Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/211

 Popular Science Monthly

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��Mr. Average Healthy Man's Enormous Appetite

AN average man who has seen seven ty- L five years of life has eaten an amount of food equal to some fifteen hundred times his own weight. One hundred and ten tons of food he has consumed, of which the bread alone, if it could be piled separately, would occupy a space equal to that of a good-sized building. The vegetables on reappearing would fill a train three miles in length and the bacon w^hen placed end to end in single slices would stretch along a line four miles long. The reappearance of five tons of fish and one-fifth of a ton of cheese would surely haunt him, while twelve thousand eggs, ten thousand pounds of sugar and fifteen hundred pounds of salt would put in their claim. And he has smoked no less than 250,000 cigarettes. Let's hope he has saved the coupons.

��The Sandwich Man As an Ally of the Telephone Companies

WHEN a disastrous fire swept through Paris, Texas, not long ago, utterly destroying more than fourteen hundred homes and many business houses of the cit>% the telephone system was badly crippled. Not only were private lines destroyed, but on account of the scat- tering of families into temporary- quar- ters all over the city it was almost im- possible to locate any one called over the long distance wires. An ex- change tvas connected tem- porarily to handle such calls, but the problem was to find the person wanted.

It was finally solved by employing the sandwich-man idea. Several boys were en- gaged to carry blackboards sandwich fashion, on which were written in large letters the names of the persons wanted. Primitive as was the plan (dating back to 1780, to the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who originated the idea) it cleared up the situation until the tele- phone lines were restored. The sandwich boys were not of the usual silent type but whistled and called to every passerby to read the sign.

����The exjjedient to which the telephone companies of Paris, Texas, were forced to resort

��The detachable motor drives the bi- cycle at a speed of thirty miles an hour

Convert Your Bicycle into a Motor- cycle with This Detachable Motor ANEW bicycle motor, so small that it reaches only from the top of the front wheel to the handlebars, is to be placed on the market for those who wish to convert their bicycles into motor- cycles. The motor, a com- plete gasoline engine in minia- ture, has a flywheel and a muffler. It is clamped to the wheel by a strong side-fork, so that a steel traction-pulley presses down upon the tire at its center.

The gasoline-tank on one side is balanced by the weight of the flywheel on the other, so that the pulley-groove is pressed down uniformly across the tire. The ignition system consists of a small spark-coil and two dry cells, which are stored in a small case suspended from the horizontal bar of the bicycle frame.

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