Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/660

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��Popular Science Monthly

��disk is then ejected from the barrel by highly compressed air or black powder which pushes against the disk with a pressure of nearly fifty thousand pounds. When the idler disk is pulled down by a magnet, the disk is shot out of the gun with the ones beside it nearly

���vertically

An electric timing circuit automatically controls the fir- ing. The mere pressing of a but- ton starts a con- trol - clock turn- ing, and the com- pressed-air valves and the idler-disk release are elec- trically operated in their turn. As soon as one disk is fired, com- pressed air brings up another in its place. The one clock is con- nected with the controlling mechanism of each gun in a battery. A veritable sheet of heavy whirling disks is shot into the water as the guns are fired simultaneously.

Torpedoes can be sighted when from one to two thou- sand feet from a ship. The time consumed in the tor- pedo's travel makes it a simple matter to aim a bat- tery of my guns in its path. The steady stream of disks ten times two feet wide, is as easily fired in the path of the torpedo as if it were a stream of water from a hose. The rapid whirling of the disks at high speed prevents them from turning out of the initial, practically vertical, plane. Therefore they begin to sink in the water in their vertical direction, and the buoyancy of the disks caused by their hollow interior prevents their sinking fast. A great sheet of rotating disks is formed in the water which is as formidable as if it were a steel wall. Striking one of the disks, the torpedo will burst. That will be all. The twenty-five feet of ocean between it and the vessel will serve as a cushion, so the vessel will not be harmed.

��rveping World Daily mogdzine

Waiting for His Contribution f*> i h ca.

��Drawing Uncle Sam, the Figure that Makes or Breaks a Cartoonist

THE ambition of every newspaper car- toonist is to win praise for his figure of Uncle Sam. Indeed, some cartoonists may be said to hold their jobs because of their

inimitable char- acterizations of this venerable and virile gentle- man.

Who would not recognize an Uncle Sam by Robert Carter, of the Evening Sun, of New York, or an Uncle Sam by John T. Mc- Cutcheon, of the Chicago Tribune, or the same figure by Oscar Cesare, now of the New York Evening Post? If these three cartoonists drew nothing but Uncle Sams they would still have the wide follow- ing that they now have. Although the three figures are as different as the cartoonists themselves, they represent in body contour and fa- cial expression all that is distinctly American.

The name of John Cassel, of the New York W'orld, should be linked with the three cartoonists mentioned above. His Uncle Sam is a striking characterization, and not, as one editor remarked, "a hayseed in a gentleman's clothes." The illustration above shows how Mr. Cassel draws his figure from a plaster cast, in order to obtain an accurate representation. The cast was molded from an original cartoon of Uncle Sam by Mr. Cassel, and by drawing direct from it he can not fail to get the expression and atmosphere that belong to his productions alone.

���At top: John Cassel, the editorial car- toonist of the New York World, draws his Uncle Sam from a cast molded by himself. Below: The finished cartoon

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