Technology Notes

Last week U. S. inventors had perfected these things:

> A triple-acting Diesel engine with two pistons operating in the same cylinder won Patent No. 2,228,472, assigned to Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. Claims: delivery, per pound of engine weight, of more than double the power of previous similar Diesels; cheap construction and operation. Two opposed pistons move synchronously together and apart in the cylinder. When closest together, they form between their inner heads a combustion chamber. Fuel is injected here and ignited by heat of compression (as in all Diesels), driving the pistons apart. Now two other combustion chambers are formed between the pistons' outer heads and the cylinder heads. Fuel is injected there, driving the pistons together again. Thus every stroke is a power stroke.

> Fairchild Aviation Corp. announced development of a device which enables military plane pilots to take photographs of ground objectives at night, at altitudes up to 5,000 ft. The airman drops a powerful magnesium-powder flash bulb equipped with a time fuse which explodes it near the ground. The flash actuates a photoelectric cell in the plane, which instantly trips the camera shutter.

> When milk streams frothily from udder to bucket, it contains much dissolved oxygen. In raw milk, bacteria then consume most of the oxygen. But pasteurization removes most of the bacteria, so the oxygen content of pasteurized milk remains high. Oxidation of the fat content may then cause papery, oily, metallic or tallowy flavors; worse, it may diminish the natural proportion of vitamin C. Obvious answer, proposed by scientists at Cornell University: take the air out of the milk. They announced development of vacuum equipment which de-aerates 1,500 quarts for 11-c-.

> Hercules Powder Co. of Wilmington was assigned Patent No. 2,228,309 for an artillery gunpowder which is smokeless, moisture-resistant and flashless. Other such powders have been developed but they are complicated, costly, hard to handle. The new powder contains only three ingredients: nitrocellulose, dinitrotoluene, diphenylamine. These are treated with an alcohol-acetone solvent, mixed, squirted out in strands like spaghetti, finally pulverized to grain size.

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