Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/369

 Popular Science Monthly

353

Fifty-Seven Miles an Hour in a Ford!

ANY owner of an automobile with a detachable head motor -such as a Ford has — may increase the speed of his car from fifty to sixty per cent by means of a sixteen-valve-in-the-head cylinder attachment, shown in the accompanying illustrations. As much as fifty-seven miles an hour have been reached with a Ford.

No machine work is necessary to install the attachment. Although sixteen valves instead of eight are employed on the four- cylinder engine, the same valve push-rods are used. This is made possible by an ingenious lever arrangement on the top of the head. All the channels previously used for intake and exhaust are converted into intake passages alone; the area for the incoming gases is doubled and simi- larly those for the exhaust. By reason of this increase, and by placing the spark plug directly in the passage over the pis- ton head instead of off to one side, as in the regular Ford L-head engine, the larger volume of gas is more quickly ignited and more thoroughly burned. Similarly, the burned gases are instantly released with but a very small back pressure, so that they are completely expelled before the admission of the next incoming charge.

Just how efficient such an attachment is, is not stated. Probably, it is chiefly of use on racing cars, are shot in and out of cylinders so rapidly a waste en- sues. Wear on parts is also greater. Imagine a little Ford scrambling down a race track, this new attach- attachment on its engine! From un- der its hood comes a roar, the wheels whir, the fenders clatter, sundry parts threaten to leave themselves along the right-of- way. "Too much is enough," groans the Ford.

Usually where gases

Showing exterior and details of the new sixteen-valve-in-head attachment for Ford motors

The physician has his hands free for the examination of his patient's mouth or eyes

He Holds the Light So That the Hands Are Free

SOMETIMES a doctor must examine the mouth, the throat, or the eyes in order to make a correct diagnosis. The ordinary electric pocket light is not con- venient because in using it the doctor does not have the free use of his hands. Dr. Alfred Kahn, of New York University, has invented an ingenious light which the physician may hold in his mouth. The simple construction of this light, its triple ball bearings, its lightness of weight, and the fact that it can be bent around one finger or held by the fiber mouthpiece be- tween the operator's teeth make it ex- tremely useful to the general practi- tioner. Another ad- vantage of the Kahn light is that it may be perfectly steril- ized. Doctors es- pecially like a lamp of this kind for emergency calls.