Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/547

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Popular Science Monthly

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��General Typhoid — an Army's Most Formidable Enemy

EVEN in the present war, for all our boasted sanitation, disease carries off many a man. General Typhoid has dirt and germs for his allies — and they never fail him. To fight him, an army and its camp must be clean. So, an apparently trifling problem like refuse disposal, is as important as supplying munitions.

Because an army piles up tons of rubbish and garbage every day, the equivalent of a municipal street cleaning department and board of health is needed. The finest purifier is fire. To the flames, then, all wastes are consigned.

A United States army officer has recently proposed that as small a group as a bat- talion of men should be supplied with its own incinerator and its own men to look after the burning of its food wastes. The incinerator approved for this purpose is built in the ground in the shape of a flat T-trench. In the oven of the "T," is the fire which heats the rocks placed in the head of the "T." The refuse itself is burned on a steel plate placed directly over the oven. The liquid of the refuse drains off from the plate and trickles through holes in the plate, down over the hot stones beneath.

��GARBAGE) PeRrORATCO

���This incinerator can be built anywhere and disposed of quickly when no longer needed

����The refuse is burned on steel plates over the oven and the liquid drains off through the rocks

��© Int. F.lm 6erv

The automobile wireless communication out- fit of the New York dty Police Department

��New York Police Department Uses Motor-Truck Wireless

WIRELESS telegraphy from moving trains was shown to be practical some years ago, but it remained for the Police Department of New York city to build a wireless truck that could communi- cate with headquarters while driving through the streets. A complete radio out- fit is mounted within the body of the automobile, and tw^o masts to supf)ort the aerial wires set up at front and rear. Power to drive the transmitter is taken from the gasoline motor which propels the truck.

Our photograph illustrates the mobile wireless station, as it appeared in [the recent police parade, passing the Public Library at Fifth avenue and 42nd street. Although the city is run through and through with telegraph wires connecting the various police stations, the wireless installations at Headquarters and the police camps are necessary in case of emergency.

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