Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 196, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1917 — Something New. [ARTICLE]

Something New.

An iris diaphragm in which the size of the opening can be altered to suit its user’s eyes forms a new rifle sight. Telephones small enough for both a transmitter and a receiver to be carried in a vest pocket are a Dutch invention. For boring holes in concrete a crankoperated spring hammer drill that can deliver 1,500 blows a minute has been invented. Steam-driven motor passenger cars that resemble American gasoline-elec-tric cars have been adopted by a European rallroild. Violets are natives to nearly all lands and thrive very generally everywhere, the greater number in the shade, but some in the sun. A group of European electricians ''decided that better results were ob- * tained by placing the carbons in arc lamps horizontal and one slightly above the other. Electrical apparatus taking current from a light socket has been Invented by a French scientist to purify the air in a room by literally pumping it into a reservoir and washing it. To display posters in inaccessible places a gun has been Invented that shoots a nail carrying a rolled poster, which unrolls when .the nail Is shot into a surface that will hold it. Efforts are being made to harness for the production of power the swift tidal currents of the Bay of Fundy, where the tides rise to a greater height than anywhere else in the world. Almost all the machines usually found in a wood-working plant have been mounted oh a motor truck by a Missouri builder so that the work can be done on the scene of a contract. Estimates place the losses to the British nation caused by farm pests — the rat, mouse, hedge sparrow and wood pigeon—at $200,000,000 annually, - or about $5 to each person.