SCIENCE NOTES.

Wairoa Bell, Volume 5, Issue 371, 13 November 1896, Page 12

SCIENCE NOTES.

A washerwoman named Kracheomkow,; ran a broken ne-dle iatojh r hand, and e_ unable to extract it. After two months had passed, she sent for her doctor, M, Gorinewski, who called in the help of an electrician, M. Croatia. The hand of the woman was placed on th:: pole of a weak electro-magnet, which was excited by three Poggendorf cells. The object was to draw the needle out, point first, and by degrees. Accordingly the experiment was repeated day after day for aa hour or i wo at a time the current being interrupted so as to urge the needle forward. At the end - of nine days it issued from the skin, without the loss of a drop of blood, and stuck to the magnet. The current acted for 20 hours altogether, and there was little or no pain , Cycle fire-extincteurs are now in use in Paris, They consist of a four-wheeled velocipede or what is about the same, a pair of tanden bicycles coupled side by side. Between the two a length of coiled hose is slung and pumping,gear is fitted. Complete, trie apparatus weighs 1401bs. Font firemen mount and propel it to the scene of the fir . Three minutes after arrival the pipe has been unreeled, and the hind wheels have been raised from contact with the ground, so that they can -he rotated fieely by pedal action and the motion transmitted to the pumps. About 4500 gal of water can be thrown to a height of 75ft, or 100ft* per hour by the efforts of the four men, * It is announood/ says Jileetricity, ‘ that a Frenchman has .discovered a new use for electricity, and lias invented an arrangement by which the cries of a baby are received in a microphone placed in a cradle over the infant’s head, and by some intermediate mechanism not described start the current in a circuit containing an electric bell. The mother or nurse can thus be summoned from any distance.’ What a deplorable spectacle it is to see a genius thus wasting i his energies S What is wanted is not something that will enable us to hear the little cherub’s cry at the distance qf hundreds of miles, but rather some device that will enatfie c baby to cry out in our own bedroom without disturbing our slumbers. The man who will invent suen a device will find customers at once and in plenty, but that Frenchman lifts mistaken the demands of the times/

will reduce a sea almost as well as oil The first trial was made on the Scandia, in a storm on the Atlantic. A large quantity of soap and water was discharged over the bow, and its effect wss instantaneous,.the height ot the waves nerng so diminished that the vessel could be managed without difficulty The steamer Senegal, struck by a squall in the Adriatic, used soap and water with the same result Six pounds of soap were dW od in two barrels of water, This solution len dripped oves she bow, made a quiet space about 10yds. wide preventing the waves from breaking over the vessel to any great extent.