Science: Laytex After Lastex

Not blushing to use the word “revolutionary,” U. S. Rubber Co. last week announced Laytex, a new insulation.

Laytex is made from latex (rubber tree milk) from which proteins, sugars and water solubles are removed. Lengths of wire to be insulated are fed vertically through tanks containing the processed milk. At each immersion a film of milk adheres to the wire and dries, any excess falling back into the tank. Thus, by repeated dippings, the insulation is built around the conductor, the wire is accurately centred, and the wall thickness of the insulation is uniform.

Laytex stretches to seven and one-half times its normal length before snapping and its tensile strength is 5,000 lb. per sq. in. After a fortnight’s soaking in water electrical resistance is decreased by only 10%.

To back up its triumphant tone, the company pointedly referred to lastex which has indeed revolutionized corsets.

General Motors’ Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. and many another industrialist is convinced that in the long sweep of industrial civilization the course is still upward and will be milestoned by more products of applied science than have ever yet appeared. The news last week, for the first time in years, was dotted with many a milestone of engineering achievement, big and little.

¶ At a great gathering of metal manufacturers’ in Manhattan, Steelmaster Tom Girdler flatly predicted a bigger and more diversified production of steels than has ever been known before.

¶ Inventor Charles Jacob Young, shy son of famed Owen D., expounded his facsimile radio, lately come into practical use. It transmits carbon copies of almost anything through the air.* Young Mr. Young works for RCA-Victor of Camden, N. J., subsidiary of Radio Corp. of America, and although his father was until lately board chairman of the parent company, Son Charles is a self-made scientist.

¶ Two smart doctors in Houston installed a urinalysis machine in a hotel washroom.

¶ President Bohn of Bonn Aluminum announced a new way to produce aluminum which he thought worth an investment of $10,000,000 (see below).

¶ Meanwhile, too, air services were speeded up; a new Sunday magazine of millions of circulation was evolved, with technical science yielding the spotlight to the science of concerted competition; and, bigger than all the others, Low Cost Housing was a goal which hundreds of architectural, plumbing, electrical, refrigerating and elevator engineers, to say nothing of financiers and sociologists, continued last week to believe was almost in sight.

*In the transmitter, a photograph, drawing or message is scanned photoelectrically as in television. Lights and shadows are converted by the scanner into electric impulses, which, at the receiving end, control a stylus under which a roll of carbon-backed paper is fed.