Inventions

Sounding. Into Manhattan steamed the French liner Paris, bearing storm scars, notables, a squad of German engineers and a new German device for deep-sea sounding with which the engineers had experimented on the way over from Havre. This device consisted of a gun on the port side, a microphone abreast on the keel's starboard side, a dial on the bridge. The gun fired a cartridge overside, which exploded a fathom under water. The microphone registered this explosion's last echo from the bottom, permitting the depth to be computed in fathoms.

Carolus Cell. In Rome, a recent statement of Guglielmo Marconi that "it will soon be possible to transmit a picture or a whole page of print across the Atlantic by radio," was amplified. Marconi's prophecy, it appeared, was based on the development, in various European laboratories, of a new photo-electric cell, much more sensitive than the selenium cells hitherto used with indifferent results. The inventor of the cell was one Dr. Carolus, who had based his work on the so-called Kerr method of influencing polarized light so that high voltage produces a strong light ray, low voltage a weak ray. The Carolus cell, which was not described in despatches, transformed light to electricity not only more completely but more swiftly than other cells. It was claimed that complete photographs, not wavy-lined blurs like those published after the London-New York tests of 1924 and the Hawaii-Long Island tests of 1925, were available in London, Paris or Manhattan five minutes after transmission from Berlin.

Televisor. In London, a concern called Television Ltd. obtained licenses to retail the "televisor," a radio device invented by John L. Baird* of Glasgow that permits "looking in" as well as listening in. Broadcasting from a televisor station in London was to begin at once. The receiver, costing -L-30, consists of a point of light moving swiftly over a revolving field of ground glass. The motion of the point of light is governed by current received from the transmitting station, where the image of an object or person is made to pass over a photo-electric cell at immense speed, through lenses in a revolving disk. Using ordinary methods to broadcast the words of people moving before the televisor lenses, it was found that sight and sound synchronized perfectly at the receiving end.

Snow Melter. At Long Island City, a steam roller rumbled and puffed through the snowy streets. But it was a new kind of steam roller. Its front looked more like a big boiler, which did not weigh heavily on the ground but pressed against it, sending aloft clouds of fleecy steam. Beneath it ran rivulets of slush. Behind it lay a street cleared of its matted snow. It was a snow melter, invented by John B. Lodge of Beacon, N. Y. The steam drum could be heated to 2,000 Fahrenheit by crude oil under compression burned within.

Edison. In Manhattan, the Edison Pioneers celebrated with a dinner the 79th birth anniversary of Inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Mr. Edison basked in the sun at Fort Myers, Fla., but sent them a telegram: "Many thanks. Feeling fine. Weather beautiful. Coconuts are dropping all over the place. Wish you were here." To newspapermen of whom he entertained two large parties during the day, he said: "I couldn't retire. Just like trying to stop smoking cigarets. . . . Inventions are away ahead of the people now. . . ."

* Another television experimenter is C. Francis Jenkins, of Washington, D. C., whose "radio eye" employs a battery of mirrors (instead of Baird's revolving lenses) to break up images for photo-electric transmission (TIME, April 7, 1923; June 25).