Inventions

Protector. In Berlin, policewomen recommend to girls a device invented by one Emil Pruess. Not to all girls, but to nice girls, above all to nice girls who are pretty. It is called in German, the “Anti-Masher.” A nice girl, imperiled, perhaps disastrously, presses against her assailant’s body an induction coil attached to the Pruess Battery, which she carries concealed under her dress. Low amperage of 1,000 volts destroys consciousness.

Arc Welding. Hotel-managers and their patrons, apartment-dwellers and other city folk, gave thanks for a report by the U. S. Bureau of Standards that arc-welded girder joints can be substituted for pneumatically riveted joints, being as strong, often stronger. The significance: no more cannonading clatter on skyscraper framesoutside the sleepy urbanite’s window; arc welding, where girder steel is melted into a joint by powerful electric current, is silent.

Smoke Photography. Aerial photographers at McCook Field, Ohio, gave full credit to the Eastman Kodak Co. for new “K-panchromatic” plates by which flying observers can photograph the earth through smoke screens and light fog. The plates are treated with a secret cyanide, “krypto-cyanide,” sensitive to infra-red rays which, though invisible to the eye, penetrate smoke and water vapor to record an image in the camera. The significance: protection for wartime mapmakers.