FLASHES

Evening Star, Issue 19775, 27 January 1928, Page 2

FLASHES

A new system of electrical control by which the ordinary telephone can bo made to turn on electrical appliances at a distance was demonstrated recently at the works of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company in. New York. Its principal use will be with electrical power companies, but it can also bo used by the electrical housewife out shopping. She can call her home on tho telephone, and by using the correct signal automatically turn on the electric stove to cook the dinner in her absence. A synthetic moon, ingeniously arranged by a combination of numerous soft electric lights, was substituted for the absent real moon at a wedding in Pittsburg, United States. _ The synthetic moon shono on classic gardens outside tho buildings, illuminating the statues of Venus, Psyche, and Diamv while inside the pavilion where the r**ceptioh was held tho effect of passing clouds was [produced by the use of hundreds of electric lights, which cow stantly changed their color. News comes from America of the invention of an apparatus which is more sensitive than anything yet developed in electrical research. When any passer-by places his hand over a certain spot marked on the show window of a New York automobile firm the shadow from his hand is sufficient to set up an immediate reaction in an electrical tube within the window, and this in turn starts tho motor of a 26cwt car, which then proceeds to run backward* and forward until the shadow of a baud is again passed over the spot. The apparatus operates on npproximtoly one billionth of an ampere electrical current. A machine that will shoot tennis balls from one side of the net to tho other at four angles at the turn of an electric switch has been invented br Rene Lacoste, tho French international player. It can be so arranged that any number of balls up to one thousand can be fired in rapid succession. One is familihr with jnany schoolboy howlers revealed at an examination, hut the youth who walked into an electrical showroom in the North of England and asked to have his mother’s electrical “ elephant ” in the cooker repaired deserves some commendation. Needless to say, the broken cooker elements were quickly replaced. In a lecture to Southend ironmongers’ assistants Dr C. E. Hiatt, works manager of tho Edison Swan Electric Company, Ltd., said that the annual production of lamps in England was about forty-five million, of which seven and eight millions are exported. Sir Williaip Bragg delivered a lecture at a meeting of the Yorkshire branch of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers on ‘ Tho Application of XTays to the Study of the Crystalline Structure of Minerals.’ Tho study of the structure of - crystals by means of X-rays, he said, became a possibility about fifteen years ago, and it was making rapid development. He welcomed the formation of a department at the National Physical Laboratory which would bo specially concerned in the application of X-rays to industrial problems. ‘The Times’ Berlin correspondent slates that the decision of the Berlin Municipal Council to approach the Foreign Loans Control Committee for authorisation of . a loan of. 120,000,000 marks (£6,00,000) for “ exclusively productive purposes,” especially “electric railways, tramways, electric works, etc.,” is widely criticised. The council proposes to have an intense “ season ” of exhibitions ahd other.attractions in the early part of next summer.