Popular Science Monthly 



Desert Sand-Shoes for the British 

 Troops in Palestine 



379 



THE, British troops in the Sinai desert, 

 in Palestine, have found a way to 

 make their feet as sand-worthy as the 

 camel's. By weaving a stiff network of 

 heavy wire and attaching it to their shoes, 

 they are able to travel over the 

 finest desert sand 

 without sinking 

 ankle - deep in it. 

 They have adopted 

 the principle of the 

 snowshoe. 



It is said to be 

 physically impossi- 

 ble for a man to 

 walk over desert 

 sand for more than 

 two days with or- 

 dinary shoes. At 

 the end of that 

 time the toes and 

 heels become pain- 

 fully inflamed and the skin comes off. No 

 doubt the troops suffered untold agony be- 

 fore they devised the sand-shoes. 



The snow-shoe principle applied to sand- 

 shoes for traveling over the blistering desert 



Loading Coal-Baskets Automatically 

 From a Motor-Truck 



MANY residences, particularly those in 

 the suburbs of cities, are built far 

 back from the sidewalk so as to leave a neat 

 lawn. Coal cannot be shot into the cellars 

 of such houses directly from a vehicle. 

 It must be carried in in baskets. That 

 necessity brought forth the new motor 

 coal-truck illustrated below. 



The vehicle has a table at the rear 



on which are carried four large baskets, 

 each holding two hundred pounds of coal. 

 The table is lowered by gravity so that 

 the baskets are level with four spouts 

 in the rear of the truck body. Gates in 

 these spouts are opened and the baskets 

 ^ filled in one operation. 



After this the table and 

 baskets are lifted up to the 

 height of a man's shoulder 

 by means of ropes and pulleys 

 operated from the driver's 

 seat by an hy- 

 draulic hoist driven, 

 from the truck en- 

 gine. The men 

 place the baskets 

 on their backs with- 

 out any lifting, 

 carry them to the 

 residence cellar and 

 return with the 

 empty baskets, 

 after which the op- 

 eration is repeated. 

 The rear of the body is tapered to an 

 angle of seventy-five degrees so that the 

 coal will run out without difficulty. The 

 entire operation of filling the baskets and 

 lifting them shoulder high takes seven 

 seconds. Five tons of coal are disposed 

 of over a sixty-foot carry, in less than 

 twenty minutes. 



With this novel- body the truck is able 

 to deliver coal at the rate of thirty-two 

 cents a ton for labor, whereas by the former 

 horse methods it cost fifty- two cents. 



w 



The inside of the truck 

 body tapers down to an 

 angle at the rear so that 

 the coal will run out 

 easily. When the baskets 

 are filled the pulleys lift 

 them up shoulder high 



Five Billions to United States Is Like 

 Three Cents to a Man With a Dollar 



HO shall say how many ten- 

 figure loans a nation can 

 make before she will be bankrupt? 

 England, with an estimated wealth 

 of eighty-fivebillions,hasmade three 

 great loans, aggregating ten 

 billions, the last one being the 

 largest single loan ever floated. 

 Germany has made five loans 

 since the beginning of the war, 

 yet her wealth probably does 

 not exceed eight billions. Con- 

 sidering these figures, a five- 

 billion-dollar loan in the 

 United States, having an 

 estimated national wealth of 

 two hundred and twenty bil- 

 lions seems small. 



