Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/76

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��Popular Science Monthly

���Press a button in the door-knob and a lamp near the keyhole flashes up

Finding the Keyhole at Night. Press a Button and a Light is Made

SOME people, on certain dire occasions in the small hours of the morning, find it difficult to locate the keyhole of their door. An Ohio inventor, however, has come to their rescue with a device for luring the latchkey to the proper place. He accomplishes this with an arrangement which provides for the placing of an electric light pointing geometrically toward the keyhole. The light has a reflector attached to it which further intensifies its illumina- tion. The connections to the light are made through a push-button which has been thoughtfully fitted directly into the door-knob. From the push-button, the wires lead to the batteries through contacts between the door and the door-sill. Push the button and the circuit is closed and the lamp lighted. Combined with this is an alarm which is so con- nected with the door-lock that as "^soon as the key is placed in it, the alarm goes of^, arousing the household.

��How They Wash Clothes with the Help of the Wind in Alaska

IN Alaska and throughout the more or less frozen North, laundresses are prac- tically unknown. The miners do their own housekeeping, and their own launder- ing. The accompanying illustration shows a device which one of them constructed as a substitute for the washboard and tub. It is made of an old barrel-churn mounted on runners so that the miner can take it along to his work,

A cylinder about thirty inches long and of the same diameter as the head of the churn was first constructed of heavy galvanized iron. One end of this cylinder was left open, and the head of the churn was fastened to the open end. The cylin- der was then carefully balanced in the churn, and the churn-bearings were fast- ened on with rivets and solder to make them watertight.

Two screens of galvanized wire of one- inch mesh were made. One of them was suspended from the movable head by one- quarter-inch galvanized iron rods, and the other was fastened to the cylinder, so that the two were about ten inches apart in the middle of the cylinder. The clothes are confined between the two screens. The water surges back and forth through them until they are clean, or as long as the churn is in motion. A large pin-wheel attached to the bearings furnishes the turning power.

���The miner leaves the machine in an exposed position and lets the wind do his washing

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