tures, however, as now produced, seem simple enough. The process is a mere combining of two separate machines the Edison phonograph and the motionpicture projector in such manner that the pictures and the sounds made by the persons or instruments, machines, and the like, shown in the pictures, and afterward reproduced by phonographic records, are synchronized.

Now a further advance, shown through experiments to be practicable, but still awaiting certain mechanical developments to be made perfect, may soon be announced. This is a motion-picture film that talks, and the electrical experts in New York who are at work on the idea are confident that they will soon make of it a success. The idea consists of combining pictures and a photophonographic record on the one strip of film.

Photophonographic records are not new. They were first produced in 1897 by a German scientist who discovered the "speaking" arc, which is a converter of sound into electric vibrations. The operation of making a sound record by means of an electric arc is as follows: The speaking or singing voice of the person or persons, and the sounds made by the instruments of an orchestra are, for example, caught by a telephone transmitter, the sound is augmented by a special microphone, and this augmented sound, directed into an electric arc, causes variations in the intensity of light of the arc. This light is then concentrated, by means of a cylindrical lens, upon a photographic film, which is passed at a constant velocity in front of it, and makes thereon a record of light variations. The illustration shows the kind of record that results. The alternating light and dark stripes shown upon these films have the appearance of great irregularity, but are in reality exceedingly. regular and harmonious, only changing their order with the change of the corresponding sound. Every sound gives its own group of lines and may be easily read from the photophonographic record.

Such a sound-record can be made on one side or half of the face of a motion-picture film, and the pictures themselves fill the other side or the other half. The combina

speaking telephone placed somewhere behind the picture screen. The light projected through the sound-record half of the film by the motion-picture machine varies in strength according to the intensity of the dark stripes or lines on the film. This results in an illumination of the selenium cell corresponding in its variations with the sound waves directed into the arc and thence against the film in the making of the record, and these varying vibrations are converted into sound again through the medium of the selenium cell and the loud-speaking telephone. The "speaking" arc, in other words, is a converter of sound into electric vibrations and light, and the selenium cell and loudspeaking telephone are the means of converting the light back into electric vibrations and thence into the sounds that originally made the electric vibrations. The recording and reproducing of sound in this manner is an interesting process in which sound becomes electricity, and then becomes light, causes chemical actions, then becomes light, then electricity, and finally sound again.

One of the problems that have yet to be completely solved in the combining of pictures and a sound-record on the one film has to do with the fact that sound and light travel at different speeds. But the adjusting of this, according to the experimenters, will not prove particularly difficult to accomplish.

THE "IMPERATOR'S" FIRE

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PROTECTION

WENTY-EIGHT metal tubes about two inches in diameter, the mouths or outlets of which are all nested in a glass-fronted box that might be taken for some kind of music box at first glance, form one of the most important aspects of the Imperator's fire protection. The hold of the giant ship is divided into twentyeight compartments. Should a fire start in any one of these divisions the smoke would rise in the tube leading from it and flow out into the box, where it would make its presence known to the man on duty. This attendant would then give the alarm, shove the nozzle of a special steam hose

A SHIP'S FIRE ALARM

PIPES FROM THE VARIOUS COMPARTMENTS OF THE

STEAMSHIP IMPERATOR" THAT DISCLOSE THE PRESENCE OF FIRE BY CARRYING THE SMOKE AS A CHIMNEY CARRIES IT AND THAT CARRY BACK STEAM FROM THE HOSE TO EXTINGUISH THE FLAMES

into the tube, and open the valve. The steam, as was demonstrated recently when the Imperator took fire, helps to smother the flames.

EASY TRANSPORTATION IN FACTORIES

F

ACTORY statistics show that the ordinary truckman in a factory

who is paid $2 for a day's work spends much more time in the repeated loading and unloading of his trucks than he does in the actual moving of material. A factory transportation system has been worked out which eliminates the waste of labor and time ordinarily required for loading and unloading, and at the same time does away with most of the danger of breakage. In this system all material is piled upon wooden platforms, instead of upon the floor. The rest of the system consists of a transveyor truck. When it is necessary to move material - for example, a roll of paper - from one place to another in the factory, a truck is moved

under the platform. When the handle of the truck is forced downward it raises the platform from the floor. Then the truck is drawn to any part of the factory and the raising of the handle deposits the platform and its load in the new location. Under old methods every truck, while being loaded, is kept from its true function, which is that of transportation, and the constant loading and unloading took many men. With this new system rolls of paper weighing from 3,500 to 4,200 pounds are moved from one place to another by a boy.

In a machine shop, a great saving is effected by the truck's depositing a platform loaded with parts at one side of a machine, a drill press, while at the other side of the machine is placed an empty platform. The workman takes the parts from the loaded platform, puts them through the machine and, at the completion of the operation, places them on the empty platform. There is a superstructure on the platform so that the material is at the operator's waistline and he saves the motion of stooping to the floor to lay down every finished part. It would be possible, of course, to have this arrangement on an ordinary truck, but this would tie up an investment of probably $20 to $30 on trucks, whereas with the wooden platforms the investment tied up is of a

SAVING THE WASTE OF LOADING

BY PILING GOODS ON A RAISED PLATFORM INSTEAD OF ON THE FLOOR, SO THAT EVEN A BOY CAN LOAD THEM ON A TRUCK BY RUNNING THE TRUCK UNDER THE PLATFORM

value not greater than $1 or $2. Furthermore, the platforms take up less room, because there are no handles in the way.

In a drug-manufacturing concern the transveyor trucks and the wooden platforms keep the mixing jars off the floor and lessen the danger of breakage after they are filled, which often happened when they had to be lifted on to and off of the ordinary trucks.