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Announcing the Election Returns 

 by Telephone 



NEWSPAPERS, clubs and private indi- 

 viduals want the election returns 

 while they are coming in. To get them 

 they use the telephone. 



The headquarters of a tele- 

 phone company is thus called 

 upon to act as a public informa- 

 tion bureau. The telephone com- 

 panies have responded graciously, 

 and each election sees them or- 

 ganizing a huge force of men who 

 collect and distribute the returns 

 to every subscriber who calls up, 

 whether he be in the center of a 

 large city or in a small country 

 town. 



This task, especially for the 

 companies within great centers of 

 population, is enormous. A staff 

 of collectors at the political and 

 at the polling headquarters all 

 over the entire country constantly 

 report the latest counts over 

 direct wires leading to the tabu- 

 lating room. Here a corps of 

 men compile the statistics as they 

 come in. Other men arrange the 

 returns into convenient bulletins. 



Once edited, the bulletins are 

 typewritten upon a lantern slide for the 

 sending room. A projection machine 

 throws the bulletin upon a sheet. Each 

 operator immediately telephones the in- 

 formation thus projected to a group of sub- 

 sending stations. These in turn relay it 

 to sub-sub-sending stations. 



Popular Science Monthly 



How the Fireman's Cellar Shut-Off 

 Nozzle Originated 



BECAUSE John Hurie, a 

 ambitious to earn more 



fireman, was 

 money to 



secure comforts for his sick wife, he was 

 constantly on the look-out 

 for "Opportunity" (Capital 

 O). He found it. It hap- 

 pened at a fire in a building 

 where the cellar was filled 

 with bales of tarred hemp 

 which had caught fire. 

 Owing to the dense smoke 

 the only way the firemen 

 could get into the cellar was 

 by chopping a hole in the 

 floor and using a cellar nozzle 

 which threw nine thirty-foot 

 streams of water. 



There was just one hitch 

 on the job. A second line of 

 hose had to be used because 

 the cellar nozzle had no shut- 

 off and could not be used 

 unless the engine or the hy- 

 drant was shut down. This 

 necessitated delay and waste 

 of water. So Hurie set to 

 work to plan out a cellar 

 nozzle with a shut-off. He 

 finally worked out the one 

 shown in the illustration, which can be used 

 without a separate line of hose and does not 

 necessitate shutting down the engine. The 

 nozzle throws a powerful circular spray and 

 has a shut-off handle by means of which 

 the water from the hose can be shut off in- 

 stantly so that the nozzle can be changed. 



The shut-off handle 

 makes it possible to 

 change the nozzle with- 

 out waste of water 



Reports from all over the country are thrown on a sheet in the front of the sending room. The 

 operators distribute it in bulletin form to various sub- and sub - sub - sending stations 



