Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/522

 494

��Popular Science Monthly

���Roller-skates have been found successful in Baltimore

as a means of speeding up the message boys in telegraph

offices where a great volume of messages is relayed

��Roller- Skates in Business

DURING the rush hours, when tele- graph operators are busiest, West- ern Union boys glide on roller-skates from desk to desk, snatching the mes- sages from the hooks without even stop-

��ping, and scarcely slackening their speed. The boys and operators co-operate in the ratio of about one to twenty- two. That is, with one boy for every twent\'-two opera- tors, the messages are not allowed to stay on their hooks more than one second before being snapped up.

The skates are fitted with rubber rollers, so that anoth- er feature of modern business efficiency — silence — has been considered. Every second is scored down in black and white on the telegrams, and efficiency experts study these figures in an attempt to cut down the seconds to frac- tions of seconds. The use of skates reduces the time ac- cording to the space which has to be covered. The main office in Baltimore has five boys who work in shifts, two being able to handle the work of forty-five of the swift- est operators. The room is sixty feet long and accomodates many operators. Best of all, the boys enjoy their work.

��Motor-cycle Helps Light a Town

WHEN the town of St. Charles, Mo., was left in darkness recently by the breaking of the high-powered transmission cable from the Keokuk dam on the Missis- sippi, a motor-cycle helped save the situation and keep the town lighted. The town formerly was lighted by a steam-power plant which drove a 150 k.w. generator. When the engineers looked up the abandoned steam plant they found it possible to get up steam and run the generator, butdisco\ered that an important auxiliary, the little exciter-generator which is run in conjunction with the big one was out of commission. The exciter at the sub-station was available and E. F. Wayee, trouble man for the Electric

���A motor-cycle attached to an electric light plant helped to light a town

��Company of Missouri, harnessed his motor-cycle to the plant by removing the rear tire and belting the wheel to the exciter. For an hour, the motor- cycle supplied light to the city.

�� �