Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/284

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OING to bed will soon be the most difficult and dreaded of the day's tasks if the inventors are allowed to have their way. One of them, James E. Hanger, of Washington, D. C, has evidently forgotten all about the adage that a hard day's work will put feathers in any old bed. He has devised a queer contraption which for exterior appearances at least appears to be a cross between a house-boat and a silo.

Imagine yourself lying in his bed, with your head under the house-like structure at one end and your feet under the ventilator at the other end. You are in the same position as a piece of canned asparagus. There is, however, at least a slight difference. Your head is literally cut off from the rest of your body by a cloth partition which prevents the air from reaching that part of the body below the shoulders. Dormer windows enable the sleeper to obtain as much air as he wishes through the house structure, but from the shoulders down, artificial heat is admitted into the can through a pipe joined to the foot.

The semi-cylindrical part of the bed can be moved back and forth as the occupant wishes. Instead of the ordinary mattress, cords are stretched between pulleys made fast to the sides, so that the bed may sag as much as one wishes. The inventor says his device is particularly fitted for invalids.

RDINARILY, to raise a boat out of the water and place it upon a float, two men lift one end and drag the boat about half its length over the edge of the pier. Then, with the float serving as a fulcrum and the boat as a lever, the other end is raised and dragged up.

The one-man boat-raising device which Harry Houghton of Seville, Ohio, invented, consists of a lever-acting frame, a portion of which extends below the water line and and under the boat. By means of a lever, fulcrumed to the frame, the boat is tilted up so that the water in it is dumped out as the boat is raised.

The operation of the lever is plainly shown in the accompanying photograph, in which a small boy is seen doing what formerly required the services of two men. The wear and tear on the boat have been eliminated.