Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/409

 Popular Science Monthly

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��A Folding Walking-Stick with an Electric Flashlight

THE walking-stick is a favorite object of experiment with the inventors — or it seems s<9.. Efforts are constantly being made to lift it into the ranks of the really useful. The one equipped with the little electric lamp is no longer a cane oddity. It made its debut fully three years ago. But the same cane in the new folding shape is certainly the first of its kind to come our way. The light switches on and oflf just as the light in the old cane did. You simply twist the metal covering over the light socket and the bulb comes to life. But the new cane has a decided advantage over its predecessor. You can pack it in your trunk and traveling bag and take it along wherever you go.

The tsvo parts of the cane are connected by a steel rod with two pivoted elbows. Thus the cane can be taken apart and the upper and lower sections placed parallel with each other.

The lamp is located at the most con- venient part of the stick — just a hand's length from the cur\'ed handle of the cane. Here it is not in any danger of being turned on accidentally as it would be if it were further up or down, and it is in just the proper position to throw light on the key- hole or on other near or distant objects.

����The folding cane which is equipped with an electric flashlight in a most convenient location

��Thirty-nine lengths of pipe were coupled together to make a compressed air con- tainer of about fifty cubic feet capacity

Improvising a Compressed Air Tank from Pipes

IT is particularly difficult with the present shortage of freight cars to obtain equip- ment of any kind. Long delays are the rule before even standard apparatus can be delivered. But sometimes, in a pinch of this kind, mechanical ingenuity comes to the front and solves the problem without delay. For instance, a contractor needed a compressed air-storage reserv^oir quickly. An eight-inch well, two hundred and twenty feet deep had been cased all the way down and screened. Quicksand then entered. To remove it, compressed air had to be employed. No suitable air-tank was available, and no manufacturer would promise delivery for weeks. So the con- tractor hooked up lengths of ordinary pipe, as shown in the illustration.

Thirty-nine lengths of pipe w'ere used, each six feet long and six inches in diameter. Their combined storage capacity amounted to about fifty cubic feet. The makeshift served its purp>ose admirably. There was very little delay and the pipe was usable for other purposes when it was no longer needed to supply compressed air.

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