SCIENCE AND INVENTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15884, 3 April 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

SCIENCE AND INVENTIONS.

, THE GNOME MOTORS. The famous Gnome rotary gasoline n.otor is to be made* in Great Britain during the war by the Daimler Company at Gcventry. The Daimler product is rated at 80 horse-power, and is to be used in aeronautical work. SEED PRODUCTIVENESS. It has been calculated by a botanist that one n'ed of cotton, given the application of all possible care and skill, would produce 80.000,000.000 seeds in six years, and he gives an actual case of the production of 11.000 bushels of seed of a pure strain of wheat from a single grain in five years, without exercise of any special care. EXTINGUISHING A CANDLE. An ingenious method of eitinguishiii" a caudle when it burns clown to a certain point is woiked as follows: Tie a string around the caudle at the desired point, then take the string through the usual loop support or ring at the base ol the candlestick, then pass it up to a pair of pulleys 011 ceiling or wall, bring down the end of the < old just above (he candle and .ie 011 a light extinguisher, which thus hang* over the candle. Nails or hooks can be used instead of pulleys foi the cold. When the caudle burns dowr to the string, this is detached and lets the extinguisher drop upon the candle. The device should, of course, be tried to make sure that the cord works easily in the different supports. IMPROVED AT'TO-'RUSKS FOR PARIS It is well known that most of the public auto-buses in Paris have been taken by the Government to serve as military transports, in which work they have proved unexpectedly successful. Kven if these vehicles are in condition for fiirthci service after the war is over they will not be returned to Paris, but such as can be utilised will be found in the small towns carrying commercial travellers to and fro between the station and the hotel. Already plans have been made for more modern and more elegant 'buses for Paris, and the new model proposed will be roomier, with higher windows, and will weigh considerably less than the old vehicles. STORING HEAT. According to a story in Power a state dinner was to be given in a castle in Germany in which there was no heating system, but as this mediaeval condition (onld not be tolerated in modern times, for the dinner was a function of recent occurrence, the engineers were asked to heat the building for the occasion: but ii was specified that no portion of the heatiug system was to be visible in the room. The result was accomplished by means of stored heat- For a number of days previous to the dinner, the floor of the dining-room was covered with steam pipes and these pipes were kept hot by means of a temporary boiler. The dav before the dinner all the pipes were removed and the stored heat in the walls maintained the room in a perfectly comfortable condition for a number of days, although the outside temperature was well below the freezing point. KEEPING INNER TUBES SOFT. Much money is Inst annually by private motorists and by dealers in rubber tyres and tubes in small communities, because of the" tendency of the rubber tubes to become hard and brittle after a few months of storage. To fold up tubes, cover them with chalk and put them in pasteboard boxes is only a makeshift. Thev will lose their resiliency ifter a while. A German rubber manufacturer not long ago furnished to ail his dealers instructions as to how best to care for inner tubes. According to these, the best way to preserve tubes is to blow them up to the pressure in an ordinary rubber ball; to hang them upon one or two fairly thick round poles, stretched horizontally, in a darkened room, in which a dish of unslaked lime and one of ammonia solution arc placed in the corners on the floor. This arrangement keeps the air free of destructive acids and retards the process of vulcanisation which goes on in the tubes. SUBSTITUTES FOR GASOLINE. The efficiency of the German military motor transport service, in which substitutes for gasoline, such as benzole and alcohol, are very extensively employed, is gradually forcing the attention of engineers and investigators to the fuel question, and calling attention to the very material advance thaj Germany lias made in this direction. In America, when cheaper fuel is mentioned to an automobile maker or dealer the reply too often is that the price of gasoline has not gone up, consequently there is no necessity for -worry. But how long will this condition last? And in the meantime why should motorists pay twice what they should for fuel? Too many people in the automobile business are so unwise as to persist in regarding their product as a luxury, in regard to which no one should consider the question of expense ; but some of the wise business men in the trade are quietly pressing forward their preparations for meeting the new conditions that are sure to come.

DISCOVERY OF WOOD-PULP PAPER Making paper from wood, tlio discovery of Dr. Hill, of Augusta, Maine, is one of the world's moat important industries. It has revolutionised the paper trade and made it possible for a great newspaper to be sold at a halfpenny. An old hornet'B nest caused Dr. Hill to make the discovery. His friend and neighbour, James 0. Blaine, had told him that there wag not enough cotton and rags in the world to supply the newspapers and other publications with their raw material. That was about forty years ago, when paper was very dear. Dr. Hill took a hornet's nest to the superintendent of a nearby paper factory and asked him : " Why can't you make paper like that?" '1 hey sat down together, took the nest apart, analysed it carefully, and decided that if a hornet could make paper out of wood, man ought to be able to do as much. The doctor discovered that the hornet first chewed the wood into a lino pulp. Thev decided to make machinery and water do what the hornet's mouth did. Such was the beginning of tho wood pulp industry. Now the logs are. floated down the river to a pulp mill. In an amazingly short time, each log comes out in a great sheet of pulp ready to be sent to tho paper mill.. COPPER VERSUS ALUMINIUM: Writing to the Times, a correspondent takes exception to certain statements made regarding aluminium which would lead readers to suppose that this metal is not suitable for use in electrical work, fie says this is far from being the case, us -aluminium has of recent years successfully challenged the heavier metal in almost every branch of electrical engineering. The lighter metal has been used on most of the more important power transmission lines of recent years, the two largest power schemes in the world employing aluminium conductors exclusively, one scheme alone absorbing nearly 3000 tons of the metal. Aluminium is also used largely for short-distance power distribution, in central stations, railways, etc, the whole of the feeder connections in the New Westminster power station. for instance, being of aluminium, while the whole of the insulated feeder system ■ of the Paris tramways is in the same metal, the latter absorbing Severn! hundred tons of aluminium. It has been estimated that in America 20 per cent, of the total output of aluminium is used for electrical conductors, and the War Office ranks among tho principal users of the metal for this purpose in England. It is of interest to record that Captain Scott, of Antarctic fame, employed aluminium wire for the portable telcphono installation which he took with him to the Souti Pole.