Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/850

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��Popular Science Monthly

��Joseph's Coat of Many Colors Was Not More Gorgeous Than This

THOSE who are in a position to know, tell us that three dollars is a fair average price for an elk tooth, such as are sold to jewelers and to members of the Order of Elks. Much higher prices are paid for very good specimens. A curio dealer in Steubenville, Ohio, has a coat covered with 3300 of these teeth, which he values at $10,000, and does not wish to sell it at that or any other price. The coat proper was made by an Indian in Manitoba, Canada, and is sinew- sewed. It weighs twenty- eight pounds. There are two rows of antelope teeth, one hundred and fifty-nine in all, down the front. The owner of the coat is a prominent member of the Order of Elks. and wears the coat at all conventions. With the coat the owner wears an ornate necklace made of the largest of the elk teeth in his collection.

���The coat, covered with elk teeth, weighs twenty-eight pounds. There are two rows of antelopes' teeth down the front

��Brake band

���Bell Gives Warning

When Automobile'

Backs Up

THE simple clock- like device shown in the accompanying il- lustrations, the inven- tion of Ernest P. Hoover, of Wilton Junc- tion, Iowa, is designed to ring a warning bell

automatically as soon as Tp ™ e * &e leve

the reverse gear of an automobile is thrown into mesh, and thereby prevent collisions with following cars. The de- vice consists of a cylindrical casing pivoted on a bracket attached to the rear axle and carrying a. shaft with a disk which may be thrown into contact with one of the rear wheel brake drums when the entire casing is swung about its pivot by the act of throwing the car's

��reverse gear into mesh. The pivoting ac- tion of the casing is effected by means of a bell-crank lever on the casing and a wire or rod leading from the bell-crank to the gear-shifting lever or pedal. The sounding bell is mounted on one end of the casing. It is rung by means of a pivoted hammer os- cillated by means of a small star cog-wheel mounted on the same shaft as the disk which is made to contact with the rear brake drum as the reverse gear is thrown into mesh. A ratchet wheel on the other end of the disk shaft is made to rotate by a small dog on the disk which is loosely mounted on the shaft. This loose mounting of the disk and the direction or shape of the ratchet teeth permits the bell to remain inoperative should the disk in any way be thrown into contact with the brake drum while the reverse gear is not in mesh.

! The bell begins to ring as soon as the automobile begins to back up, and the warning is sounded contin- uously until the car comes to a standstill, thus avoid- ing all rear-end collision. It would be almost an im- possibility foi anyone but a deaf person to disregard it.

��The arrow points to the bell which gives warn- ing to those in the rear that the car will back up

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