Page:Popular Mechanics 1928 01.pdf/73

 powerful. The sound of their discharge is difficult to describe. Not just an earbitting crash, but an infernal super-thunder that reverberates long after the shell is speeding on its flight. The writer has been on deck behind a turret when the big guns were fired and the feeling is as though some giant hands were crushing one's body from all sides.

High aloft, the speeding planes await the striking of the first shot. They see the "California" towing the target rapidly. She is so close to the target that a landsman would believe it inconceivable that another battleship, eighteen miles away, could hit the bit of canvas without at least endangering her. But naval gunfire is so accurate today that there actually is no danger. A man might appear in a rowboat 200 feet ahead of the target and be perfectly safe so long as he could keep that distance away from the target.

The radiomen in the "West Virginia" suddenly hear their call sign and begin to receive directions from the planes in the air eighteen miles away. They hear, "100 over," and immediately yell it into a voice tube which reaches the bridge and gunnery officer. Instantly the turrets change the lay of their guns and fire again. Again the monster guns crash out, and this time the planes radio, "straddle"!

The guns are "on" and the welcome words from the planes, "no change," delight the waiting crews on the guns. These were the words passed that memorable day at Gonaives off the Haitian coast when the "West Virginia" made her record.

 

Having been abandoned as a home for fish, an old aquarium in an Ohio city was remodeled into a community church. Its shape afforded a roomy auditorium. and the only alterations made were entrance and a hallway.



 



A novel siphon built of aluminum tubing and equipped with a rubber bulb by which it can be started without the usual sucking has been patented by a Chicago inventor, who is marketing it in sizes small enough to extract the cream from the milk bottle, through grades up to siphons big enough to empty oil and gasoline barrels. A U-shaped tube extends into the container, and a third leg is bent down over the outside to provide the outlet. The intake hole is on the top side of the bend in the container. After the siphon is inserted, the rubber bulb is pressed once to expel the air and fill the "U" with liquid. A second pressure on the bulb forces the liquid over the upper bend and starts the flow. The bulb can be held depressed, or slowly released without interfering with the action, and the flow can be stopped at any time by squeezing the bulb and releasing it quickly, which action draws the liquid back over the upper bend.

