GOLD FOR BRAINS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9308, 7 August 1908, Page 2

GOLD FOR BRAINS.

FOE TUNES WAITING FOR INVENTORS. The many tempting inducements and lucrative awards that at present stimulate the goniusof the .modern inventor, show what a wide and varied field is open for the exercise of his faculty, and how rich in many instances will be the recompense of the individual clever enough to produce even one of the numerous inventions . for, which the world is waiting. The conquest of the air is perhaps the most fascinating of the- many problems awaiting solution, and, with so many " Rich mends in the field " public interest is considerably aroused as to the probable winner of tho big money prize of £10,000, which will be awarded to the first person who will fly from London to Manchester, and for which, needless to say, Mr Henry Farman, the winner of the Deutsch-Archdeacon prize of £2UCO, intends to try. I For an effective spark-catcher, the Government of New Zealand will promptly hand over a cheque of £3000. Ever since railroads were laid in the country destructive forest fires have taken place, caused by sparks from locomotives. Numerous inventors have tried to capture the prize, but so far their efforts have been in vain. A number of the inventions stopped the sparks successfully enough ; but they also stopped the draught, consequently diminishing steam and the hauling power of the engine. """ A device for delivering mail bags from swift trains without injuring the mail is wanted by the American Go Iyernment. A big fortune awaits the inventor of such a scheme. Men with j brains have been experimenting for years to solve the problem of how mail bags shall be received from trains running at the rate o>f sixty miles an hour. Every day thousands of mail sacks are thrown on to the platforms of stations where it is impossible to make stops. The mail bags are not infrequently forced under the wheels of tho fast-flying trains, by suction of the wind, ground to pieces, and the mail that is not entirely destroyed scatered broadcast. The Government has been for years hunting in vain for a safe arid reliable means of catching these flying mail bags. A simple hook device has for many years been in use whereby the mail bags are taken aboard a fast train without injury. A scheme just the reverse has been experimented with for delivering them, but unsuccessfully, th© momentum gained in discharging a two-hundred, pound bag being too great to bo withstood, by a device of this Kind. So the Government is willing to pay a big pride for the use of a patent which solves the problem. The pest office authorities of America are. also- looking out for a good substitute for jute twine, and a handsome award will be given to the one who is ingenious enough to devise such a thing. In every post office of the country letters are wrapped up and tied with twine on being made ready for delivery. The Government has to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for this cord. All kinds of substitutes have been offered, but none have proved entirely successful. A great many inventors have made devices" for bundling up the letters, but they have all failed before the test of quickly untying them. A good fastener which can be disposed of instantly, and which costs less than twine, will he worth a million to the inventor. Whatever the device may be, it will have to be of stuff that can be severed as quickly as a snap of tho scissors on twine, for the time in the handling of the mail counts. There is a certain £1000 a year outside of all personal profits standing ready for the man who finds a. genuine cure for consumption. This is the gift of Sir John Beau, the famous physician and scientist. The Beau award amounts to. £35,00U in Government stock. He left this legacy in trust, to be awarded to any British subject who may discover a cure that is considered genuine by a committee of the College of Physicians and the British Medical Council. The interest amounts to £1000 per annum, and there are always plenty or "starters" working at the great problem, and a good many fortunes have been spent in the pursuit. The cure, according to rules laid down in the will, must be able to heal seventeen cases out* of twenty, all in the "second stage" of the malady. This is about the best bequest there is, for the great doctor calculated that, out of 80,000 people that die of consumption every year in Britain, alone, at least 68,000 would be saved. Another humanitarian award is the £5000 dedicated by Mrs Vaughan Pritchard, and held in security by trustees for the man or woman who invents a substitute for the bit in a horse's equipment, and makes it universal in Britain in place of the present variety. Hundreds of people have tried to annex this prize, but so far without success, and it is said there is absolutely no other way of controlling a horse. It is a condition of the award, that the substitute must not enter the animaUs mouth in any way, and must not be spiked or studded. An invention that would revolutionise the world and bring untold wealth to its inventor is a magnet which will attract gold. Everyone is aware that a magnet will attract a key, but not a sovereign, hence it is* that a magnet which will attract gold is one of the great aims- of the twentieth century metalworker. Could such a seeming miracle be made, it would put an end at one swoop to all the painfully long and tedious processes at present required to extract the precious metal from the sands or rocks amid which its tiny particles lie hidden. Such an invention would almost "stagger humanity," for it would make it possible to work rock from which no process known today can extract gold in paying quantities. Wales would be full of goldfields; Scotland and Ireland have both gold-bearing rocks which would only need crushing to yield their gold-dust to the magnet. A fortune awaits the person who invents a simple process for the production of aluminium. While the cost of the production of aluminium has decreased wonderfully in the last few years, it is still a comparatively dear metal. Its uses are extending in all the arts, and what a vast number of important alloys have been formed. Were it not for the cost, aluminium would be used for an enormous number of purposes for which other metals are now employed, and there seems no real reason why it should not be produced as cheaply as iron. It abounds in nature in an enormous variety of substances, being: one oF the most common metals in combinations. Thus, clay contains a large j anantitv of aluminium, yet no successful method is in use for extracting i>Tr*> aluminium from the clay. T*<* millions made by ironmasters will shrink intm insignificance beside the sums to be made by an aluminium kin ft. When it, is rememlwred that +-he inventor of the Tubber-tir»>ed pencil mad*< over £30,000 out of his patent, and t' 1 " lucky man who first thought of roller skates an even larger sum, it will be seen that there is money in even simple ideas. For instance, quite a number of manufacturers of patent medicines and' alcoholic drinks are on the look-out for a bottle that, once emptied, cannot be re-filled. Hairy brains are trying

to Bolv© the problem for they know that a big fortune is in store for him who strikes the idea. A certain firm a year ago offered £2000 for such a bottle, but no one succeeded in gaining the prize. Au envelope that cannot be opened without detection is another desideratum of every business man ; it also must be something at ones simple and cheap. House-paintevs want a selffeeding paint brush, for it would greatly economise time and labour. There is i a wide field for ingenuity in the manufacture of children's toys; th© cries of the various animals, for example, have never been successfully imitated, and the man who can do this will find a ready market for his invention. The ideal collar-stud — the stud that calls for no sacrifice of time, temper or j linen — has still to be invented, and | make somebody's fortune. The mail who can devise a neat and reliable device for keeping one's scarf or bow iv its correct position will own an idea that will be worth a gold mine to him. There are tie-clips and scarf-retainer 3 ; but, according to an expert, the real thing has yet to come. A perfect pipe — that is to say, a pipe that will not absorb the injurious nicotine — is still the inventor's dream. It is a dream that will doubtless be realised some day. A huge fortune is waiting ihere. ' It is highly probable, also, that a fortune awaits the man who will produce a saucepan handle that will not get hot but it must be something that will not appreciably increase the cost of production. There ie money, likewise, in a cheap and serviceable knife-siharpener. Most people, especially women, cannot sharpen their own knives. They still need some little machine that will enable them to get over the difficulty. To tho nation that has given the ■world the telegraph and the steam en-< gine, such a Simple contrivance as an automatic fire-lighter ought to present no trouble at all. Nevertheless, this valuable invention ie not yet accomplished, although it will help to solve the servant problem and make the inventor as wealthy as he could reasonably wish to be.