Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/416

 400

��Popular Science Monthly

��The Latest for Hair Dressers Is a Combined Chair and Basin

���A chair which has been designed to make shampooing operations easy for the shampooer and the shampooee

��THE discomfort and inconvenience of getting the hair shampooed is almost entirely eliminated by the use of a special chair and basin. The chair, placed about six inches in front of the basin, has a hinged back which is lowered until the head rests comfortably on a rubber neck-piece forming part of the basin. With the head in posi- tion the hair can be washed thoroughly. Soap lotion is applied through a small faucet and hose at the left. A gas heater in a water compartment makes it possible to get hot water instantly at any desired temperature.

��electrical contact with a battery comprising a num- ber of dry cells, such as are used in pocket flash- lights. Between the two electrodes is some blot- ting paper which has been charged with com- mon table salt. Thus in placing the electrode in a glass or bucket of water, the sodium chlor- ide, or table salt, is elec- trolytically changed into so- dium hypochlorite, which con- stitutes one of the most powerful oxidizing or sterilizing agents known.

The effect of the oxidizing agent is to destroy the dangerous germs or bacteria and to render the water

> sterile and safe for drinking. The

i water does not lose any of its dissolved gases and is not flat or otherwise unpalatable after it has been sterilized. Furthermore, the salt used as an electrolyte does not impart to the water a salty taste, since very little of it is used. Within a short time after bubbles of gas evolved at the electrodes rise to the surface, all parts of the water have been subjected to the purifying oxidation. Moving the electrodes about in the water ac- celerates the action.

Charles F. Burgess, of Madison, Wisconsin, is the inventor.

��Sterilizing a Thousand Quarts of Water with a Vest-Pocket Apparatus

SOME remarkable claims are made for the efficiency of a vest-pocket water sterilizer that should free all travelers, campers and soldiers from the germs lurking in contaminated water.

The apparatus is distinctly portable. A complete equipment of large size is capable of sterilizing eight thousand quarts of water. It weighs only a few ounces. Ordinarily, however, the apparatus is used to purify a small quantity of water at a time, a cupful, for instance; but it may be used again and again with but slight re- adjustments.

The principle of the invention is simpli- city itself. Two electrodes are brought into

���Sterilizing a cupful of drinking water vest-pocket apparatus. It only takes

��with the a minute

�� �