Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/748

 732

��Popular Science Monthly

��A New Can for Handling Gasoline to Prevent Waste

MUCH gasoline is wasted every year by evaporation and spilling. Now a Chicago firm has introduced a new can designed to prevent

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��this waste. It is fitted with a hinged spout cover, closed by a spring. This seals the spout the moment the pres- sure of the thumb on the lever is re- leased, thus pre- venting evaporation and also loss by splashing out or spilling. A steady stream is assured when pouring by a long pipe that extends to the bottom of the can, thus admitting air in a steady, constant stream, instead of forcing it to bubble through the stream of gasoline as it leaves the can. This does away with all the objection- able splashing when pouring out the contents of the can. If all the automobile owners in the United States saved one gallon a year each they would create an additional supply of 4,500,000 gallons. This is enough to keep 1,250 airplanes in fuel for a whole year. It is the team-work that will count in this as in all else. It is the "long pull, the strong pull, and all pull together."

���Safety gasoline can de- signed to prevent waste

��It Walks Through the Field, and Drags a Plow

THE tractor here shown is a small, inexpensive one that can be used very profitably on farms of less than one- hundred acres. The little mechanical worker is only four feet high and three and a half feet wide, but it v/ill plow four acres a day with a fuel consumption of less than two gallons an acre.

The tractor is the inven- tion of Rush Hamilton, a California orchardist, who sought in vain for a machine to do his work. It may be called a walking tractor in comparison with the creep- er or round-wheel types. Note the radial tread legs on the wheels. They pene- trate to the sub-soil for traction.

In plowing, one wheel of the tractor follows in the furrow, thus eliminating the side-draft on both tractor and plow or other imple- ment. The machine is so small that it can pass under the branches of trees where even a horse could not go, much less one of the cumbersome juggernauts which most tractors resemble. It also takes up very little room to store when not in use, and is simple enough to be easily repaired by an amateur mechanic.

���This little tractor is only four feet high and three and a half wide, but it will do the work of four horses. It was invented by a Californian fruit rancher for his own use

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