The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-12-01

! invention as connected with ordnance
 are the light automatic guns which are
 mounted on bicycles. Some of these have 1 designs have arrangements for gun
 Ter and driver. Some of the machine
 guns are discharged by the gases from
 the powder and others derive their force
 from a gasoline mixture ienited by a f~spark similar to the ordinary automo-
 bile. The heavy Browning machine gun | is worked by a recoil. It is the kick of 1 the gun that moves the machinery and
 sends off the next charge.
 | And then there are many new appli-
 cations for patents for improvements in 1 our centrifugal guns. These guns have a rapidly revolving disk which flies around at as high as 10000 revolutions | a minute, sending their projectiles out through an opening or barrel in the rim l fed from a magazine into the hollow at the hub of the wheel and the bullets | go forth by centrifugal force without the aid of powder to fire them
 There are scores of applications for
 patents for improvements in automatic | pistols, for gas and flame projectiies and for instruments to throw liquid fire or ! poisonous materials over the enemy. A curious idea, patented shortly before we | entered the war. was a gun fastened to 1 the helmet of the soldier and shot by 1 blowing through a tube whioh ran from
 the pistol down to his modth.
 The patsnts for airplanes, balloons and other kinds of flying machines and of
 parts connected with them is another field 1 in which hundreds of American inventors are working. Some of the new planes 1 carry as much as 5000 pounds of bombs. and from them Is sent out the aerial 1 torpedo which flies through thei air by
 it's own machinery and goes off at a 1 certain fixed time. These torpedoes are entirely automatic. They may be set to | go off by a time fuse or they may be controlled by the aeronaut using his wire l less machine. The automatic torpedoes have gyroscopes or pendulums similar to 1 those used in marine torpedoes. Some of the new applications have bomb re- leasers. i Many of the new applications for pat ents deal with defensive warfare, and ! not few of them describe inventions
 of armor that might have been used in the middle ages. This is the case with
 helmets and coats of mail All the sol diers wear helmets as protection iron, 1 shrapnel. Some of the German helmets weigh as much as 10 or F pounds. They are thick and clumsy. We have some l made or tough steel no tnlcKer than | a safety razor blade. As to the breast plates and the coats of-mai the Ger mans are using. the inventions of this | nature deal more or less with resilient l material Just as an earthen embank- | ment will stop a cannon ball better than | a bed of concrete, so layers of feathers or cotton woven in and out through a network of wire or chains of steel will l stop bullets if the material Is this 1 enough IA coat-of-mail of this kind may save a mans life from a half spent ball, l Among the other great fields of inven- | ton are metallurgy and the metal work 1 ing industries. We are making many rev combinations in the production of high-speod steels. Before the war we depended on England for large part of our ferro-alloys. Today we are produc l ing four fifths of our ferromanganese l four-tenths of our ferrosillicon, and we stand at the head in the production of i jferrotungsten. We are leading in the smelting of steel by electricity, and last l year the biggest electric steel plant of 1 the world was erected by the United 1 states Steel company at South Chicago.
 Many of the applications for patents | cover special steel and new combinations 1 of steel It is the same with copper. which we are reducing by means of the new Notation processes. We are increas- ing our production of that metal to an enormous extent.
 l might write great deal as to the