HOSPITAL DEVICES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22024, 2 February 1935, Page 14

HOSPITAL DEVICES

INVENTION BY ENG.INEER AN INGENIOUS MACHINE An ingenious machine for solving what has been in the past a very real difficulty at the Auckland Hospital and Infirmary has been invented by tho resident engineer, Mr. F. C. Jacobs. In the bathing of heavy, elderly patients, the assistance of four nurses has in the past been required to lift the patient in and out of tho bath, and even then the nurses have sometimes strained themselves seriously. Mr. Jacobs has evolved a machine by which one nurse, using a force of 7Jlb., can lift a patient of up to 20i. ; t. weight, safely and carefully. It hast assisted greatly toward the smooth and efficient running of the hospital. The machine is in effect a small crane, running on a wheeled chassis. The patient is placed on a canvas sheet which has six attachments for the pulley ropes, and the lifting forces are so ingeniously devised that the patient can be moved with the utmost smoothness and ease.

Mr. Jacobs, who has already patented several devices! in use at the lulipital, including a labour saving potato peeler, has also secured a specimen of what is probably the first " glass silk blanket" in Auckland.* This substance, which is formed of very fine strands of spun glass only, is expected to revolutionise methods of hoat and sound insulation. It is made, comparatively cheaply, by 'drawing molten glass on to a revolving drum which pulls the glass into mirnito strands. Eventually a blanket of glass is formed but owing to its fineness it has n<>iie of the brittleness associated with glass --on the contrary possesses a high tensile strength- Seen under a microscope, it is full of minute pockets of air, and it is the presence of this air that gives the substance its wonderful insulating powers. Mr. Jacobs is hopeful that eventually it will be possible to utilise the glass silk in farming sound-proof rooms at the hospital.,