494 



Popular Science Monthly 



Roller-skates have been found successful in Baltimore 



as a means of speeding up the message boys in telegraph 



offices where a great volume of messages is relayed 



Roller- Skates in Business 



DURING the rush hours, when tele- 

 graph operators are busiest, West- 

 ern Union boys glide on roller-skates 

 from desk to desk, snatching the mes- 

 sages from the hooks without even stop- 



ping, and scarcely slackening 

 their speed. The boys and 

 operators co-operate in the 

 ratio of about one to twenty- 

 two. That is, with one boy 

 for every twent\'-two opera- 

 tors, the messages are not 

 allowed to stay on their 

 hooks more than one second 

 before being snapped up. 



The skates are fitted with 

 rubber rollers, so that anoth- 

 er feature of modern business 

 efficiency — silence — has been 

 considered. Every second is 

 scored down in black and 

 white on the telegrams, and 

 efficiency experts study these 

 figures in an attempt to cut 

 down the seconds to frac- 

 tions of seconds. The use of 

 skates reduces the time ac- 

 cording to the space which 

 has to be covered. The 

 main office in Baltimore has five boys 

 who work in shifts, two being able to 

 handle the work of forty-five of the swift- 

 est operators. The room is sixty feet 

 long and accomodates many operators. 

 Best of all, the boys enjoy their work. 



Motor-cycle Helps Light a 

 Town 



WHEN the town of St. 

 Charles, Mo., was left 

 in darkness recently by the 

 breaking of the high-powered 

 transmission cable from the 

 Keokuk dam on the Missis- 

 sippi, a motor-cycle helped 

 save the situation and keep 

 the town lighted. The town 

 formerly was lighted by a 

 steam-power plant which 

 drove a 150 k.w. generator. 

 When the engineers looked 

 up the abandoned steam 

 plant they found it possible 

 to get up steam and run 

 the generator, butdisco\ered 

 that an important auxiliary, 

 the little exciter-generator which is run 

 in conjunction with the big one was out 

 of commission. The exciter at the 

 sub-station was available and E. F. 

 Wayee, trouble man for the Electric 



A motor-cycle attached to an electric light plant helped 

 to light a town 



Company of Missouri, harnessed his 

 motor-cycle to the plant by removing 

 the rear tire and belting the wheel to 

 the exciter. For an hour, the motor- 

 cycle supplied light to the city. 



