Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/191

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RAMED by the masonry portals of the Municipal Building the Woolworth tower by night represents one of the greatest artistic achievements in this age of electrical wonders. For more than a year now the thirty-storied tower has burst out into the night as a giant shaft crowned with a scintillating jewel. When that part of the building below the thirtieth floor is dark the tower takes on the appearance of a huge crystal hung by invisible wires from the skies. When the switches are pressed into sockets illuminating the structure more current is employed than is necessary to light the streets of a city of thirty-thousand inhabitants. Six hundred automobile lamps are contained in the electrical installation.

The lights are so arranged that they flood every inch of the structure. An ingenious system of screening prevents the rays from shooting directly downward or upward, thus revealing the source of light. Anyone viewing the spectacle from below is vexed to find where the light comes from.

WOMAN'S thimble is said to have been the means of suggesting the first gas burner. William Murdock, the inventor, first burned the gas simply as a flame from the end of a pipe. One day in an emergency he wished to stop the illumination. Hurriedly looking around for something, Murtlock seized his wife's thimble and thrust it over the light, which was immediately extinguished. There was a strong odor of gas, however, and the experimenter applied a light to the thimble, discovering that it was full of holes, through which tiny jets of flame appeared. The importance of the result was that the illumination from those two or three tiny jets was much brighter than had been given by the great flare from the end of the pipe. Acting on the principle which this chance discovery revealed, he constructed what was known as the Cockspur burner.