Popular Science Monthly 



393 



A Steel Hill to Test Automobiles 



THE al)ility of a motor car to climb 

 a hill "on high" has long been con- 

 sidered a necessity by motorists and a 

 selling argument by manufacturers. 

 And because Detroit, where many motor 

 cars come from, is in a flat section of 

 the country where hills are the excep- 

 tion, one manufacturer has built the 

 steel test-hill illustrated. Furthermore, 

 this same manufacturer has also con- 

 structed a half-mile track for speed 

 tests and what is termed a "sand pit." 



The Noisy Motor-Boat and the 

 Unabashed Fish 



CONTRARY to general opinion, a 

 number of motor-boats cruising 

 about a harbor with more or less noisy 

 engines have no appreciable effect upon 

 the fish in nearby waters. It has long 

 been thought, particularly by fishermen, 

 that the presence of a noisy motor-boat 

 would drive the fish away. Exhaustive 

 experiments recently conducted by the 

 Bureau of Fisheries prove this theory 

 to be incorrect. 



Detroit automobile dealers had to build this steep hill to order so as to have grades where 

 they could demonstrate the hill-climbing proclivities of their cars in that city of level highways 



The track permits speed tests, and in 

 the "sand pit" the testers alternately 

 sink the cars to the hubs and then drive 

 them out of the clinging sand. 



But the test hill is perhaps the more 

 remarkable. The hill is located in the 

 center of the speed track and is built 

 entirely of structural steel. It is five 

 hundred and forty-two feet long and 

 thirty feet wide. The two approaches 

 have grades of varying steepness so that 

 cars can be tested on gradual and steep 

 inclines. 



The speed track is built of wood, 

 more than two hundred and fifteen 

 thousand square feet of lumber being 

 required. It is built on a foundation 

 of clay and cinders with the turns 

 banked and is surfaced with pine plank- 

 ing, creosoted to afford a dustless sur- 

 face for the tests. 



In testing the effect of motor-boat 

 noises, on fish, a number of young 

 scup, known to be sensitive to sounds, 

 were placed in a large wooden cage. 

 This cage was fastened in quiet water 

 at the end of a wharf, and a motor-boat 

 with a very noisy engine was run at 

 varying distances past the cage. At no 

 time did the fishes appear to be dis- 

 turbed by the noise, except when the 

 splash from the boat hit the cage. Then 

 the scup would generally dive to the 

 bottom of the receptacle. 



Another test was made with baited 

 lines. When a number of fish had com- 

 menced to nibble at the bait, a motor- 

 boat was backed up under its own power 

 until its stern was directly over the 

 lines. The fish continued to nibble until 

 driven off by the backwash from the 

 propeller. 



