Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



221 



AUTOMATIC TICKET MACHINES. THE DEATH-TRAPS OF THE SEA. 



In the Railway Magazine for August Mr. A. W. 

 Arthurton, in a description of the new Great Western 

 Railway station at Snow Hill, Birmingham, menlions 

 a novelty introduced there. He says : — 



The booking office contains two machines of a type which 

 may possibly revolutionise the booking of passengers as effected 

 today. These are the automatic ticket printing machines, by 

 the aid of which the labour of booking pas.sengers is reduced lo 

 a minimum. Consequently, if such machines should become 

 general, fewer booking clerks will be required. The machines 

 have been adopted generally on the German State Railways, 

 with excellent results. In England other railways are also 

 experimenting with the apparatus, but that at Snow Hill was 

 the first to be installed in this country, .\bout 3 ft. long, 4 ft. 

 high and 20 in. wide, the machine carries a series of small 

 troughs holding as many printing plates as are required. 

 Names of stations are arranged in alphabetical order on a scale, 

 and alcng the (op travels a small carri.ige containing the 

 printing plant. The clerk desiring lo issue a ticket simply 

 lakes a blank canl, slips it through a slot in the sliiling carriage, 

 moving the latter along until the pointer is opposite the name 

 of the station to which the passenger wishes to book. Hy 

 depressing a handle the ticket drops out imprinted with the 

 names of the departure and arrival stations, price, date, con. 

 seculive number, ruule and class of carriage, together with any 

 other details that may be necessary. In addition to printing 

 the ticket, an automatic register in duplicate is made upon a 

 continuous strip of paper, and no ticket can be issued without 

 being so registered. Therefore all that the clerk has to do at 

 the end of the day is to total up his strip of paper, and count 

 his cash, the machine thus not only reducing his labour, but 

 acting also as a check. 



THE RAILO PHONE. 



In the Railway Magazine for .\ugust there is given a 

 description of the railophone in railway service :— 



Briefly :.tatcd, the "Railophone" now consists of the original 

 plant, comprising a buried conductor along the track, the 

 telephonic installation on the train and in the signal boxes, and 

 the detector which serves for calling up train or statiim for 

 telephonic purpose-, as also for exchanging code signals while 

 travelling, or to apply the brakes as a positive safeguard if 

 necessary. The buiie<l conductor is of copper, and is the only 

 item of serious expense, though its proportionate cost naturally 

 varies acconling to the number of trains having the remainder 

 of the equipment, litneath the coach are suspended two large 

 insul.-ited copper ci'ils, mounted in wooilen casing-, one Ijcing 

 wound for sending and the other for receiving. I'hese coils are 

 conncctci with the telephone in a sound-proof telephone box in 

 the train. Operation accoriU with ordinary telephone practice, 

 except that the currents induce<i between the conductors on the 

 train and the buried conductor enable the few feet which 

 separate them to be bridged without positive control. .As 

 already mentioncti, the detector enables a train or signal cabin 

 to be "callctl up," -o that neiti.er trainmen nor signalmen 

 rc<}uirc to be in constant attendance, aiul at the same time it 

 allows the other results indicated to be attained. 



It is a pity that some less amiiiguous term than a 

 " Iniricd ( onductor " could not he used in connection 

 with a railway tniin. It suggests spooks. 



In Chambers's Journal for August Mr. T. C. Bridges 

 describes a number of ocean death-traps or graveyards 

 of ships and sailors. He enumerates the Goodwin 

 Sands, which cause greater destruction to shipping 

 than any other reef or shoal in the world, averaging at 

 least one wreck a month ever since the year 1099, when 

 the sea swallowed up the fair and fertile Isle of Lomea ; 

 the sandbanks at the mouth of the Thames, with their 

 heavy toll of victims ; the Hoyle Sands, the menace 

 of Liverpool Bay, with an average of sixteen wrecks a 

 year ; the Manacles, covering 700 acres just behind the 

 Lizard, with only a single black pinnacle visible at 

 high water ; Lundy Island, on which in four months 

 in 1886 more than forty vessels and nearly three 

 hundred lives were lost ; the South Stack, near Holy- 

 head ; Fastnet, from which there are only two records 

 of escape ; the Sable Island, pronounced by any sailor 

 as the worst danger spot in the world's oceans, a 

 crescent of sand ninety miles south-east of Cape 

 Canso, off Nova Scotia, twenty-three miles long and 

 about a mile broad, composed of shifting sand and 

 mostly enveloped in fogs ; Cape Race, the meeting- 

 ground of the Gulf Stream and Arctic current, the 

 worst place in the world for fogs, and the chief zone 

 of danger from icebergs, an irregular semi-oval running 

 south-east of Newfoundland as far as the thirty-eighth 

 degree of north latitude. 



THE FIRST TRANSMUTATION OF 

 ELEMENTS. 



In Knmvledge for July, Stanley Redgrove writes on 

 the transmutation of the elements, and recalling the 

 theory of the alchemists, says that the investigations 

 of radio-acti\ity have proved the alchemists in a sense 

 right, and the followers of Dalton wrong. Sir William 

 Ramsay has carried out experiments on distillcfl water, 

 on which a small quantity of Niton was allowed to act. 

 Oxygen and hydrogen were produced, and a residual 

 gas which was examined spectroscopically. In this 

 Helium was present, owing to the tlisiiilcgration of the 

 Niton, but the characteristic lines of Neon were also 

 observed. Ramsay and Cameron report ; — " We must 

 regard the transformation of emanation into Neon, in 

 presence of water, as indisputalily proved, and, if a 

 transmutation be delined its a transformation brought 

 about at will, by change of conditions, then lliis is the 

 first case of transmutation of which londusive evidence is 

 put jonvard." So, adds the writer, the first step has 

 been made into a new realm of science. 



.\Ik. .NuviKuw's i)()uk on " War and Its .Mleged 

 Benefits " is decried by the Quarterly Rcfiac tis being 

 immensely hetlonistic, holding that the goal striven 

 for by every human being is enjoyment, and as war 

 is not enjoyment it is not desirable. 



