436 



Popular Science Monthly 



At left: The three-wheeled 

 vehicle with inclined 

 screen, bucket conveyor 

 and mechanical feeder 



Below: The machine in 

 operation. The feeder is 

 suspended on a cable and 

 adjusts itself to the pile 



Filling Twenty Coal Bags by Elec 

 tricity in Four Minutes 



ONE man and the coal -bagging ma- 

 chine shown in the accompanying 

 illustrations can fill and stack twenty bags 

 in four minutes. In many cities with a 

 large number of private residences without 

 suitable driveways coal is delivered in bags. 

 In such cases bagging the coal by hand 

 has always been slow and expensive. To 

 eliminate this cost the machine shown 

 herewith was designed. 



It consists of a small three-wheeled 

 vehicle having an inclined screen, small 

 bucket-conveyor and a mechanical feeder 

 which automatically pushes the coal to the 

 bottom of the elevator. The machine is 

 chain-driven from a small electric motor 

 beneath the conveyor, receiving its current 

 from the available lines in the 

 yard. 



In operation, the ma 

 chine is backed up into 

 the base of the coal-pile, 

 the feeder is lowered to 

 the surface, a bag is 

 placed on the bottom 

 of the screen as 

 shown, the current 

 is turned on and the 

 clutch is thrown in. 

 After this the opera- 

 tor has nothing to do 

 but remove the filled 

 bags and stack them. 

 The feeder is 

 suspended on 

 counter- 

 weigh ted 

 cables so that it adjusts itself to the surface 

 of the pile. It is provided with a metal hood 

 to prevent clogging in case of a pile slide. 

 Four removable screens are furnished. 



Put Pneumatic Tires on Your 

 Hiking Shoes 



TAKING his inspiration from auto- 

 mobile tires, and going the ordinary 

 rubber heel one better, Mr. Oscar Mussinan, 

 of New York city, has invented a pneumatic 

 tire for his own shoes. The "tire" diff"ers 

 very decidedly from the ordinary heel in 

 that a partition of rubber is built in it half 

 way up its thickness. The partition thus 

 forms an air chamber with the bottom of 

 the leather above it, and still another 

 one with the ground when the heel 

 comes down upon it. Each of 

 these two chambers is 

 connectedwith theout- 

 side air by a small open- 

 ing. When the heel 

 strikes the ground, the 

 air in the chambers 

 becomes slightly com- 

 pressed causing the 

 jolt of the walking to 

 be very greatly cush- 

 ioned in a manner very 

 much similar to that in 

 which the automobile 

 tire cushions the jolts 

 of riding. To pre- 

 vent the air from be- 

 coming too suddenly 

 compressed and so putting the bottom of 

 the heel out of shape, the air is allowed 

 to escape slowly through the openings 

 during these compressions. 



A rubber partition 

 is built half way up 

 into the heel. This 

 forms an air cham- 

 ber to cushion jolts 



