Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/867

 Popular Science Monthly

��851

��This New Motor-Truck Kitchen Serves Meals to 2,000 Daily

ANEW type of United States Army steam field kitchen has just been de- signed to furnish a battalion of 2,000 men three hot meals a day. The new outfit is mounted on a four-ton motor truck to en- able it to accompany the troops on marches and even move ahead of them so that their meals will be ready when they halt for the noon lunch period or at night.

The great capacity of the equipment is its principal feature. This is directly at- tributable to the use of a ten-horsepower vertical boiler which furnishes live steam at fifty pounds pressure to two fifty-gallon coffee urns and two ninety-gallon stew, soup or pot-roast kettles. The boiler is arranged to burn coal, wood or oil, and the kettles and urns are of the steam- jacketed type which can raise water from 62 degrees Fahrenheit to 212 degrees in six minutes.

The kitchen can be run by two cooks and the motor truck driver. The outfit and these three men replace twenty of the ordinary army field kitchens which require eighty men and forty horses or mules for their operation, and are slow- moving as well as lack- ing in facilities for serv- ing quick meals in large quantities.

The new outfit is the invention of J. C. LaVin, manager of the Hotel Taft, New Haven, Conn., and is known as the Taft army kitchen.

��Some of the Eccentricities of a Sleeping Horse

HORSES seldom lie down to sleep. Throughout their entire lives most of them sleep while standing on their feet. The reason for this is believed to be that the horses are afraid that an insect might crawl into their nostrils. This is a very likely explanation when we consider that a horse's nostrils- are the most sensitive part of his body. If the insect could not be removed, it could easily irritate a horse to death. Many horses will not lie down because they have once been "foundered," that is, unable to get up unassisted.

Another curious fact about a sleeping horse is that he seems always to keep his faculties working. His ears, for in- stance, keep constantly twitching and he seems to hear the slightest noise. Because of this, it would probably be impossible for a man to enter a stable quietly enough to prevent his waking up every horse in it. Horses act peculiarly also in time of fire. They ^^ will burn to death rather t h a n I I rush out from the stalls.

���The boiler of the motor field kitchen is arranged to be run by coal, wood or oil. Three men operate the entire apparatus

The great ten-horsepower vertical boiler furnishes live steam to two fifty- gallon coffee pots and two ninety-gallon soup kettles

�� �