48 Miracles Ahead! 



average of 600 pounds." "Bill" Stout already has developed 

 a hundred-pound, hundred-horsepower, four-cylinder, air- 

 cooled automobile engine. 



New Metals for New Motors 



New light but tough metals and more powerful gasoline 

 will aid in the perfecting of small, high-speed auto engines 

 with greater power per pound of weight. If a little gasoline is 

 poured on the ground and ignited, it flares up quietly. But if 

 gasoline and air are compressed by the piston in the cylinder 

 of an engine, and then ignited by a spark, the mixture burns 

 very rapidly and the consequent expansion drives the piston 

 back with great force. The more the gasoline and air are com- 

 pressed the greater the power delivered. The problem has 

 been to make a cylinder head strong enough to stand the 

 greater pressure exerted by a high-compression motor, with- 

 out adding too much dead weight to the motor. 



The use of steel alloys (steel plus vanadium, chromium, 

 molybdenum, manganese, etc.) and beryllium has produced 

 materials which make light but tremendously strong cylinder 

 heads. Further experimentation with beryllium, the tough 

 cousin of aluminum and magnesium, promises to bring future 

 marvels in metallurgy to speed the building of the low-cost 

 postwar automobile. 



Beryllium is one-third lighter than aluminum and harder 

 then steel, but it is too brittle alone for use in high-speed 

 machinery. If 2 per cent of beryllium is added to copper, and 

 a heat treatment then is used, an amazing change is wrought 

 in copper. The beryllium-copper alloy made into a rod only 

 one-half inch thick will lift twenty tons! A beryllium copper 

 chisel can be driven through steel. Most metals "get tired," 

 but beryllium-copper is virtually untiring. It gets a "second 

 wind" just when other metals give up the race. For instance, 



