Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/590

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��Popidar Science Monthly

��A Phonograph for Lazy People. It Changes Its Own Records

A GLORIFIED phonograph has been patented by a young man in Cali- fornia. His phonograph will do every- thing but go out into the dining-room and mix a cocktail when the music is over.

Harry Scott, the inventor, gives the fruit of eight painstaking years to indolent humanity. His

��phonograph num- bers among its achievements the ability to play both disk and flat rec- ords. But its forte is the cylinder. It will play cylinder records, one after another, without re-winding, with- out changing, in- deed, without any more effort than sitting down in an easy chair and listening.

Cylinder records are played in a ver- tical position. Eight cylinders are placed in pockets that permit the upper rim to project about one inch. The pockets are cut into a revolving platform. When one cylinder is finished, the table auto- matically revolves until the next cylinder is under the reproducing needle.

The operation is continuous. A button is pushed to start an electric motor. The same push button stops the performance. If intermissions between selections are desired, alternate records are removed. For dancing par- ties, it is obvious that the auto- matic changing mechanism has advantages.

Six patents have already been issued upon this appara- tus. Besides accomplishing the feats outlined above, many little niceties have been incor- porated. For example, when the lid is raised a frosted elec- tric lamp flashes on. Lowering the lid switches off the lamp. Besides this, a small brush has

���lows the needle, carefully cleaning every record as it is being played. Another feature is an automatic oiling device which deposits one drop of oil in every important bearing at the necessary inter- vals. Small storage vaults for records, making the disks convenient of access, round out an apparatus that gives us an inkling of what the phonograph of one hundred years from to-day may resemble. At any rate most of us are innately lazy, so we at least think kindly of this inventor.

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��This phonograph does everything but pro- vide the smokes and drinks for the company

��The Desert Dry ? Read This

'OULD you believe that the air in an aver- age schoolroom is drier than the air in the deserts? That is w'hat recent tests indicated. How- ever, there is noth- ing to be alarmed over, as the drying power of air does not depend so much on its humidity as on its being in motion. An interesting illustration of this is furnished by the fact that the air in a room which is fan ventilated and artificially humidified has greater drying power than the air in a naturally ventilated and humidified room.

���been incorporated which fol-

��Here is an anomaly — an honest dice box. Is it possible?

��Come Seven! Come Eleven." Honest Deal Always

HONESTY in the manipula- tion of the dice is assured by a new dice box provided with a conical bottom and spiral ridges around the inside walls, as these make it im- possible for the player to pre- vent the dice from turning over at every throw. The box i.5 moulded from one piece of tough but flexible leather so that dice with the finest sur- faces are not injured. The box is also practically untearablo and unbreakable and outwears the average dice cup.

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