Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/206

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��Popular Science Monthly

��tele-

��ful temperature, will be used for drinking. Heavy doors and windows will be moved automatically by compressed air. Gas dis- infecting pipes will lead to each residence.

Vacuum cleaners will be installed. Bell announcers will signal a few moments in advance the arrival of a train to the nearest station, allowing sufficient time for the resident to be on the platform. This signal device can be made inoperative at will. The dictograph will en- tertain, lecture, sing or play for you when you do not care to go out. By simply phoning central the name of your favorite selection, the entertainment will be wired to your room or to the room of a convalescent patient.

To the practical-minded man the Roadtown propo- sition may now begin to assume the thinness of a fantastic dream, too good to be true. But, is it? The society recently or- ganized to further the in- terest in Roadtown is re- ceiving the cooperation of architects, engineers, builders and scientists. Among them are level-headed thinkers who are not readily bowled over by a fas- cinating but impractical venture, such men, for instance, as Mr. Boyes, inventor of the monorail, M. K. Turner, inventor of the dictograph, and Thomas A. Edison, electrical wizard, who has donated his cement-pouring patents to the Roadtown Society.

Estimates, costs and statistics are being rapidly compiled, and in view of the ex- treme economy of build- ing in a continuous line, slots utilizing one mold for hun- dreds of buildings, of pur- chasing building material in wholesale quantities, and the economy of close alinement, it has been es- timated that one of these seven - rooms and bath Roadtown residences could be rented for twenty- one dollars per month.

��assume that

����A New Spur Is Carried on the Reins— Not on the Heel

IF you dig a horse in the ribs with nicely sharpened spurs, he runs. You naturally if you dig him in the back in like manner, the result will be the same. Herein lies the reason for the rein spurs invented by B. E. Jordan, of Hugo, Okla.

The spur consists of a circular piece of steel which is at- tached to metal plates that hold it in position on the rein. The sharp points on the edge of the disk complete the spur. If it is sufficiently sharp the driver need only drop it gently on the horse's neck and, as the inventor says, "he will be goaded into activity." The prin- cipal advantage which the rein-spur has over the heel- spur is recognized when the rider has occasion to dismount and walk awhile.

��The spur strikes the horse's neck. It is attached to the rein within easy reach

��A Bottle Opener Which Will Not Break the Cork

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���The self-opening device is glued to the neck of the bottle. It rolls over to form * thumb-loop

��opening a bottle with the ordinary corkscrew, it often happens that the cork is broken and difficulty is found in removing it without dropping crumbs of cork into the contents of the bottle, or of pushing the broken cork itself down into the bottle. In the illustration below a device is shown which eliminates all the bother con- nected with the opening of the bottle. It is in the form of a ) loop glued to the top and around the sides of the neck of the bot- tle, by means of which stopper, seals and labels may be removed.

��Advertising surface of flap

flexible strip

��Glue-covered sealing flap

Flap sealed

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