Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/502

 �The Life-Preserver Chair Cushion

��A new idea for pleasure yachts and steamers

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��'HEX next your best friend invites you to take a trip on his yacht, do not refuse just because you do not happen to see anything that looks like a life-preserver around. He may have fitted out his deck chairs with life-preservers that serve as cushions. Practically everything that is upholstered can be made into a life-preserver. The mattress you sleep on at night, the pillow under your head and the deck chairs in which you lounge during the day all can be designed to float and help you float if disaster overtakes the ship.

The most interesting of these life- preservers is contained in the easy chairs which invite you to rest on the deck. The comfortable leather upholstery may be removed from the chair in a minute

��The chair cushions in position on the body as a life- preserver

��and fitted on a person as a life-preserver. When the time to take to the water arrives, you simply rise from your chair, grasp the cushion which has been supporting your back and raise it up. You will see that it is attached by two straps to the cushion which forms the seat. Lift the cushion over your head so the two straps rest on your shoulders and the seat lies on your chest. Two other straps attached to the cushion and the seat are readily adjusted so the life-preserver fits you correctly w^hether you happen to be stout or thin. The straps fasten with snappers and you may hook yourself into the life-preserver with all the expedition with which a fire- horse gets into his

rr,. ■, harness.

The seat and rj^,,.

back cushions A he rnaterial

are connected g/tf^ used in this type of

with two straps. f^M marine upholstery

is kapok from

Java. This will

not absorb

water and

��The seat fits over the chest

���It takes only a few moments to adjust the kapok cushions. They have a buoy ancy of one hundred and forty pounds

��is exceedingly buoyant. It is equally attractive for the purpose of ordinary .deck upholstery as real leather, which it very closely resembles. The chair cushion life-preserver has" a buoyancy of one hundred and forty pounds while the ordinary life-preserver only boasts about twenty-seven pounds buoyancy.

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