Popular Science Monthly 



Lowering the Life-Boats by Means of 

 Gear-Operated Davits 



533 



TO make possible the rapid lowering of 

 lifeboats, Everett W. Myers and 

 Aaron E. Sharpley, of Key West, Florida, 

 have devised gear-operated swinging davits. 

 Each davit is 

 provided 

 near its shank 

 and close to 

 the deck with 

 a gear, with 

 which a bevel 

 gear carried 

 by a crank 

 shaft meshes. 

 When the 

 boat is to be 

 lowered the 

 cranks swing 

 the davit 

 arms toward 

 each other 

 and thence 

 outwardly to 

 lower the 

 boa t . A 

 cover plate 

 over the gear 

 protects it from water and from rusting 



When the boat is to be lowered, cranks swing the davit 

 arms toward each other and outwardly after grasping the boat 



The Camouflage Soldier — A Decoy for 

 the German Sharpshooter 



WE have heard of tin soldiers but it 

 has remained for J. Burgess, an 

 officer in training at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, 

 to bring to our attention a camouflage 

 soldier of papier mache. His plan is to 



place a large number of these dummy 

 soldiers beside the regular troops on the 

 firing line, to serve as decoys for the 

 Germans. Unable to distinguish between 

 the real and faked soldier, he believes the 

 Germans will waste a great amount of 

 ammunition on the papier mach6 figures. 

 In this in- 

 stance, every 

 hit will be as 

 good as a 

 miss. 



Study the 

 accompany- 

 ing photo- 

 graph and 

 you will see 

 the papier 

 mache figure 

 at the right 

 of the inven- 

 tor. It is not 

 easy to . dis- 

 tinguish one 

 figure from 

 the other. At 

 a distance of 

 from fifty to 

 one hundred 

 yards, say, it 

 is extremely doubtful if the Germans could 

 do so. The dummy figures cost practically 

 nothing to make, and they can be molded 

 to represent a soldier in any one of a number 

 of firing positions. Whether it would be 

 wise to place the dummies beside troops 

 in the trenches is open to doubt, but there 

 is no question but what a party of sharp- 

 shooters could use the figures to advantage. 

 They could certainly be used as decoys. 



The dummy soldier, made 

 of papier mliche, is seen 

 © Underwood a t the left of the picture 



and Underwood 



