Popular Science Monthhf 



251 



Making the Desert Bloom 

 like a Flower-Garden 



SAMUEL LI 

 veteran inv 



PPERT, 



Cleveland, Ohio, writes us 

 that he has developed a 

 pump which he thinks some 

 day will perform no less 

 a feat than to make the 

 Sahara desert a flower gar- 

 den! Pumping water, he 

 reminds us, has been a seri- 

 ous question ever since 

 Biblical days when Jacob's 

 well was drilled. 



Lippert proposes to use 

 "the free energy of the air." 

 Not any other free energy, 

 however, than that of the wind. Even the 

 sporadic winds, of the Greatest Desert can 

 operate his pump, since it is rotary and is 

 self-checking. A vertical shaft, leading from 

 the mill vanes down to within a score of 

 feet of the deeply-buried stream, rotates a 

 set of screws fitting tightly against the 

 inside of the pump casing. A corkscrew 

 action is produced, and the water is 

 sucked up the first twenty feet of the 

 distance. All the rest of the journey, the 

 water is simply screwed up. . 



The rotary 

 pump for tap- 

 ping deep un- 

 derground 

 streams. It 

 is driven by 

 a windmill 



^ 



One man working at this machine can punch over four 

 thousand holes in heavy plate during a nine hour day 



The inventor holding a small 

 model of his rotary pump 



Punching Holes in Steel Plates — 

 A Machine Used by Shipbuilders 



PUNCHING more than four thousand 

 holes in heavy plates during a nine 

 hour working day is a modern accom- 

 plishment. It could not have been done 

 so recently as a year or two ago. Plates for 

 building ships must have many holes so 

 that they can be riveted together into a 

 finished vessel. The great expansion in 

 steel shipbuilding industries has made the 

 rapid handling of plates at punching 

 machines a real necessity. The plate 

 punch roller shown in the illustration has 

 made this rapid handling possible, and it 

 is in use in many of the new plate shops. 

 The plate is laid on the table and the 

 operator, from his seat, 

 moves the table back- 

 ward and forward with 

 the aid of an operating 

 lever at his right hand. 

 At his left hand is 

 another lever, which can 

 be operated to move the 

 plate sideways, thereby 

 placing it in the desired 

 position for punching. 

 The punch is controlled 

 by a foot lever. 



Plates from one-quar- 

 ter to one-eighth of an 

 inch thick, and up to 

 thirty by eight feet in 

 size are handled. The 

 tables are built with 

 roller bearings. 



