HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12688, 9 July 1919, Page 4

HERE AND THERE.

One day a young officer in the Con* struction Department of the United States Navy —Robinson by name—was looking over a lob of naval blue prints, and, as chairs were not plentiful in the room, he up-ended a wire waste basket and sat on that. Rising, h© started to kick the basket right side up, but paused. That instant an idea was born. The idea, materially expressed, yon cajj see on every American battleship today. It is the trellislike mast.

The farm tractors in us© in the United States do the work of at least 200.000 farm labourers and 800,000 horses.

Hero is a story of the ex-Kaiser, which was told by Miss Mary Anderson to the author of that amusing book, “The Notebooks of a Spinster Lady.” A young pianist had played before the Emperor. “I- have heard many musicians in my time,” said the Emperor. “ I have heard Wagner (a. profound how from the pianist), I have heard Mendelssohn (a still deeper inclination), Rubinstein (the performer's back bent double), the Abbe Liszt (lower and lower he bowed, with his hands across his breast), but,” continued his Imperial Majesty, “I have never seen anyone perspire so much ,as .you have.”

Ex-King Ferdinand of Bulgaria was as foxy in his financial dealings as in Ms statesmanship. His civil list was a small one—£so,ooo a year—but he was allowed another £30,000 for the upkeep of palaces. He did not spend t(ie money on the palaces, however, hut invested most of it abroad, mostly, it is believed, in England and America. Of course, it is not in his own name.

Speaking recently on the vital necessity of the workers combining together and sticking to one another and their leaders, Mr J. H- Thomas, the railwaymen’s member, remarked that he was one day visiting a lunatic asylum. " A hat an awful thing it would' he,” be said to the asylum doctor, “if all these lunatics combined to attack you !” “I* or innately,” replied the doctor, " lunatics never combine with one another to do anything.” One of the busiest men at the British Bar is Sir .Ernest Wild, K.C., who is the judge of the ancient Norwich Court of Record. He has had the unique experience of twice successfully defending a. man charged with a sensational murder. He also has found time for literary work; as an enthusiastic, admirer of Edmund Spenser, whose poems he can recite by the page, he has written on the “Faerie Queene,” besides publishing a hook describing “A iScramblo Amongst the Alps.” He has also putilished a volume of poems. The famous Irish tenor, John MacCormack. telsl an interestong fact about gramophone profits. When a certain company asked him to sing for a record of “Tipperary” he stipulated fox- a fee of £4OOO. The company . refused, and instead gave him a percentage on sales of the records. These sales have so far added up to 2,500.000, netting the singer £50,000! Exports of cereals, butter and meat from Argentine during the first quarter of the current year show expansion on Comparison with 1918 figures in all those commodities with the exception of grains, which underwent no material variation in quantity (says the “Mercantile Gazette”). The total was 692,861 tons of wheat, maize, linseed and oats, as against 693,124 tons shipped in the corresponding period in 1918. Meat cargoes, most of which were for the United Kingdom, comprised 1,317,098 quarters of beef and 373,641 carcases of mutton, and lamb, as com--1,257,230 quarters and 260,u10 carcases. Butter continues to make headway as an item in the list of exports from the republic, the quantity forwarded to oversea markets In the latter term being 239,807 cases, as against 166,948 cases in the JanuaryMarch quarter of last year. Industrial disturbances at Buenos Ayres were largely responsible for a diminution in shipments of wool despatched, but it is expected that the ground lost will be made up quickly now that the labour trouble has been ended.

The removal of the control of imports will assist the British fur trade to make L’ondon again the fur centre of the world- When restrictions were placed ’on cargo space, the great world market for skins moved from London to America, and peltry from Northern Canada, Russia and Siberia, the three great trapping grounds, went to the united States for sale.

Great Britain has shown conspicuous activity in developing the automatic telephone exchange; and the announcement that a sum of £7,000,000 is to bo spent 'on converting the telephone system of London from “manual ” to automatic working is proof that the enterprising trials at Leeds and other iunghsh towns have been successful, in the_ automatic telephone the instrument is provided with a rotating dial having numbered depressions near its circumference. To effect a “call” the user places a finger in a certain depression and pulls the dial round to a mechanical stop; this operation is repeated for each figure in the telephone number required. Thereafter the moexchange Joes all the work; it 1 selects’ ’ the line required, rings the bell of the called subscriber and continues ringing it until the receiver is lifted; “holds” the line clear until the conversation is finished and both receivers are hung up; and then disconnects the line. If the called number is engaged, a clear signal is given by the calling telephone. The advantage of replacing the fallible exchange operator by almost infallible machinery is so great that, the British examole is likely to be widely followed, especiallyin countries where skilled labour is not .cheap and plentiful. Several firms in Britain have specialised in the production or automatic telephone equipment both for public exchanges and for pria ate installations in offices, government and municipal buildings and factories. xi I x ’I. foisted by a trade authority that Britain s annual landing of fidi °n r ±^ Wlll BOOn be at the rate of 40,000,000cwt per annum. What that menus is best seen by comparison with the pre-war years, 1913, when the catch amounted to 24,657,116cwt. The bari est of the sea has not been thorou°iilv gathered since August, 1914, and there are fortunes waiting for the fishing industry. That this is fullv realised is apparent from the eagerness with which r.^ re 3, are being purchased. Recent! v- - res , have sold at £2l 15s and £23 los each.

For a long time past it has been a mystery why steamship propellers, especially those of fast vessels, became pitted over ‘a portion of their surface. At first it was thought that the metal was corroded by ■, the action of seawatei, but a more satisfactory explanation has been found by a sub-committee formed in 15*15 by the British Board of Invention and Hesearch. Every highspeed propeller produces what is calted “ cavitation ” in the water ; rough I v speaking, it bores holes in the water Violent eddies are apt to form in the cayitated region, especially if the propeller is revolving in water disturbed by the action of other propellers or by portions of the stern' frame, and these eddies aro liable to collapse suddenly, throwing the water against the propeller with a hammer-like action. Calculations made by the sub-commit-tee showed that the weight of the blow might be several tons or even hundreds of tons per square inch. Little wonder, therefore, that holes are knocked in even the toughest phosphor bronze. Confirmation of this theory is supplied by the fact that on a fast cruiser the bearings close to the propeller resound with a deafening noise like a million pneumatic riveters. Now that British science has discovered the cause of this phenomena. British engineering will not be slow to work out some means of removing the trouble, which can bo done partly by alterations in design and partly by adopting slower propeller speeds to reduce cavitation.