Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/701

 Popular Science Monfhh/

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��Cleaning Billiard Tables by an Electric Brush

THE cloth of billiard and pool tables takes up a great deal of the chalk dust that drops from the cues. How can it be removed without ruining the cloth and without merely raising it into a cloud that settles again upon the cloth? When vacuum cleaners came into use, many owners of billiard halls tried them upon their tables, but unsuccessfully. The powerful suction loosened the cement between the slate plates forming the bed of the table and in a short time wore off the nap of the cloth.

An electric brush, which was invented by Mr. Dolph L. Lowery of Sandusky, O., avoids the undesirable features of the vacuum cleaner.

The contrivance has the appearance of a large flatiron and moves on swiveled wheels over the cloth. A small electric motor furnishes the power for a rotary brush in the front part and a suction fan in the housing in the rear of the motor. Loosened by the bristles of the brush, the chalk dust is drawn through a tube to the center of the fan and blown into a bag connected with the fan housing. The excess air is al- lowed to pass out of the bag through strainers which hold back the dust.

As all billiard players know, it is absolutely essential that the surface of the table shall be perfectly true, and great difficulty has been hitherto experi- enced in cleaning the cloths, as even a soft brush is likely to raise the nap and

cause an infinitely Patriotic women are

small unevenness, machines to speed

���This rotary brush and vacuum cleaner cleans billiard tables without damage

which, nevertheless, may upset the ac- curacy of the table to a noticeable degree.

���APair of Socks Every Thirty-Five Min- utes — Red Cross Knitters Please Notice

THE enormous demand for sweaters, sCarfs, etc., for the Amer- ican soldiers and sail- ors made it clear that this war work needed speeding up. So the Comforts Com- mittee of the Navy League of the United States installed in its headquarters several knitting machines and turned them over to the women. Even the most ex- pert knitter cannot knit much more than one pair of socks a day, while a machine like that shown in the picture, if skill- fully operated, can turn out one pair of socks every thirty- five minutes.

��Newspaper Union

��operating knitting up the war work

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