Popular Science Monthly 



665 



Toledo's baby moon is a ball of fire, eight 



feet in diameter. It is an advertising device 



Toledo Plants a Baby Moon 

 in the Sky 



"T IKE the Moon led astray in the 



1 ^ Heaven's wide pathless way," wrote 

 the poet Wordsworth many years ago, with- 

 out knowing, of course, that in later years 

 some emboldened Toledo folk would ac- 

 tually abduct a young moon and take it to 

 the top of a twenty-two-story skyscraper 

 and fasten it there just for the sake of 

 looking at it. 



It goes without saying that Toledo's 

 young moon is for advertising purposes, but 

 the Toledo people get around that easy 

 enough. "Doesn't the real moon advertise 

 the fact that there is a sun on the other 

 side of the world?" they ask. And there 

 you are. 



Fifteen miles out on Lake Erie, pilots of 

 steamers can see Toledo's moon. En- 

 gineers on trains, passengers, automobilists, 

 and everyone approaching the city, wonder 

 what the big ball of fire is. Everywhere is 

 heard the question, "What is that great 

 light in the sky?" 



The baby moon is nothing more than a 

 huge ball eight feet in diameter, lighted 

 with eight hundred seventy- five-watt 

 lamps, equivalent to seventy-five thousand 

 candlepower. To operate the ball eighty 

 horsepower is required. The ball has the 

 appearance of revolving, due to a flasher 

 which turns the current on and off, making 

 the lights quiver. There is no word of 

 advertising on or near the ball. 



How the tiny moon looks on a dark night 

 on top of its twenty-two story building 



As a Lineman He Has Climbed 

 Eight Hundred Miles 



THE next time you see a lineman scaling 

 a telephone pole think of William 

 Lane, of Rockford, Illinois, who has climbed 

 over eight hundred miles in the last twelve 

 years. Mountain climbing pales into in- 

 significance compared with scaling tele- 

 phone poles. It takes more strength to 

 climb ten feet of pole with spurs and harness 

 than it does to climb five hundred yards of 

 steep mountain side. Lane's average as a 

 lineman has been twenty-five poles a day, 

 or something like one hundred and ten 

 thousand times forty feet. He has had 

 several falls, due to poorly-fastened spurs 

 and harness, but no bad ones, he says. 



