Evening Star Newspaper, May 26, 1929, Page 107

ASHINGTON, D. C, MAY 26, 1929—PART 7. THE SUNDAY STAR, W. had px,fly a capacity of 4,000 pages an hour. In . the new machine the plate is placéd upon a roller. Each turn of the roller works auto- matically with'a cutter, which cuts the finished page and drops it upon a holding table, with an output of 12,000 an hour. The sheets of paper before receiving the imprint of the zinc sheet were formerly dampened by hand, a slow process requiring much hand labor. The new machine achieves a better effect by heating the paper by electricity, which, besides doing away with the hand labor, incremses the spced and also gives a better “point” to the raised text. The greater part of the printed newspapers, magazines and music, and all the books used by the blind of the world, are printed at the Paris establishment, and all this material is- supplied free to the people in different coun- tries. Magazines have proved more popular than books, owing to the greater ease in-han- dling. The American Braille Press is now pre- paring to publish a short story supplement with the newspapers. Publications are now printed in English, French, Italian, Serbian, Polish and Rumanian. The greatest single achicvement was the com- pletion a few weeks ago, after three years’ work, of a French encyciopedia of 4,000 pages. A system of distribution has now been com- pleted by which 40 countries are served. In th: United States and Canada alone there are 75 digtributing points. The American Brzaille Press has also a head- quarters at 730 Fifth avenue, New York, where much of the financial detaiis are attended to and where contributions to carry on the work have in the past been generously contributed from different parts of the Union. The great work in aid of the blind and its immense extension since the end of the war are mainly due to .American initiative and American donations from pecple in all walks of life. The founder was Willilam Nelson Crom- l'el!dmtéf} the American Braille Press .and_ Civilian Blind, a lawyer of New d-of the war he conceived the idea ing in Paris 4 model printing house th ed soldiers and sailors blinded and for civilian blind. ; Now We Are Measuring the Heat of Stars And the Wing of a House Fly Plays aLafge By NELL RAY CLARKE. wlncotaeommonhbusefiyhnm used to measure the heat of the hottest stars, which are millions of miles from the earth! * - A single pair of fly wings will supply. six delicate instruments with a tiny vane which 2 beam of light from one of the hot stars will cause to swing to and fro. “I have collected the rays from about 20 of the brighter stars with the great 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, Cali- fornia, and measured the heat produced in their spectra with this tiny instrument,” Dr. Charles G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and perhaps the world's greatest suthority on solar radiation, told the writer. Dr. Abbot is now preparing still more sensi- tive devices, intending to return to Mount Wilson to continue his studies in future expedi- tions under conditions admitting heat measure- ments in the spectra of stars as faint as the eye can see. ITH the instruments made of part of a fly’s wing, the finest thing of the kind which has ever been made, he not only measured the heat of the stars, but he used the temperature’ figures he obtained to determine other facts about them. Astronomers have already calcu- lated the distance of thess stars from the earth, and awith these two known fagjors—their dis- tance and their temperature—Dr. Abbot easily estimated their size. In this fashion, he and other astronomers. are gradually finding out the hottest and the largest stars in the known universe. With the moest powerful telescope in.existence today, the great 100-inch reflector at Mount Wilson, they are able to make such tests on the stars up to the third magnitude. When the new 200-inch reflector is finished, they will be able to measure the size and heat of stars up to the sixth mag- nitude, the smallest which can be seen with the naked eye. The little instrument which tells the secret of the stars’ size and temperature can be slipped with ease in a man’s vest pocket. It is known as a radiometer. It is composed of a tiny quartz tube in which is suspended by a quartz thread so fine that the eye cannot see it a vane somewhat like a weather vane made of the sixth part of a fly's wings. The air is pumped out of the tube and hydrogen pumped in, so as to offer the least resistance possible to the movement of the vane. The vane which is suspended in the tube is blackened in order to make it absorb rays as readily as possible. ‘The great eye of the telescope is then turned upon a distant star which the astronomer wanis to measure. The light is thrown into the spec- troscope and sifted down to a single beam if possible, which in turn falls upon the delicate radiometer. The warmth from the beam of light is absorbed by the blackened fly-vane. If the heat from the spectrum is sufficient to turn the end of a pointer of light 20 feet long at- tached to the vane through the distance of the width of the stroke of the letter “1,” that rota- tion is measurable. That tiny movement of the pointer of light across a scale formed the basis for his measure- ments not only of the heat