Popular Science Monthly 



197 



Next Summer's Ice. They are Cutting 

 It Now with Electricity 



ONLY six years ago this winter ice 

 was cut by driving a horse over a 

 sHpper>'| field. The horse draggeci a 

 sharp-edged ice-plow which dug deeply 

 into the ice and finally cut it into pieces 

 as small as was possible by such a method. 

 How differently is this done now. A 

 single electrically-driven, rapidly rotat- 

 ing blade like a buzz-saw drives itself 

 across the field, cutting it into large 

 oblong pieces as it is guided and pushed 

 by the man behind. After this, the pieces 

 are floated into a large saw-mill where 

 they are rapidly cut into small cakes. 



The mill contains two separate bat- 

 teries of saws, all electrically driven. The 

 first battery consists of three saws at the 

 front of the mill which are evenly spaced 

 apart. Some distance behind, the second 

 battery, consisting of seven saws, is 

 placed. As the floats of ice reach the mill 

 they are pushed against the first battery of 

 saws and pulled along by them as they are 

 cut into four pieces. Next, the strips are 

 turned around through an angle of ninety 

 degrees and fed into the second battery. 

 Here they receive their final cut and come 

 out as cakes, generally square or oblong 

 in shape. These cakes are then floated 

 downstream to the warehouse where thqy 

 are stored until delivery. 



Floats of ice forty feet wide by fifty-five feet 

 long can be cut in a minute into small pieces. 



The toothbrush 

 fits snugly in a 

 hollow chamber 

 in the back of 

 the comb from 

 which it can not 

 easily slip out 



A Combination Comb and Tooth- 

 brush Holder 

 PERHAPS the most novel combination 

 in this day of two-in-one devices is 

 the one illustrated in the accompanying 

 photograph. It is a small comb, of vest- 

 pocket size, with a hollow chamber in the 

 back, into which a toothbrush may be 

 slipped for safe keeping. The upper and 

 lower walls of the hollow chamber are 

 thickened at one end to provide a restricted 

 neck and flared mouth, to conform to the 

 contour of the brush-handle. 



The mill through which the ice is floated to be cut into cakes 

 before passing downstream to the warehouse for storage 



France Completes the 

 World's Largest Tunnel 



A FEW months ago, France 

 counterparted her re- 

 markable engineering feats 

 along the breastworks of Ver- 

 dun with an equally great 

 achievement through the 

 peaceful hills of Rove. A tun- 

 nel seventy-two feet wide, 

 fifty-two feet high and four 

 and one-half miles long — larger 

 than any other in the world — 

 was completed. This spacious 

 tunnel, the result of twelve 

 years' planning and labor, is 

 part of a great canal system 

 which will, in the near future, 

 connect the network of the 

 canals of France with the 

 Mediterranean Sea. The sys- 

 tem will be fifty one miles long. 



