Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/213

 Popular Science Monthly

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��Next Summer's Ice. They are Cutting It Now with Electricity

ONLY six years ago this winter ice was cut by driving a horse over a sHpper>'| field. The horse draggeci a sharp-edged ice-plow which dug deeply into the ice and finally cut it into pieces as small as was possible by such a method. How differently is this done now. A single electrically-driven, rapidly rotat- ing blade like a buzz-saw drives itself across the field, cutting it into large oblong pieces as it is guided and pushed by the man behind. After this, the pieces are floated into a large saw-mill where they are rapidly cut into small cakes.

The mill contains two separate bat- teries of saws, all electrically driven. The first battery consists of three saws at the front of the mill which are evenly spaced apart. Some distance behind, the second battery, consisting of seven saws, is placed. As the floats of ice reach the mill they are pushed against the first battery of saws and pulled along by them as they are cut into four pieces. Next, the strips are turned around through an angle of ninety degrees and fed into the second battery. Here they receive their final cut and come out as cakes, generally square or oblong in shape. These cakes are then floated downstream to the warehouse where thqy are stored until delivery.

Floats of ice forty feet wide by fifty-five feet long can be cut in a minute into small pieces.

���The toothbrush fits snugly in a hollow chamber in the back of the comb from which it can not easily slip out

��A Combination Comb and Tooth- brush Holder PERHAPS the most novel combination in this day of two-in-one devices is the one illustrated in the accompanying photograph. It is a small comb, of vest- pocket size, with a hollow chamber in the back, into which a toothbrush may be slipped for safe keeping. The upper and lower walls of the hollow chamber are thickened at one end to provide a restricted neck and flared mouth, to conform to the contour of the brush-handle.

���The mill through which the ice is floated to be cut into cakes before passing downstream to the warehouse for storage

��France Completes the World's Largest Tunnel

A FEW months ago, France counterparted her re- markable engineering feats along the breastworks of Ver- dun with an equally great achievement through the peaceful hills of Rove. A tun- nel seventy-two feet wide, fifty-two feet high and four and one-half miles long — larger than any other in the world — was completed. This spacious tunnel, the result of twelve years' planning and labor, is part of a great canal system which will, in the near future, connect the network of the canals of France with the Mediterranean Sea. The sys- tem will be fifty one miles long.

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