Some New Inventions.
A cotton manufacturer of Westbrook, Maine, has patented a machine for the harvesting of cotton which has just been successfully demonstrated at Fairwold, S. C. The harvester picks the cotton by sucking the lint out of the bolls by compressed air, somewhat on the order, apparently, of the vacuum cleaner.
A mechanic of St. Louis, Mo., has invented a “non-skidder,” which is intended to prevent the possibility of accident to an automobile by making it impossible for the car to slide off the road. The attachment consists of two shoes fastened to the rear of the car, between the wheels. When the car begins to skid, the driver touches a button, and the shoes instantly drop to the surface of the road, stopping the car. The shoes are about eighteen inches long and three inches wide, made of hard metal with a corrugated undersurface.
A device perfected by an inventor of Wakefied, Mass., enables the motorman of a street car to see the entire interior of the car or to have an unobstructed view down the outside. It consists of a series of mirrors arranged at angles in a small tube, through which images of any object are reflected.
For use in small gatherings there has been invented an attachment for phonographs that illustrates songs as they are sung by projecting lantern-slide views on a screen hung in front of the phonograph horn.