Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/113

 Popular Science Monthly

��It Stormed; So the Funeral

Was Conducted by

Telephone

FROM Wisconsin comes the report of a funeral by telephone. A Methodist minister, of Oakfield, died and his bishop was to deliver the funeral sermon. But a severe storm came on and the bishop, who was on his way, saw no chance of getting to the village, since traffic was stopped on the short branch line leading to the place. Stopping at a farmhouse to telephone his predicament to the waiting family, he decided to conduct the service over the telephone, one of the members of the family re- peating his words to the mourners.

���Compressed air pumped into the cylinder rapidly vibrates the cutting bar as would a short-stroke reciprocating engine

��The Last Word in Fountain Pen Efficiency — An Eraser Attachment

IF you should make a mistake while writing, the fault is yours, not your pen's. However, your pen may be made to correct the mistake very neatly. Daniel R. Markley, of Lancaster, Pa., has devised a plan for attaching an eraser composed of threads of spun glass to the top of the barrel of any ordinary fountain pen.

The spun-glass threads are encased in a cup which is held in another cup which screws on to the bar- rel of the pen and is covered by a cap resembling the one which covers the pen. The inner walls of the cup holding the bristles, or threads, converge at the outer end so that the bristles are held in a compact little bunch, as shown in the illus- tration. As the bristles at the end are worn away the remaining lengths may be fed through auto matically by screwing the cup further up.

The addition of the eraser does not alter the ap- pearance of the fountain pen in any other way than by slightly increasing its length.

���Bristles of spun glass are fast- ened in a cup threaded on the barrel of the pen for an eraser

��Removing Iron Rivets with a Pneu- matic Hammer

THOUGH the pneumatic hammer has long been used in structural steel work to shape the heads on red-hot rivets, the old hammer-and-bar methods are still used in removing the rivets. A pneumatic hammer has been invented, however, which removes fifty times as many rivets in a given time.

In the time that one hammer stroke can be given by a man, the pneumatic hammer gives several hundred. The long cutting bar is attached to a piston in a long cylinder. Air is pumped to the cylinder under pressure of one hundred pounds per square inch, and it im- • mediately vibrates the bar violently. When the crew press the hammer against a rivet, the pounding knocks the rivet's head off al- most instantly.

This method of cutting is not only easier for the men, but it saves seventy- five per cent on the cost of the hand method. More- over, it can be used in ordi- narily inaccessible places.

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