Science: Technology Notes

Recent news of invention and engineering:

> Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.—which branched out into batteries, plastics, steel parts, service stations, cotton mills—announced development of a new automobile spark plug that provides better ignition, quicker starts for cold motors. The plug has electrodes coated with polonium, a radioactive element discovered by the late great Marie Curie (and named for her native Poland). The polonium shoots a steady stream of subatomic particles which ionize (electrify) the air in the spark gap, make it a better conductor when the spark jumps.

> In ordinary metal casting, molten metal is poured into a mold, allowed to cool, then removed. After long experiment, several metallurgical manufacturers have devised a way to cast high-grade metal rods continuously—that is, in an endless strip, as newsprint is made. Molten metal is fed from a reservoir to a water-cooled tube. As the metal flows down and out of the tube, a water spray cools it so that it can be continuously withdrawn as a solid rod. The Industrial Bulletin of Arthur D. Little Inc. (Boston consultants) states that continuously cast rods are free of air cavities, highly uniform in strength.

> Airplane engine carburetors have been vastly improved since the old cork-float type, but they still tend to get clogged with ice in a certain temperature-humidity range. This can be prevented by valving in hot air from the exhaust stacks. But if anything goes wrong with the hot-air valve, the engine conks just the same. To get rid of carburetors, fuel-injection systems have been devised to shoot into the cylinders tiny jets of liquid gasoline.

This spray is said to burn more smoothly and cheaply than a carburetor mixture, to make possible the use of less volatile gasolines, to prevent icing under any conditions. One of the first German planes shot down last fall in Scotland was found to have a fuel-injection device. In the U. S., Continental Motors Corp. now equips 75-h.p. engines for light planes with the first commercial U. S. fuel-injection system. Army & Navy technologists are experimenting with it.

> In Denver, Reginald Scott Dean of the U. S. Bureau of Mines held up pieces of steel and brass, dropped them on the floor. They clanged. Mr. Dean then dropped a piece of another metal. There was a faint thump. This “noiseless” metal, as strong and elastic as mild steel, is a heat-treated alloy of copper and manganese. “This,” said Metallurgist Dean, “opens up many new possibilities—chatterless spring suspensions, noiseless gears, a muffler for a whole host of bothersome industrial sounds.”

> Coffee is vacuum-packed by some canners because the oxygen in the air diminishes freshness and flavor. It occurred to Engineer Jay Erwin Tone of Des Moines that freshness and flavor might be even better preserved if, after air was pumped from the can, it was replaced by vapor from fresh-ground coffee. After several years of puttering, he invented a big machine which fills 3,000 coffee cans an hour with such vapor.

> Big electrical transformers used to be filled with oil as a cooling liquid. The oil was in constant danger of catching fire because of arcing, which occurs when high voltage jumps its channel. Westinghouse transformers are now filled with a chlorinated hydrocarbon liquid called “Inerteen” which is not only nonflammable but itself provides the means of putting the transformer out of action before arcing can destroy it. Arcing through Inerteen releases hydrochloric acid fumes, which act on contact with zinc oxide to make it electrically conducting, completing a relay circuit which switches the misbehaving transformer off the power line to await repairs.