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This is our ninth birthday.

¶ We are eight years old and proud of it.

¶ It is something even to be alive at the end of a period which has seen such frightful infant mortality in the magazine nursery. Scores of bright-eyed young periodicals have grown blue in the type-face and passed away during the last eight years from defective circulation.

¶ To survive at all is proof of a good constitution.

To have grown constantly stronger in influence and in circulation justifies complete confidence in the vitality of the idea on which the Technical World Magazine is founded:

¶ The most interesting thing in the world is the story of man's ceaseless and successful endeavor to harness and tame to his own uses the tremendous forces of Nature.

¶ During the eight years which cover our span of life, the inventors, the scientists and engineers-all the gentleman adventurers of the new democracy - have pushed far forward into the realms of the unknown.

The air has been conquered. The skies are full of bird-men.

¶ The depths of the ocean have been invaded by submarines which travel a thousand miles under their own power.

¶ The explosive power of gases has been used to send a million men flashing back and forth on their daily errands.

¶ Tremendous steam engines, creaking and snorting, have given way to tiny, silent turbines.

TECHNICAL WORLD MAGAZINE

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¶ Electricity has been sent through the pathless ether to explode torpedoes and guide boats on their desired courses to carry messages over mountain ranges and across the ocean.

¶ Wherever water runs down hill the power of the "white coal" has been put to turning wheels and spinning turbines.

¶ Of cement and sand and water a liquid stone has been mixed, which hardens overnight into indestructible towers and houses and great sky-scrapers.

¶ Men speak with each other through the vacant air across miles of space.

¶ Invisible power is carried hundreds of miles over country on small wires and delivered instantly at a thousand scattered points.

The microscopic germs which are man's most relentless enemy have been brought under man's control. ¶ The farmer has been taught how to master the seasons and force the earth to yield its increase.

¶ To-day the world trembles on the verge of discoveries which may double the field of knowledge and the capacity of the human race.

¶ People who read the Technical World Magazine regularly keep abreast of the van of progress.

¶ They find in it every month the latest news bulletins from the battle front.

¶ And more than fifty per cent of them renew their subscriptions year after year.

¶ Is there any other magazine anywhere which can truthfully make the same statement?

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NEW SAFEGUARD FOR THE AVIATOR.

PARACHUTE FOR
AEROPLANISTS

THE necessity for a safety device to

protect aeronauts in case of accidents to their machines is universally recognized. The ordinary parachutes used by professional balloonists will not answer the purpose because in the first

NEW AUSTRIAN ARMORED MOTOR FOR DEFENSE AGAINST FLYING FIGHTERS.

Means of protection against aeroplanes still absorb the attention of European military experts.

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place the aeronaut guiding an aeroplane has too much to do and too much attention to pay to different things to burden himself with an apparatus requiring considerable room and. attention. In the second place a parachute is of great value when the aeronaut knows at what time he wants to detach himself from his machine, but of very little value in the case of a sudden and unexpected fall. A young Berlin engineer has invented a cloak which seems to answer all requirements. It can be worn like a cape, is not heavier than an ordinary overcoat, and does not impede the movements of the wearer. As soon as the aeronaut begins to drop, it opens automatically, and is strong enough to break the descent so that the wearer glides down easily, and all danger of a sudden fall is obviated.

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This machine is the invention of an Englishman and has a sort of turbine in the head instead of a regular propeller.

Next Month's Features-See Next Page

Technical World Magazine

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Technical World Magazine should be on the news-stands on the 17th of the month preceding the date of issue. Patrons unable to get the magazine on the 17th will confer a favor by notifying the Circulation Manager. News-stand patrons should instruct their News-dealer to reserve their copy of Technical World, otherwise they are likely to find the magazine “sold out”. TERMS: $1.50 a year; 75 cents for six months; 15 cents a copy. Foreign postage, $1.00 additional: Canadian postage, 50 cents additional. Notice of change of address should be given thirty days in advance to avoid missing a number.

TECHNICAL WORLD COMPANY

58th St. and Drexel Avenue, Chicago

1702 Flatiron Building, New York

Entered at the Postoffice, Chicago, Ill., as second-class mail matter.

TECHNICAL WORLD MAGAZINE FOR MAY

WHAT STEEL DIVIDENDS COST

By

HENRY M.

HYDE

The firm of J. Pierpont Morgan got $70,000,000 for organizing the Steel Trust. On this and the rest of its stock-watered and otherwise-the Steel Trust has made in ten years a billion dollars in profits. And 23,000 men employed by the Steel Trust work twelve hours a day and seven days a week-except once in two weeks, when they work twenty-four hours out of one day when the gangs are changing. Commercial supremacy comes high!

TOWN WHERE TRUSTS DON'T RULE

By

CHARLES

DILLON

Sabetha, Kansas, with but 2,000 inhabitants, is a peculiar place. It isn't socialistic, it hasn't any radical form of government. Yet it is probably the best governed community in the country. For instance, while the rest of the nation did homage, the past winter, to King Coal, Sabetha with its own municipal heating plant kept its fearless independence. Strangely enough, too, not one lawyer is to be found in this little Kansas town.

THE INVISIBLE DETECTIVE

CHARLES

By
FREDERICK

CARTER

The dictograph, that mute but wonderfully efficient listener, has figured successfully in over a thousand cases where first-hand evidence was imperative. Mr. Carter, in his usual clever style, presents in an absorbing way, some of the more striking instances of this automatic detective work.

MINING FOR TIGERS
By

C. F. HOLDER

An asphalt trap in California began over a million years ago to ensnare the great sabre tooth tiger. From that day to this all kinds of animals have here met their death.

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