Page:Popular Mechanics 1928 01.pdf/10

 



Trips between New York and Paris in fifty hours are anticipated by a French inventor in a boat he has designed to rival aircraft. It is in the model stage so far and shows similarities to a submarine, being fitted to travel under water for a considerable time. It is to have eight motors, six for forward and two for reverse travel, with a total horsepower of 2,400. A maximum rate of over eighty-six miles an hour can be attained, the designer believes.

 

As many as 30,000 earthquakes may occur yearly, but not more than thirty are what can be considered catastrophes so far as man is concerned, according to R. M. Wilson, of the geological survey. Sensitive seismographs show that the earth is almost constantly quaking and trembling somewhere, but hundreds of the disturbances are so slight that they cannot be considered "earthquakes" in the accepted sense of the term, and fewer still possess sufficient intensity to cause great damage in centers of population. Just a few weeks ago, a severe quake was registered on instruments in various parts of the world. It was believed to have occurred somewhere under the ocean off Alaska. No damage was reported, hence the quake is not recorded as a catastrophe, although it was a severe shake. Between Sept. 1, 1924, and Aug. 31, 1926, 551 notable disasters in various places were tabulated in "The World's Health," recently published in Paris. The list included sixty-six earthquakes, four volcanic eruptions, nine avalanches and landslides, 197 floods, 148 cyclones, eight tidal waves, twenty-three droughts, forty-eight big fires, seventeen famines and thirty-one plagues of locusts.

 

Embryo orators and actors at the University of Southern California, have a means of studying the defects and good points of their own voices in an instrument that registers the tones as they are spoken and repeats them as a phonograph does. It is essentially a combination recorder and repeater, and the voice is sufficiently amplified as it is rendered by the machine, so that a number of persons can hear it at one time in a classroom or other place. The volume may also be diminished to suit a smaller area.



