Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/690

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��Popular Science Monthly

��Gas Flows Back to the Earth

IN the Midway oil-field of California natural gas is being returned to the earth from one pocket to another. Two flowing oil wells on this lease produce a considerable quantity of gas along with the oil. Already there is more gas than is needed for fuel or domestic purposes

���Too much natural gas is obtained from a California

oil-field. For that reason it is piped back into natural

underground reservoirs for future use

��in the field. Instead of permitting this gas to go to waste it is carried by pipe lines to a hole that was drilled for oil several years ago. Under natural pres- sure the gas finds an outlet at about five hundred feet. Apparently it is being stored away in underground reser- voirs at that depth.

Buying Telephone Poles by Weight

SOME of the telephone and telegraph companies have adopted a plan of weighing poles which they buy as a means of as- certaining just how well seasoned they are. Men who are experienced in handling poles are able to calculate with a remarkable de- gree of accuracy the approxi- mate weight of a pole that has been properly seasoned. Should a pole

��prove to be much heavier than their estimate, it has not been properly sea- soned as a general rule ; the over- weight is due to the presence of sap in the wood. The accompanying illustration shows a weighing device which is utilized by one concern. A tripod supports a long lever, the short end of which is a few inches in length and the long end twelve or fifteen feet. To the short end is at- tached a simple weighing device consist- ing of a balance-arm and sliding and fixed weights. Hanging from this bymeansof heavy chains are two sets of wood tongs. The pole is slid between the tripod to such a position that its weight will be about evenly distributed on either side. The points of the tongs are embedded in the wood, then the long arm of the lever is brought down and the pole is lifted from the ground and its weight ascertained. The leverage is so great that one man is generally able to lift the average pole. Only the well-seasoned poles are dipped in the preserving bath. This bath adds greatly to the life of the base of the pole, as the chemical, which is kept hot by a fire beneath the vat, enters every pore and crack in the base.

THE East will have to look to the West for progressive ideas. Palo Alto, California, a town of about 7,000 population, has a town incinerator of a daily capacity of 30 tons of mixed refuse.

��� ��Before dipping in the preserving bath, telephone poles are weighed to determine whether or not they are well seasoned

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