Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/549

 Popular Science Monthly

Lowering the Life-Boats by Means of Gear-Operated Davits

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��TO make possible the rapid lowering of lifeboats, Everett W. Myers and Aaron E. Sharpley, of Key West, Florida, have devised gear-operated swinging davits. Each davit is provided near its shank and close to the deck with a gear, with which a bevel gear carried by a crank shaft meshes. When the boat is to be lowered the cranks swing the davit arms toward each other and thence outwardly to lower the boa t. A cover plate over the gear protects it from water and from rusting

���When the boat is to be lowered, cranks swing the davit arms toward each other and outwardly after grasping the boat

��The Camouflage Soldier — A Decoy for the German Sharpshooter

WE have heard of tin soldiers but it has remained for J. Burgess, an officer in training at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, to bring to our attention a camouflage soldier of papier mache. His plan is to

��place a large number of these dummy soldiers beside the regular troops on the firing line, to serve as decoys for the Germans. Unable to distinguish between the real and faked soldier, he believes the Germans will waste a great amount of ammunition on the papier mach6 figures. In this in- stance, every hit will be as good as a miss.

Study the accompany- ing photo- graph and you will see the papier mache figure at the right of the inven- tor. It is not easy to. dis- tinguish one figure from the other. At a distance of from fifty to one hundred yards, say, it is extremely doubtful if the Germans could do so. The dummy figures cost practically nothing to make, and they can be molded to represent a soldier in any one of a number of firing positions. Whether it would be wise to place the dummies beside troops in the trenches is open to doubt, but there is no question but what a party of sharp- shooters could use the figures to advantage. They could certainly be used as decoys.

���The dummy soldier, made of papier mliche, is seen © Underwood a t the left of the picture

and Underwood

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