Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/548

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��Popular Science Monthly

��Put These Webbed Gloves on and The Small Caterpillar Tractor Rings the Swim Like a Duck Death Knell of the Industrial Railroad

��HOW would you like to be able to swim as fast as a duck, and with as little effort, with webbed hands and feet to push your way through water ? It is not at all impossible, now that Dr. A. Kandor Zawadski, of Honolulu, has invented his swimming glove. As the accompanying photo- graph shows, the webbed glove makes a veritable duck's foot out of the human hand. When swim- ming, the gloved hand is spread out at each backward stroke and closed each time the hand is drawn forward. According to the inventor, a swim- mer equipped with the duck-like hands can not only outdistance other swimmers but the hands enable him to stay up for hours with slight exertion.

��The swimming glove, made for both hand and foot, is webbed like a duck's foot and will keep the swimmer afloat

��Statistically, What Is Your Chance of Being Killed in This War?

IF you, a drafted man, believe that sta- tistics tell the truth, you will feel as safe in France as you usually do in the streets of New York. So says Roger W. Babson, the eminent statis- tician. Furthermore, he says that the man who is connect- ed with the heavy field artil- lery is no more likely to be killed than one in the employ of a railroad. However, he does not hold out such high hopes for the lieutenants, sergeants- and corporals, the death rate being very much greater among officers than among privates. Also, the mortality is higher among volunteer corps than among drafted men. Sixty men per thousand are now being killed in the war, and about one hundred and fifty men out of each thousand are wounded.

��A SMALL tractor of the conventional caterpillar type which is designed as a substitute for the narrow-gage industrial railroads operated in connection with large plants, has recently made its appearance. It can move material rapidly from one department of a fac- tory to another and pass obstacles, since it does ^ not require roads or tracks for its operation. Further- more, it does not mar the surface over which it passes, be- cause it lays its own track as it goes along. For this reason it can be used inside factory buildings. It can pass through doorways of the ordinary size, and when not used in transporting material from one de- partment to another, it can be employed in the shipping room or on the loading platform. It is but fifty inches wide and fifty-two inches high.

There are any number of other uses to which the industrial tractor may be put. For instance, it can be employed for pulling loaded wagons out of excavations, or it can be used in logging camps, or in lumber yards, mines, and shipyards.

����The new caterpillar tractor adapted for commercial use in manufacturing plants. It can be used inside and outside a building and as a substitute for the industrial railroad

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