Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/70

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��Popular Science Monthly

��A Brush Which Clears the Way for the Phonograph Needle

DO YOU really clean your phonograph records when you rub them off with a cloth? Doesn't the rub- bing compress some of the dust into the grooves?

Arthur Herrman, of New York city, thinks so. He has taken an ordinary brush and has attached it to the sound box in such a way as to dislodge all dust from the groove just before the needle reaches that particu- lar portion of the groove.

His sweeper is composed of stiff bristles. It may be swung to an inactive position out of en- gagement with the record by turning it on its swivel connection. It is adapted for the playing of records having hill-and-dale or laterally cut grooves.

���The sweeper is clamped to the sound box and is moved along just in front of the needle

��Doing Away with the Pick and Shovel in Excavations

UNTIL recently there were only two methods of excavating and handling dirt, stone and gravel. The one was by means of the pick and shovel, which is both expensive and slow. The other was by means of the steam shovel, which, while cheaper and quicker than the first way,

��10(1 u ires a large original purchasing outlay. To provide a happy medium, John Albrecht invented this ex- cavator and loader.

The machine consists of a scraper and a loading plat- form. The scraper is of steel and scrapes up the dirt or gravel and carries it to the loading platform. It is pulled back and forth over the ground by a steel cable. A man guides it by two wooden handles. When the scraper reaches the platform it is full of dirt and ready to be dumped into a wagon. To do this it is drawn onto a skip, or steel box with only three sides. The skip is then lifted till it holds the scraper direct- ly over a shute down which the dirt slides into the waiting wagon.

The machine is run by an electric motor and needs only two men to operate it, one to run the motor and the other to steer the scraper. When this excavator is used the wagons are loaded with dirt on the street instead of having to be driven into the excavation to be loaded, which would necessitate an extra team of horses to pull them out. In this way the great gap between the expensive steam shovel and the old hand method is bridged.

���The machine consists of a loading platform and a scraper, which, when filled with dirt, is drawn up on a three-sided steel box which dumps the dirt into the waiting wagon

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