Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/265

 Popular Science Monthly

��When the Star-Spangled Banner Is Played Wave Your Cane Flag

THE question of what to do with your cane when the orchestra strikes up the Star-Spangled Banner has been solved by Charles T. Fernandez, of Roxbury, Massachusetts. If

��you have one of his new canes you raise it above your head, turn a knob until an American flag con- cealed in theinterior comes out through the slot, and then wave the flag as long as the music lasts. In a word, his de- vice is nothing more than a flag wound round a roller inside the cane. The knob or head of the cane is connected with the roller so that the flag may be wound or unwound at will, appearing and disappearing through a slot. When the flag is inserted the flag-stick fits into the cane, and the flag into the slot.

���Turn the knob and the flag will come out through a slot from the interior of the cane

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��fifteen and one-half packages. In 1916 we exported 718,000 pounds — say 11,129,000 packages. We shall soon see that this is a mere bagatelle. The total amount of chicle imported, manufactured and con- sumed in the United States in 1916 was 7,031,000 pounds, equivalent to 28,- 124,000 pounds of chewing gum. This represents a per cap- ita consumption in the United States of about three and a half pounds, or fifty-five packages per annum. Every man and woman, old and young, boy and girl and infant in arms represented a consumption of fifty-five packages of gum last year! Great is the power of the American jaw! No wonder we are a race of orators. — Ellwood Hendrick.

��Fifty-Five Packages of Chewing Gum for Everybody!

AT the Kansas City meeting of the > American Chemical Society, Dr. Fred- eric Dannerth, of the Re- search Department of the Rubber Trade Laboratory, present- ed in detail the meth- ods for determining the content and val- ue of block chicle, of which chewing gum is made. These are of interest only to chemists, but the statistics that Dr. Dannerth gave are enough to drive us silent from sheer jaw weariness at the mere thought of them! One pound of chicle makes four pounds of chewing gum and one pound of gum produces over

��A portable nail sorter which will arrange nails and tacks according to their size

��A Portable Nail Distributor Saves the Carpenter's Hands and His Time

A BOON to the traveling carpenter, in the form of a portable nail distributor has been invented by Robert B. Holland, of North Yakima, Washington. With it the carpenter or other workman can separate small nails from large ones by simply dropping them into a hopper. The various parts of the device are easily collapsed into a com- pact package of a convenient size for carrying.

To distribute the nails according to their several sizes, the nails are first placed in the hop- per and fed down- ward to the chute by jarring the casing. The nails strike the partitions and are deflected out through the openings in the bottom into the guideways. Here they collect, according to their size, and the operator grasps them by the thumb and forefinger.

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