Science and Invention.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 440, 18 August 1904, Page 7

Science and Invention.

ANEW worm-gear is being introduced from Germany. It consists of a worm driving a worm-wheel, the teeth of which are conical rollers. An automatic fife-lighter is the newest labour-saving device. It is attached to your alarm clock ; when the alarm goes off, it works a mechanical arrangement which ends in a wire with a fuse at the extremity. The fuse is lighted by the movement, and sets fire to the paper and wood already laid in the grate. You can thus dress yourself by a nice fire.

A new copy holder for typewriters is a support with a clamp, attached to the back of the frame of the machine ; it permits the page of note to fall over the front and hang just above the keys on a position most suitable for reading. It can bo turned back when it is desired to look at the typewritten work, and the note-book can be closed without losing the place. A novel hatpin has just been invented. Tt is a disc attached to the under surface of the crown of the hat, with a button protruding from the upper side; on the disc are two pins resembling coils. The button is turned, Mie new dins enter the hair, curl in it, and fasten the hat firmly to the head. To remove the hat, you must first turn the button back again. A curious method of boiling water to cook an egg is mentioned by an ingenious inventor. He has a small cylinder filled with water ; he turns this rapidly by means of a hand-wheel, but at the same time a wooden tongue grates against the cylinder; this friction produces heat, the water gets hot, and the steam is allowed to escape through a hole. This steam boils the egg, and the device is useful in a place where matches and fuel are not to be obtained.

ONE OP THE USES OP SEALING-WAX.

Engravers in Germany harden their tools in sealing-wax. The tool is heated to whiteness and plunged into the wax, withdrawn in an instant, and plunged in again, the process being repeated until the steel is too cold to enter the wax. The steel is said to become, after this process, almost as hard as the diamond, and when touched with a little oil or turpentine the tools are excellent for engraving purposes, and they are able to pierce the hardest metals. A GOLD MINE WAITING FOR SOMEBODY. The most crying need of to-day is a substitute for Para rubber. It is certain"to be discovered sooner or later. Celluloid and oxidised linseed oil arc useful for some purposes for which rubber is used, but for cycle and automatic tyres real rubber is still the only material with the elasticity. Why should not you be an inventor? Gutta--percha is rising in price every year. For golf balls it has never been superseded. Find a good golf ball substitute and you will leap to millionairedom. For the purpose of insulating submarine cables guttapercha is the one and only substance at present known. The market for a substitute is enormous. RADIUM AND CANCER TREATMENT. Dr. W. J. Morton, of New York, makes the announcement that he has succeeded in affecting cancer eur«s with the aid of radium. He is not extravagant in his claims, and does not assert that his method will prove successful in every instance, but he has operated on three proven cases of cancer, and he says his patients are now cured. Dr. Morton's treatment consists in administering internally a solution of sulphate of quinine and then holding near, "the body a minute quantity of radium. The solution fluoresces, and this process by working on the malignant growth kills it ( Whether other practitioners have discovered the same method Dr. Morton does not know, but he says so far as he is concerned the operation is original. His purpose in making piiblic the fact that he has successfully used radium is to induce other physicians to experiment with the treatment to discover its potentiality in cases more difficult than his. American doctors at present withhold comment. THE NAVIGATION OF THE AIR. Mr Eric Stuart Bruce in an address on ' The Navigation of the Air,' explained the material nature of the air, the principle of the pressure of fluids, showing the mistake fallen into by Lana, in 1670, 'when he first proposed to apply the pressure of fluids to a lifting body in air. Lana thought that if he emptied some copper balls of air he would thereby make them light enough for the air to press them up, but forgot that the atmospheric pressure would also crush them fiat. The lecturer showed this practically by means of a tin canister, from which the air was exhausted. Mr Bruce dealt with the use of heated air, of hydrogen, and of coal-gas as a means of raising balloons, showing in each case how it was done, the experiments interesting his juvenile hearers very much. Patriotism had been the stimulus which originated and had developed ballooning. The first practical use was in war. He stated that our national balloon equipment was the finest in the world. Its most important feature was gold-beaters' skin, the material of which the balloons were made. Its lightness was shown by the rising to the ceiling of a very small gold-beaters' skin balloon. One ten times as large, made of varnished cambric or silk, the ordinary materials, would not lift its own weight. The method of rapid filling from steel cylinders of compressed gas was shown, also a large cylinder, such as is actually carried by our troops in war. It would take 84 such cylinders to fill a balloon of 10,000 c. ft. Thus the advantage of a very light balloon material, which will necessitate as small a balloon as possible, was obvious. Views wore shown of war balloons in use in South Africa. The principle and use of- the parachute were also explained. LIQUID FUEL. From the time when steamers wore fired by oil fuel in the Caspian Sea in 1870 until the present year vast numbers of burners and other devices have been suggested,, and sometimes made, for the better utilisation of heavy oil as fuel. The problem is an attractive one, but the difficulties connected with its solution appear to be only slightly understood by those who attempt to introduce their pet project or special apparatus for burning the oil. The earliest arrangements that were employed consisted in the distribution of oil in bulk form on to a grate or hearth in the manner that had always been considered necessary when using solid fuel. That this introduction of a liquid was manifestly extravagant and wasteful in every sense did not require very many experiments to determine. The bulk supply method was discarded, and recourse was had to methods of breaking up into a spray the oil, either by pressure or by devices in which air was employed to act as the conveying agent. The step from cmploying air to utilising steam a.*, the atomising agent or spraying medium was not a groat one, and it is not surprising that most of the latter forms of burners that have been introduced are modifications only of methods for supplying liquid fuel to steamraising purposes by the utilisation of steam as the carrying agent for delivering it into the furnace to spray form. Many forms of vaporising gasifies the oil initially by a small or pilot burner, the oil thus gasified being thus distributed or fed either with steam or compressed. '