Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/604

 588

��Popular Science Monthly

��Giving Fords a Greater Pulling Power for Heavy Loads

ALTHOUGH in passenger car service the Ford car generally has adequate pulling power for all kinds of hills, there are times when it is used as a delivery- truck that still greater power at low speeds would be advantageous.

This device is inserted in the regular Ford driving shaft just forward of the rear axle and con- sists of a small case enclosing a series of gears which are al- ways in mesh. This constant-mesh fea- ture distinguishes the invention from the gears of the average passenger

car in which each gear is out of mesh except when transmitting power. In the device illustrated the gears, while always in mesh and turning, transmit the power only when they are locked to the shaft by means of jaw clutches. These can be slid into mesh with much less chance of stripping than the gears themselves.

The Ford car is operated as usual, except when additional gear driving ratios are required. Then the auxiliary gearset control is operated to give three additional ratios, one in low, one in reverse and the third in intermediate speed, thus giving the engine almost double the flexibility.

���This auxiliary gearset gives a Ford more reserve power on hills or with heavy loads

��The Motion-Picture Scene-Shifter Enters the War

POOR Fritz will never again believe what he sees, or believe what he thinks he sees. "When is a tree not a tree," is going to become a more terrifying conundrum to him every day. This is the reason why: — Moving picture men are going into the "camouflage" business. Some of the recruits of a newly or- ganized United States Army corps are experienced motion picture men. A full company has been raised in the Los Angeles studios alone. Another company stands ready to be enrolled. The men are eager to use their skill to "make up" imitation cannons, tanks, ma- chine guns and other grim actors for their parts at the Front.

A recent demonstration, held in one of the great Los Angeles studios, revealed the possibilities of "camouflage." The wizards of illusion raised a village in the twinkling of an eye; tore it down with equal dexterity, and in an incredibly short time substituted a startlingly perfect "camouflage" forest. The fairy-tales of our youth, in which genii and fairies raised and removed castles by magic, seem to bid fair to come true in these days of seeming miracles.

���Two masterpieces in camouflage. The first is a sham "gun. " In the second, village, gun, smoke, and all, are, for practical purposes, "of the stuff that dreams are made of"

�� �