The Savannah morning news., 1902-06-22

~ iiiAlAtlidtlOIi OF the whole Atlantic
seaboard.
The cellar seismographs are made of
smoked glass, needles, laths, bicycle
spokes and piece of gas pipe. They
work on the same principle as the
strings and tops upstairs, only instead
OF swinging at the end of long plant
pendulums the needles are fixed to the
ends of rigid gas pipe arms and rest
on the glass. The glass and the needle
arm both rest on the same floor, but
Mr.. Eddy is confident that the needle
would shake first and make its tell
tale scratch before the quake could get
under the glass and joggle that.
The only thing that my seismo-
graphs can't do yet" said Mr.. Eddy
yesterday, is to record the exact time
OF tremor but that isn't essential, for
the daily press is always able to de-
termine that from the reports sent in
from different localities. l call up
the newspapers and tell them there
has been an earthquake and the next
morning the papers that are not scep-
teal print articles telling the exact
minute at which the tremor was felt.
My cellar seismographs We're amply
verified only the other day. 1t was on
May IS. 1 went down stairs and found
a scratch. I called upstairs to find out
who had fooled with the instrument.
My wife said that nobody had. Then /
looked at the second seismograph and
found a scratch there too. Then l knew
that there had been an earthquake. The
third vertical instrument didn't work
because the needle was rusty and
stuck to the glass and my longitudinal
sejsmograph was too near the chimney
to get the tremor but I knew from the
first two that there had been an earth
quake and l rushed upstairs to send
the information broadcast over the
world. But my wife said that If I had
earthquakes every day folks wouldn't
believe me, SO 1 let it go that night.
But the very next day l learned that
another scientist, named Flynn, in New
York had felt a shock in Warren
street and neighbor of mine, whose
mother is 50 years old and goes to bed
in the afternoon. told me that the old
lady felt the bed shake just as she was
getting in. That proved absolutely the
record of my seismographs And an
other important point is that there was
no record of that trenlor on May IS
made by the seismograph at Johns
Hopkins or by the instruments at the
Weather Bureau"
The seismographs and kites are only
small part of Mr.. E,ddys appara tus.
He has cloud timer just as delicate
as his quake indicators. But Mr.. Eddy
very frankly admitted that the credit
of making the cloud timer was not due
to him, but to Anthony Comstock, the
vice hunter.
THE idea is mine, but Mr.. Comstock
made the instrument. 1 was up in
Stamford timing clouds Mr.. Comstock
was there experimenting the shingling
of hen house at his country place He
saw my cloud timer, and said he would
make better one, which he did with
a couple of shingle binders. This is
the very Instrument which he made"
When right side up the cloud timer
make by Mr.. Comstock looks like a
boys V-snaped sling. The other way
up it looks like a Noahs Ark wooden
lady without clothes. Connecting the
two ends of the forks of the timer
there is an iron wire three inches
long or an inch and a half to the
middle. The length of the whole thing
is nineteen inches. On one side is a
hook upon which a Waterbury watch,
alarm clock or any other timepiece
may be hung.
Now" said Mr.. Eddy demonstrate
ing as he went along, 1.-The butt end
of the thing is placed against the chin,
which is in the same vertical line with
the eyes. The other end is pointed at
the CLOUD. You keep one eye on the
watch and one on the cloud and see
how long it takes the cloud to go that
inch and half on the wire.s Then
divide the inch and half by the num-
Der of seconds, multiply the quotient
by sixty, multiply product by hight
of cloud, divide the product by nine
teen, the total length of the time and
multiply that by sixty. The result
shows the number of miles the cloud
is going an hour. l doubt if there is
another timer like this in use any
where in the world
Personal equation is not a factor in
this experiment with cloud speed, but
corrections must be made for a re-
ceding chin.
AS the result of more than twenty
years of investigation of tornadoes
in the East Mr.. Eddy has worked
out the theory that the safest place
is to get in the southwest corner of
the cellar and wait till things get calm
UP aloft, for tornadoes always
travel from southwest to north
east and all of your house
will blow away from you instead of
onto you. To avoid having house next
door to the southwest blow on you in
nado comes to the house southwest of
your southwest neighbor
Mr.. Eddy has recently invented the
chromoscope. Naming it, he said, was
the hardest part of the job. He
thought of scope" himself and friend
suggested Chrome" This is made of
a cigar box, a piece of paper, a candle
and a small hole and 1t proves, Mr.
Eddy says, that there's something
green on Mars He thinks the green
is vegetation, but isn't sure. 1t might
be pistache ice cream, but its green
according to the records of the chro-
moscope. Mr. Eddy has many slips
of paper, each of a different color. He
puts one in the box with a lighted cam
die, looks through hole at the paper
with one eye and and at Mars or We
nus of anything he likes with the other
eve. If he can see both the papers
and Mars or the outside object what
ever it may be, at the same time, that
indicates that the outside object is not
of the same color as the paper, so he
keeps on trying papers of other colors
till he gets one that becomes invisible