Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/756

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Announcing the Election Returns by Telephone

NEWSPAPERS, clubs and private indi- viduals want the election returns while they are coming in. To get them they use the telephone.

The headquarters of a tele- phone company is thus called upon to act as a public informa- tion bureau. The telephone com- panies have responded graciously, and each election sees them or- ganizing a huge force of men who collect and distribute the returns to every subscriber who calls up, whether he be in the center of a large city or in a small country town.

This task, especially for the companies within great centers of population, is enormous. A staff of collectors at the political and at the polling headquarters all over the entire country constantly report the latest counts over direct wires leading to the tabu- lating room. Here a corps of men compile the statistics as they come in. Other men arrange the returns into convenient bulletins.

Once edited, the bulletins are typewritten upon a lantern slide for the sending room. A projection machine throws the bulletin upon a sheet. Each operator immediately telephones the in- formation thus projected to a group of sub- sending stations. These in turn relay it to sub-sub-sending stations.

��Popular Science Monthly

��How the Fireman's Cellar Shut-Off Nozzle Originated

��BECAUSE John Hurie, a ambitious to earn more

��fireman, was money to

secure comforts for his sick wife, he was constantly on the look-out for "Opportunity" (Capital O). He found it. It hap- pened at a fire in a building where the cellar was filled with bales of tarred hemp which had caught fire. Owing to the dense smoke the only way the firemen could get into the cellar was by chopping a hole in the floor and using a cellar nozzle which threw nine thirty-foot streams of water.

There was just one hitch on the job. A second line of hose had to be used because the cellar nozzle had no shut- off and could not be used unless the engine or the hy- drant was shut down. This necessitated delay and waste of water. So Hurie set to work to plan out a cellar nozzle with a shut-off. He finally worked out the one shown in the illustration, which can be used without a separate line of hose and does not necessitate shutting down the engine. The nozzle throws a powerful circular spray and has a shut-off handle by means of which the water from the hose can be shut off in- stantly so that the nozzle can be changed.

���The shut-off handle makes it possible to change the nozzle with- out waste of water

���Reports from all over the country are thrown on a sheet in the front of the sending room. The operators distribute it in bulletin form to various sub- and sub - sub - sending stations

�� �