of the star, but of its actual size. The amount of light a star sends down to the earth depends, first, on its temperature; second, on its size, and third, on its distance out in the universe. Thus the work is valuable because it gives accurate estimates of star diameters which could be made by no other means. Besides this, it helps to understand how the interior of stars is composed because such things impress their mark on the spectrum. such work was done by hand. “Part in - Newest Scientific Research. Experiments Being Carried On at - One of the Observatories. R One hundred-inch reflecting telescope at Mouns Wilson Observatory. wonxma in this meticulous fashion, Dr. Abbot has been able to measure the heat of stars that are far hotter and larger than our sun. In fact, if they were suddenly swung down in the universe to take the glace the sun now occupies, direful and terrible things would take place on the earth, ~ Every living thing would simply be turned into cinders in the winking of an eye, and even all metals would melt and finally vaporize in the terrific heat which would descend upon the earth from these more gigantic and hotter stars. i ‘The star Capella, for instance, with a tem- perature of about 5,800° absolute centigrade, as compared to the sun's 6,000°, would un that account ' really make little différence in our present temperature conditions on the earth. But if Capella moved from its remote spot in the heavens down to take the place of the sun, we would see an enormous disk hanging in the sky, for Capella is 2,000 times larger in mass than our sun. ‘ Capella, however, lies so far out in the uni- verse that it sends us only as much light over two square miles of area on the earth’s surface as the sun does on one square centimeter (about the size of one fingernall). But Rigel, which at the present time is the hottest of the known stars, has a temperature of 16,000°, and therefore is nearly three times as hot as the sun, and about 25 times its diameter. If Rigel came as the sun’s subsitute we would get 50,625 times as much heat on t earth. The beautiful blue star Vega is more than - The newest high-speed stitching machine for books Io.r the blind, now in o peraton at the Braille press headquarters in Paris. Until recendy all. twice as hot as the sun, and Sirius, the big _ter. of the Great Dog Constellation, is almost twice as hot, their temperatures measuring 14,000°: and 11,000°, respectively. I{ Sirius moved down~ to take the place in the sky that our sur now’ occupies, those Summer temperatures of 100 or. 50 degrees would simply cimb through the top of the thermometer. % ‘Poor old Alpha Herculis, the largest star, measuring 790,000,000 miles in diameter, would” almost cover completely the visible horizon, it it subsiituted for the sun. Though compara~ tively cold, it would not freeze us out, however,. though it is only a little more than one-third as hot as the sun, because it would be like’ having half our surroundings of the tempera- ture of the electric light. = When the new 200-inch telescope has been completed, undoubtedly there will be found many more larger and hotter stars which will yield up their secrets to astronomers. 30 Men to Drive. Continued from Eleventh Page. He usuallly drew $50 a week and traveling eme. a penses, with -a privilege of taking a 5 or 10 per cent cut on whatever prize money “his driver might win. e If a mechanic were lucky enough to be riding with a driver like Jimmy Murphy, who set an all-time record one year by drawing down $105,000, he did right well. Otherwise his job was hardly a sure path to riches, whatever else it might or might not be. THIS year, then, for the last time the 150,000 spectators of the Memorial day race at Indianapolis will see the drivers going it alone. Added interest will be given the spectacle by the fact that the two best drivers in Continental Europe will be present to vie for the speed- crown. Louis Crison, European champion, will bring his French de Lage car to compete with the American drivers. In his train there will be Goanfranco Commoti, a young Italian who will be driving a Talbot, another Prench car. r There will be the usual list of famous Amer= Ican drivers—including Clff Durant, the multie millionaire stock speculator who drives in the Indianapolis races for a hobby. Durant will be at the wheel of a front-wheel drive Detroit Special. ; 4 Also present will be Ray Keech, who held the straight-away record of 207 miles an hour before Maj. H. O. D. Segrave came over from England to break it to bits at Daytona Beach last Winter. - Other drivers entered are Phil Shafer, Ls;n Duray, Ralph Hepburn, Tony Gulotta, il Albertson, Zeke Meyer, Prank Brisko, Bill Lin- dau, Deacon Litz, Louis Meyer, Gianfrancl Comotti, Albert Karnats, Lou Moore, Bob Mc=’ Donogh, Clff Woodbury, Billy Arnold, Babe Stapp, Dave Evans, Ira Hall, Fred Frame, Jimmy Hill, Pete Kreiss, Johnny Seymour, Rus- sell Snowberger and Jimmy Gleason. - The Indianapolis race is a big money affair. The prize money totals $60,000, with the winner getting $20,000, second-place man getting $10,000 and the rest divided in diminishing amounts among the next zighf finishers. On top of this there are $20,000 in lap prizes, and’ $20,000 more in prizes offered by the makers of automobile accessories. : (Copyright, 1929.) CiE