Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/756

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��Popular Science Monthly

��Soldering-iron Has New Principle

AN electric soldering-iron which heats the object to be soldered only at the actual point of contact, thereby doing away with much of the loss of heat

���A Room Papered with Postage Stamps

WITHIN easy walking distance of the old cathedral town of Chi- chester, England, is the "Rising Sun," in North Bersted, a house of interest to all who collect stamps. This small inn contains a room every inch of which is covered with postage stamps. Ceiling, walls, doors, chairs, tables, picture frames, every part of the room, except the floor, is thickly covered, while from the ceiling hang long festoons and ropes, made of bundles of stamps for which there is no other place. Fully two million stamps are pasted up, and a million more hang in the festoons. Great bundles, one of which contains sixty thousand stamps, hang among the heav}^ loops.

��To obviate loss of heat by radiation, this

soldering-iron has been invented. It heats

the object to be soldered only at the point

of direct contact

��by radiation in the old-fashioned iron, has been put on the market for work of all kinds. The iron, which is made in various sizes, is connected with a step-down transformer.

Heat for soldering is gen- erated by the resistance of carbon or carborundum con- tacts against which the ob- ject to be soldered is placed. The other contact, through which the current flows, is metal and will heat but slightly. No current is used until the object to be sol- dered is placed between the brass and the carbon con- tacts. It is said that with this new form of electric iron, soldering can be done in about half the usual time.

���Of all English inns the "Rising Sun" is the most curious. It has a room, every inch of which is covered with postage stamps — ceilings, doors, pic- ture frames and tables. There are so many stamps that some have to be disposed of in long festoons and ropes, which hang from the ceiling

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