Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/86

58 Cripple Makes a Fortune with Tri-Car; Then Runs for City Council

EVERELY hampered by a disease of the hip which makes him a cripple from his waist down, a resident of Los Angeles has begun life all over again in middle age, succeeding in a new business under a handicap which would have made most men quite willing to depend upon charity. The disease developed to an alarming extent and made crutches essential. At the same period, the physicians declared that life in the open air was the only thing that would save their patient.

So C. E. Ellsworth dropped his former name and for business purposes adopted that of "Handy Andy." He had always liked to tinker with things, and

the skill of his hands was unimpaired. He was able to outfit a little second-hand car as a traveling machine shop, equipping it with emery wheels, vises and a big grindstone. In this machine he buzzed around town, doing odd jobs for housewives and sharpening knives for butchers.

After some years of hard work, "Handy Andy" bought a neat tri-car well equipped for the work in hand. Now he has succeeded in earning enough to buy a block of flats, and not long ago he entered into a political campaign, winning many votes for a place in the city council, although he failed of election.

 Gangway Life-Saver Prevents Crushing of Life Boats

HE hazardous method of lowering life boats into rough water alongside ships in disasters has inspired many inventors to perfect life-saving apparatus that would be really safe.

Among the scores of such inventions that have been submitted to the patent office, is a long net gangway which projects from the side of the vessel upon the surface of the water, being supported at the lower end by large air tanks. The poles which support the gangway are hinged to the ship's side, and when not in use are carried in long pockets below the rail of the first open deck.

The chief advantage of this gangway-life saver is that the life boats never approach near enough to the ship's side to be crushed by waves. The boat is held close to the gangway by means of gaff hooks.

A New Device for Recording Sounds

N apparatus for recording sounds has been devised which, while incorporating some well known principles, has several features of decided originality. The fact that it is possible to retain sounds by other mediums than the phonograph record is not generally known. One device, however, which departs radically from the wax record, is the telegraphone which was brought out several years ago. The telegraphone is a magnetic apparatus, which impresses sounds in their relative strength magnetically on a wire.

The new invention makes use of the telegraphone principle to a certain extent, in that it is magnetic. But it combines a new principle as well—that of photography. A diaphragm alters a shaft of light falling on a moving strip of sensitized paper. When the reel of paper is used, it is copied photographically on a strip of iron. The iron is then etched—in much the same way that half tone plates are etched—and when it passes in its completed form between highly sensitive magnets, the variations in sounds are accurately reproduced in a telephone receiver.