Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/120

92 expensive in the lives of many splendid young men.

What is the remedy for this shocking condition? During the present session of Congress there must be an appropriation which will insure the purchase of a great number of new machines. When we have at least five hundred machines as a start in the right direction, then, and not until then, will the Pensacola Aeronautical Station be of real benefit and be worth the money that has been spent on it.

With the requisite number of efficient aeroplanes, and money enough to maintain flying schools, the aviators of our Army and Navy will have to confront only the ordinary dangers incidental to flying, "which they are ready and willing to face.



HE photography of the war has been, until recently, one of the great disappointments of modern journalism. In the first months of the great conflict, few pictures of any real interest filtered through the hands of the censors, but since the beginning of the second year, American photographers have managed to find their way to the fronts and have taken pictures which while inocuous in the eyes of the censor, had that striking news value which has made American journalistic enterprise the criterion of the world.

In the first rank of these photographers is Albert K. Dawson, of Brown & Dawson, Stamford, Conn., whose picture of a German 42-centimeter cell which pierced the walls of a Przemysl fort but failed to explode, is one of the most striking war photographs to reach this country. This photograph, which as published in our November issue, was mistakenly credited to Underwood and Underwood, but the credit of the achievement should go to Brown & Dawson, who copyrighted the picture.

MICROPHONE installed in a sounding lead is used in taking soundings to determine the character of the Ohio river bed. An armored cable leads from the microphone to the trawler, terminating in a telephone receiver and dry batteries. The ship is propelled at a rate of from two to six miles an hour. When the sounding lead drags over the mud bottom, a dull groaning sound is heard in the receivers, while a stony or pebbly bottom will cause a series of sharp, staccato raps.

RANK PEIRCE, of Edwardsville, Ill., an electrical experimenter, devised a way of lighting the path for his baby's buggy. He thought of the plan when the baby objected to riding



in the dark and being jolted about because of striking unseen objects. The light and reflector of a flashlamp are arranged in the top, a four-volt light being used and giving about sixty candle-power. It is connected with two dry cells in the bottom of the baby carriage, under the seat.

The light throws a ray fifteen to twenty feet ahead of the buggy. It may be easily adjusted to keep the rays from the child's eyes at all times. A plug and socket arranged in an inconspicuous place is used to light and shut off the current.