New Gadgets

Sunlight TV Tube. Conventional TV pictures tend to fade out when the light in the room gets too bright. This is because the glowing substance (phosphor) on the face of the picture tube is a reflective powder. In sunlight or other strong light, the reflection gets brighter than the picture and washes the picture out.

Last week the Naval Research Laboratory told about its new system of depositing the glowing phosphor as a transparent film by vacuum evaporation. The purpose of the project was to improve airplane instruments, but the transparent phosphor can be used for TV too. The picture will form as usual when the set is turned on, but light coming from the room will be reflected very weakly. Most of it will pass into the interior of the tube and be lost. So the picture will stay sharp and clear with full daylight shining on the tube.

Peaceful Warhead. A cheap, shortrange, foolproof rocket was developed a few years ago for one of the armed services. The program was washed out before the production stage, but last week the Grand Central Rocket Co. of Mentone, Calif, came up with a new use for its rocket: fighting forest fires instead of human enemies.

The fire-fighting rocket is almost as simple as a wheelbarrow. It has a metal tube packed with solid propellant and feathered with four fins. The working parts come packed in a cylinder of strong waterproof cardboard which can be attached as the "warhead" and filled with water or chemicals. When fired from a simple launching rack, the rocket flies more than a mile. When it hits, its liquid cargo splashes in fine spray, drenching a 50-yd. circle. Rockets carrying 10 gallons cost about $35 each. California and U.S. forest fire fighters are interested. They do not hope to use rockets to put out full-grown fires, but all fires start small, often in inaccessible places. A few rockets tossed in time can kill many of them in their vulnerable infancy.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.