"The Best Is Yet to Come"

Radio static has at last been smoothed into silence. So said the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. last week to a group of scientists and industrialists gathered for the dedication of the new $1,325,000 Goodyear Research Laboratory in Akron. To prove it, Goodyear displayed a small box which, hooked up to an ordinary receiving set, chokes the fiercest static to a mere whisper.

Goodyear's new "radio static neutralizer" has a set of electronic tubes that intercepts outside electrical interference and reduces it to less than one twenty-thousandth of a volt. In one test a 25,000-volt spark projected on a radio antenna was so effectively tamed by the neutralizer that the set smoothly brought in a short-wave broadcast from Europe. But the neutralizer is reserved for the armed forces, will not be available to civilians until after the war.

The static eliminator was one of many new gadgets announced at Goodyear's lab oratory dedication last week. Most of them now have a strictly military purpose. But the chief significance of Goodyear's expensive new laboratory was its preview of the part that synthetic rubber and plastics may play in the postwar world.

In the laboratory's lobby, Goodyear's big, brooding board chairman Paul Weeks Litchfield had struck a slogan in foot-high letters: "THE BEST IS YET TO COME." Some glimpses of things to come that Goodyear gave its visitors:

> A folding, prefabricated house, so light (three tons) and compact that it can be moved from place to place on a truck trailer. Its chief feature is a new insulating material called Plastic Foam, which looks like dry ice, weighs only a tenth as much as rock wool or cork board, is fireproof, waterproof, soundproof. The house, tele scoped to 8 ft. wide on the road, pulls out to 15 ft. to provide two bedrooms, has a small living room and kitchen, costs $1,800 complete with furniture.

> A new plastic glue, called Cycleweld, which may replace riveting and spot welding on light metals, notably aluminum. Developed by Goodyear and Chrysler, it bonds metal, wood or plastic sheets together, is stronger and cheaper than riveting or welding.

> A new soft plastic, Plioflex, which is a first-rate substitute for rubber--raincoats, shoe heels, gaskets, wire insulation.

> A new gadget for inspecting tires that uses high-frequency sound waves (supersonics) to detect flaws. A tire is put under water and supersonic vibrations passed through it; if the tire is sound, the vibrations are recorded smoothly on a microphone and the gadget shows a green light. But if the vibrations hit an air bubble or break in the tire, the microphone's current drops, a light turns red.

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