HER LIFE TO TEST HER FATHER'S DEVICE ISS TINY BRODWICK, an eighteen-year-old MISS girl in San Diego, California, recently showed her faith in the safety parachute for aviators invented by her father, Charles Brodwick, by dropping to earth from a flying parachute. The feat occurred before a crowd of visitors at the San Diego Exposition, and the parachute worked in perfect fashion. The parachute is contained in a pack attached by means of straps to the back of the aviator, and opens out when the flyer leaps or drops from his machine. The pack is not burdensome and is never in the way of the aviator, no matter what he may have to do, so long as he has his seat adjusted to provide room for the pack between or above the rest against his back. These features mark the device demonstrated by Miss Brodwick as a most promising one. The Aviation School of the United States Army, located at San Diego, has been experimenting in an effort to find and work out a device for the use of military aviators, and flyers generally have been willing to use a device to increase the safety of their work, if the device would really work and not be in the way. From the results of Miss Brodwick's daring achievement, it would seem that her father's device will meet the need, and accordingly, if repeated trials confirm the results already attained, the new parachute should win the general acceptance. MISS BRODWICK DROPPING FROM MISS TINY BRODWICK, WHO OWNERS CO-OPERATE IN GARAGE ELECTRIC car owners and dealers in the Central Park district of New York City have banded together and built a co-operative garage. One hundred electric machines have been placed in the new station and six dealers in electrics and accessories have taken show room along the street frontage. As the result, the fortunate ones have reduced storage expenses considerably. Keys are left in charge of a desk man, who is responsible for every machine not in the hands of its owner. Beside him is a large call board with various hours marked, so that an owner may leave a car call at the garage as he would a waking call at a hotel. Attendants deliver the machine at this prearranged hour. In establishing the garage it was necessary to install one of the largest electrical charging boards ever built. With it, each car can be charged without leaving its stall. Flat rates have been established for most of the electrics and will be maintained, at least until more accurate figures can be established. The average cost of keeping a car is forty-five dollars a month and in this rate is in-. cluded everything from washing and charging to the little services the owners are sure to demand. NEW ACETYLENE TORCH THE plumber has a new torch to take the place of the noisy gasoline heater he has used heretofore. The new device consists of a small tank of compressed acetylene gas such as is used for lighting WORLD'S LARGEST BANK THE Continental and Commercial Na tional Bank Building of Chicago, just completed at an approximate cost of $6,000,000, is a new building which houses a larger number of clerks, and handles more items under one roof, than any other bank in the world. These employes, eleven hun dred in number, would represent a large community if their families were included. The number of items handled, exclusive of money, is some 217,000 per day. The building is twentytwo stories high, and covers 54,000 square feet of land. There are three basements, the first containing the vaults of the bank, the second, storage space, janitor's rooms and machinery, and the third, four 500 horsepower boilers and machinery which pumps 70,000,000 gallons of Iwater to the top of the building each year. Twenty-six acres comprise the floor area of the building. The entire first and second floors and parts of others are occupied by the bank, the remaining floors containing some two thousand offices. There are three miles of corridors in the building; and the twenty-three elevators, which require the use of more than nine miles of cable, will carry fifteen million people each year. When fully rented, the building will house a population of approximately 8,000 persons, exclusive of those who enter the structure to transact business with its tenants. One of the most unique features of the banking room is a series of ninetytwo "windows" by which the management is enabled to serve the public in a manner not possible under old conditions.. These windows are arranged in groups, each group representing a small bank in itself. Thus a customer may transact all ordinary business at two contiguous windows. HOW THE PUBLIC SEES THE WORLD'S LARGEST BANK BUILDING The immense size of the banking room is thoroughly typical of the entire structure. GIVING THE THRILLS OF AN A NEW form of amusement park de- The elevation of the car when in this position, together with the added elevation of the location of the structure above that of the Exposition grounds in general, gives an unobstructed view of the Exposition and of its surroundings, for the car in this position is the highest structure on the grounds, with the single exception of the Tower of Jewels. Strauss, maker of bascule bridges, and is an evolution of the familiar "jack knife". It is counterbalanced by a huge concrete weight which automatically fills with water to meet the varying weight of the car and its load of people. Enough water flows into the concrete reservoir and weight to keep the car on the ground as each passenger steps off at the completion of his thrilling aerial ride. HORN WARNS TRAFFIC OF FIRE ENGINES THE Fire Commissioners of the city of Baltimore have recently installed a number of novel fire horns along the principal downtown streets, where traffic is congested, to warn chauffeurs, drivers, and pedestrians of the approach of fire engines. Advocates of a noiseless town vigorously opposed the innovation, but the success which has attended the experiment has made the retention of the horns a practical certainty. The horns are placed at the top of tall poles, and though painted red, are The structure was invented by J. B. quite inconspicuous. They are connected electrically with all the fire engine houses in the district, and the signal chief at each house can start or silence them at will simply by turning a lever. When an alarm sounds which denotes that the apparatus at his house shall respond, the signal chief turns the lever, before the engines have started. Instantly the horn gives out a long-drawn, shrill scream that rises and falls, and asserts itself far above the petty squeaking of auto horns by sheer volume of sound, its own power being more than twenty times greater than that of horns attached to any automobiles. This signal cannot be ignored by those on the street, and as there are a series of signal horns, the entire route of the engines is cleared, some minutes before they have appeared. CLEARS STREETS FOR THE FIRE This powerful horn is turned on at the engine house when an alarm comes in, and traffic is given ample warning. unable to make more than surface scratches in several days' work, because the concrete base of the pavement was from ten to twelve inches thick; but when the steam shovel was put to work on the pavement, it tore up the concrete at a rate of six hundred feet a day in a strip twenty feet wide. Besides demolishing the old surface, the shovel placed the débris in wagons so that it could be hauled away, and this effected a considerable saving over what the cost would have been under the old methods, where laborers were used for such work. AN UNUSUAL TASK FOR A STEAM SHOVEL The machine was entirely successful, however, in its work of digging up the concrete pavement. ment in Ogden, Utah, without success, a steam shovel was put on the job and cleaned up the work in record-breaking time and at a saving on the estimated cost. The plows and road scarifiers, hauled by horses, and finally by big tractors, were |