Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/564

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Shops, factories and offices should not have exactly the opposite effect— by de- priving the employees of the opportunity they previously enjoyed of working in their gardens before beginning their reg- ular occupations.

Apparently the procedure of setting the clock forward and backward has not caused much trouble on European railways. Whether, with our much lar- ger proportion of single - track lines, we can follow the same plan with im- punity is still un- certain.

Obviously daylight-saving has much to commend it. What can be said against it? Many arguments urged by its op- ponents are fallacious and frivolous. It has been called unscientific, but it is purely a practical mea- sure, with which sci- ence has little to do; it has been looked upon as immoral, be- cause a certain amount of "deception" is sup- posed to be involved in it — as if there could be any deception in a mere change in con- ventional time-keep- keeping publicly esta- blished by law!

The real argument against the daylight- saving scheme is that civilized humanity has a strong liking for artificial light — even though it costs money. Many — ^perhaps most — of us have no desire to go to the bed with the chickens, and it is a plausible hypothesis that the daily alterna- tion of natural and artificial light has a beneficial effect upon health, analogous to

��Popular Science Monthly

���U Diameter of base of co[\e 2,500 ft

t\ear|y Vi mile

England saved 300,000 tons of coal in one year. The diagram shows the size of the heap. It is equal to a 215-foot cube

��that which we derive from the change- able "cyclonic" weather of middle lati- tudes, constituting the most stimulating of all climates, though it is hardly parallel. That thrifty old soul, Benjamin Franklin, was an enthusiastic day- light-saver, and one of the first to formu- late an opinion on the subject. In a much-quoted essay he took the people of Paris to task for lying abed hours af- ter sun-up — a prac- tice resulting in needless expendi- tures for candles.

���This little machine winds thousands of bandages a day for our soldiers

��Electricity Makes the Winding of Bandages Easier

IT is only fit that electricity, which is so widely used as an aid in the destruc- tive work of the war should also contribute its share to the efforts of healing the wounds caused by the war. An electrical contri- vance shown in the picture, is now used in the workshops of the Red Cross for expedi- ting the formerly slow and laborious work of winding bandages. It is a reel of simple con- struction, driven by a small electric motor supplied with power from any household lighting circuit.

This contrivance ob- viates much handling of the bandages and so prevents, to a great extent, their contami- nation. The greatest advantage, however, is its speed, which is a boon when requisitions for many thousands of these bandages have to be rapidly filled.

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