Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/424

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��Popular Science Monthly

���Int. Film Serv.

The force of the outrushing water turns the ten nozzles round

��A Fire- Hose with Ten Nozzles. It's to Be Used in Ships' Holds

��A Spring- Motor for the Human Jaw

A YOUNG girl was ad- mitted recently to a New York Hospital. She had a form of lockjaw. The surgeons removed the muscles of the lower jaw- bone and substituted a de- vice with a spring to be wound up just as one would wind up a clock. The de- vice was fastened to the jaw and extended over the head. The spring kept the jaw in constant motion. After about three weeks, the de- vice was removed. The muscles of the lower jaw had developed wonderfully. The girl was then put to chewing gum.

��""CMRE in the hold!" Since t

��the freighter sailed the seas, there never has been a warning more to be dreaded. A fierce fire cannot be smothered. There is nothing to be done but to take down the hose and face the music. In an effort to improve on the old and dangerous method of groping about in the dark and the smoke to. locate the seat of the fire, Fire Chief Heffer- nen, of New York, has been testing out a novel system. He has been using a multiple nozzle which floods the hold in every direction. An entire cargo may thus be damaged, but after all, that is better than suffocating the firemen.

Not one, but ten ordinary nozzles ter- minate at the end of a great hose. When they are lowered into the hatchway and the emergency engines pump away at full load, ten great water streams rush equally out of each nozzle. In doing so, the nozzle mount- ing is turned around, so that no part of the hold is left untouched over a circular area a hundred feet in diameter. About 16,000 gallons of water are pumped each minute.

���Cork floats keep the ring and platform afloat. At right : Detail of the device

��The Story of a Life-Saving Platform —And How It Will Not Work!

SINCE Germany began her submarine warfare, the number of applications for patents of life-saving apparatus has increased a dozenfold. Some of these have at least been reasonable, but most of them have been grotesque. Take, for instance, a device invented by a citizen of Illinois. A man stands upon a wooden platform and straps to his shoulder a buoyant ring from which ^P^ the platform is to be sus- i -»^* " pended when in the water. Unfortunately, however, no instructions are given in the patent copy which would tell the man how he could jump away from the sinking ship. If a person is to stand upon the platform, how is he to use his feet to jump?

Even if a man could land in just the proper posi- tion in the water, this device, it seems to us, would be no better than the ordinary cork life-preservers.

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