POPULAR SCIENCE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2090, 31 January 1896, Page 4

POPULAR SCIENCE.

How to Breathe. A gentleman gaye good advice to a young lady who complained of sleeplessness. He said, "Learn bow to breathe, and darken your room completely, and you won't need any doctoring."

"Learn how to breathe! I thought that was one thing we learned before coming into the world so terribly full of other things to be learned," the insomniac said, ruefully. *'On the contrary, not one in ten adults knows how to breathe. To breathe perfectly is to draw the breath In long, deep inhalations, slowly and regularly, so as to relieve the lower lungs of all noxious accumulations. Shallow breathing won't do this." "I have overcome nausea, headache, sleeplessness, seasickness and even more serious by simply going through a exercisepumping from my lower lungs, as it were, all the malarial inhalations of the day by long, slow, ample breaths. Try it before going to bed, making sure of standing where you can inhale pure air. and then darken your sleeping room completely. We live too much in an electric glare by night. If you still suffer from sleeplessness after this experiment is fairly tried, I shall be surprised.—"Ram's Horn."

Cast Steel.

The history of cast steel presents a curious instance of a manufacturing secret stealthily obtained under the cloak of an appeal to philanthropy. The main distinction between iron and steel as most people know, is that the latter contains carbon. The one is converted into the other by being heated for a considerable time in contact with powdered charcoal in an iron box. Now steel thus made is unequal. The middle of a bar is more carbonised than the ends, and the surface more than the centre. It is. therefore, unreliable. Nevertheless, before the invention of cast steel there was nothing better. In 17.'?0 there lived at Attereliffe. near Sheffield, a watchmaker named Huntsman. He became dissatisfied with the watch springs in use, and set himself to the task of making them homogenous. "If." thought lie, "I can melt, a piece of steel and cast it into an ingot, its composition should be the same throughout." He succeeded. His steel soon became famous. Huntsman's ingots for fine work were in universal demand. He did not call them cast steel. That was his secret. About 1770 a large manufactory of this peculiar steel was established at Attereliffe. The process was wrapped in secresy by everyone in reach. True and faithful men'were hired, the work divided and subdivided, large wages paid, and stringent oaths administered. It did not avail. One midwinter's night, as the tall chimneys of the Attereliffe steel works belched forth, a traveller knocked at the gate. It was bitter cold, the snow fell fast, and the wind howled across the moat. The stranger, apparently a ploughman or agricultural laborer. seeking shelter from the storm, awakened no suspicion. Scanning the wayfarer closely, and moved by motives of humanity, the foreman granted his request and let him in. Feigning to be worn out with eold and fatigue, the poor fellow sank upon the floor and soon appeared to be asleep. That, however, was far from his intention. He closed his eyes apparently only. He saw workmen cut bars of steei into bits, place them in crucibles in a furnace. The Sre was urged to its extreme power until the steel was melted. Clothed in wet rags to protect themselves from the heat, the workmen drew out the glowing mold. Mr Huntsman's factory had nothing more to disclose. The making of cast steel had been discovered.—"The Inventive Age."

The Flying Machine.

Mr Hiram Maxim, in an article in the new number of the "North American Review" upon Birds in Flight anil the Flying Machine, says:—"l have proved that it is possible to make a machine that 'has sufficient power to lift itself into the air without the agency of a balloon, so it now only remains that I should obtain very much larger premises, unencumbered by trees or buildings, where I can to manoeuvre my machine. I am only able to devote a small fraction of my time to these experiments, as I am, and have been for many years, the managing director of a great English company, but I have put in all the time that I had to spare for the last five years, and the experiments have led me to believe that the flight of man is possible even with a .steam°ngine and boiler." Mr Maxim advises young engineers, if they wished to do something to advance the science of aviation, to turn their thoughts in the direction of a petroleum motor. Petroleum may be obtained in any quarter of the globe, and no other substance that we can obtain on a commercial scale contains such an enormous quantity of latent energy.

o Electric Boat Propeller

Among the multitudes of inventions that are offered to the public day by day there are some that commend themselves to the judgment at the first sight, and fill off-hand a long-felt want. The electric boat propeller, is surely one such invention as mentioned above. It has the accumulated advantages of being cheap, portable, compact and thoroughly safe to the user. Briefly described, it consists of a movable tube, hinged at the stern of the boat, much as an oar is used in sculling. The tube contains a flexible shaft formed of three coils of phosphor bronze. This tube extends down and out of the water, where it carries a propeller. aud at the inboard end an electric motor is attached, which is itself driven by batteries. The rudder and the propeller are thus in one, and the steering properties of a boat so fitted would be very swift and powerful. The tube, with its inclosed flexible shaft, is partly filled with oil, and these parts are thus automatically and constantly lubricated.The rate of speed is from three to five miles an hour. The combined propeller, motor and rudder weighs only thirty-five pounds for a ten to eighteen-foot boat. The batteries weigh from 100 to 2751b5, but being in four parts are easily handled.

This very ingenious and effective invention will be gladly welcomed by the sea and river sportsman. Its handiness and noiselessness make it admirably adapted to duck shooting, and it wiil commend itself at once to the special needs of the fishermen. All spoilsmen at one time or another, when they have been following the windings of some narrow stream, or threading their way through the mazes of a rush-grown marsh, have wished for a means of propulsion of smaller compass than a pair of sculls, or even a canoe paddle. The electric propeller, working snugly in the wake of the boat, is admirably adapted for such work, or for any circumstances where a boat has to be handled in a crowded wakeway—" Scientific American."