Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/642

 626

��Popular Science Monthly

��A Simply Constructed Vapor Plug for Automobile Engines

VAPOR plugs are fast becoming a com- ponent part of the automobile engme. One can be made that will serve the purpose and the cost will be only for the price of a small pet cock and a piece of tubing. I Two methods may be used in making

���Small pet cock interposed in the manifold of an engine instead of a regular vapor plug

the connections for the air inlet at the pet cock. The first one shown is where the pet cock is turned into a tapped hole in the manifold body and the rod connects a

��handle on the dashboard. The second method calls for a piece of tubing to form a connecting piece from the manifold body to the pet cock where it is placed on the dashboard within easy reach of the driver. In the manufactured plug the operation is automatic; but the simply constructed device must be worked by hand. It is claimed that these plugs will reduce the carbon formation, give more mileage per gallon of fuel, more power and speed. When starting the engine or on a cold day close the cock. It works best when the engine is hot. — R. F. Becker.

��A Substitute Drafting-Rule Made from Ordinary Flat Rule

FIRST buy a common flat rule with a metal strip embedded in a slot running lengthwise of the rule. Next get a piece of cardboard the length and width of the rule. Glue this firmly to the underside of the rule. The cardboard raises the edge of the metal strip a trifle off the drawing paper, thereby allowing the ink from the drafting-pen to flow freely and without danger of smear- ing. Rulers like the one described are not expensive and when treated according to instructions will give as much satisfac- tion as a steel scale.

��Succeeding in Radio Work

Advice to the Radio Amateur

��THE future development of radio teleg- raphy is largely in the hands of the earnest non-professional experimen- ters of to-day. From the ranks of this country's 300,000 amateurs are to be recruited many of the men who will make wireless telegraphy of greater and greater public value in the years to come.

Amateurs have been handicapped by a lack of authoritative technical guidance. Much of the instruction given them has been and is entirely inaccurate.

The Popular Science Monthly, in accordance with its policy of expressing scientific facts truthfully and clearly, has arranged for a series of wireless articles of a new sort. In them some of the hardest problems of the radio amateur will be explained and solved by Mr. John L. Hogan, Jr., who has agreed to aid the

��Popular Science Monthly's readers in this way. Mr. Hogan is Chairman of the Standardization Committee and Vice-Presi- dent of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Honorary Member of the Radio Club of America, member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and a Research Engineer. His inventions and scientific writings are widely known in the radio field throughout the world, and his views are authoritative. Best of all, however, he is able to explain abstruse scientific and engineering matters so simply and clearly that they can be grasped even by beginners in the study of wireless.

Mr. Hogan believes in the radio ama- teurs, and is going to help us help them. Watch for the series of articles, which will commence in an early issue of the Popular Science Monthly.

�� �