Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/762

 746

Grooming the Horse with a Vacuum- Cleaner Mitten

THE latest application of the vacuum cleaning principle is to the grooming oi horses. Walter B. Guild, of Roxbury, Mass., has invented a kind of glove which takes the place of the old curry comb and brush and cleans the hide thoroughly and quickly.

Between the fingers of the glove small, stiff brushes are set. These stir up the dust in the hide. The brushes are separated from the walls of the

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���channels into which they are set, so that there is a free-air space around them. Into this free-air space the dust is sucked up, to be drawn into a main air-duct attached to the back of the glove. This main air-duct is connected with a suction hose and pump. The brushes are simply sets of bristles wrapped about a flexible rub- ber core so as to bend with the fingers and conform with any irregularities of surface.

Such a cleaning mitten is believed to be a means of pre- serving the health of the grooms, since the dust which is invariably imbedded in the hide is not allowed to escape into the air of the close stall to be breathed into the lungs of the workmen. With such a mitten it is claimed that one man can do the work of three without loss of time.

��Why a Sidewalk Was Built on the Top of a Storm-Sewer Tunnel

BECAUSEa Pasadena storm-sewer could not be built low enough to avoid con- flict with the sidewalk above it and still retain a down grade to insure a flow, the sidewalk was placed on the top of the tunnel.

The top of the sewer projected above the point where the foundations of the sidewalk would nat- urally begin. Hence the contractors de- cided that the easiest remedy for the situa- tion was to build the sidewalk on the top of the tunnel and as an integral portion of it.

Now hundreds of persons daily walk over the sidewalk without the slightest knowledge that they are traversing the top of a sewer. Only if you chanced to be un- usually observing and reached the end of the walk, would you be likely to discover the details of the construction. At the end there is a concrete abutment to prevent you from absent-mindedly walking off into the open portion of the big drain.

��The vacuum-cleaner mitten which takes the place of the curry comb for grooming horses. It is a time-saver

��The brushes between the fingers stir up the dust which is sucked up through the hose at the back of the glove

���The top of the sewer projected above the point where the sidewalk began, so the sidewalk was built directly over it

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