Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/88

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��Popular Science Monthly

��Utilizing Your Player Piano as a Vacuum Cleaner

THERE is no better vacuum cleaning pump than the air pump of your player piano. So thought Max Rothfeld, of Phil- adelphia, who has patented the dust- filtering at- tachment which will change your piano into a vacuum clean- er. You need only to discon- nect the air pipe leading from the piano bellows, from the air motor. Insert the at- tachment in this, have somebody

���A dust-filtering chamber fits in the end of a long flexi- ble hose leading from the piano bellows. The suction created by the piano pump draws the dust into the filter

��ground-up leaves of the hay of alfalfa. By replacing the all-too-scarce wheat flour with a considerable percentage of this alfalfa, a bread can be made which is far more nutri- tious than that made from plain wheat. The high percentage of both body-building and bone-building ele- ments in the alfalfa makes this new bread a practically complete article of food. The bene- fits of its use will therefore be two- fold: the present supply of wheat can be "stretched" to feed a far greater num- ber of people, and a more ideal war food can be gained.

��work the pedals, and proceed with your parlor cleaning. The inventor also suggests that should the air-mechanism of your piano become clogged it can easily be cleaned with his device.

The device is nothing more than a flexible hose having a wire filter mounted across a small dust chamber near its end.

��Conserving the Wheat Supply with Alfalfa

A SHORT time ago alfalfa, the clover-like plant which grows so abundantly in the West, was considered fit only for feed- 1 ing cattle. Thanks to the re- I searches of the industrial chemist, it is now destined to become one of the most important articles of \ human food. The present prob- lem of the world's shortage of wheat — that well-balanced and so essential food — may even be solved with the aid of this form of "cow fodder."

Elizabeth C. Sprague, head of the department of Home Econom- ics at the University of Kansas, has found out how a most whole- some flour can be made from the

��Making Bad Whiskey out of Good Jam and Potatoes

SOME German prisoners in the Holds- worthy Internment Camp, in Australia, rigged up a still of kerosene cans, bottles, tin tubes and other receptacles and made whis- key out of jam and potatoes! It was effi- cient enough to meet the demands of the drinkers. Perhaps it was too efficient, for the intoxicated Germans themselves gave the secret 'away.

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