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Inventions and Affairs

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 26, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 13.

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Inventions and Affairs

By Editor

Exhibits at the Museum of Anthropology of the University of California in San Francisco show that some of the aboriginal tribes supposed to be densely ignorant showed remarkable skill in invention. Among these are the Eskimo with his oil heater and cook-stove, his water-tight boat, the arch in building, the water-proof overcoat, the best fish-spear ever invented, the spear thrower, and the harpoon. From Peru comes a whistling jar said to be twenty-two hundred years old. One pulls a string and "chirp, chirp," goes the little bird on the cover of this pre-Inca relic. The jar is double, Siamese-twin fashion, and when partly filled with water and tilted by the pulling of the string, the air rushes out the little slit in the bird's mouth, producing a call like a live bird. All the inventions are not to be credited to this generation. The museum is open all days except Mondays, from 10 to 4.
The trouble in Mexico grows worse day by day. The Mexicans seem wholly unable to settle their difficulties, and the necessity for intervention by the United States is strongly talked. Some troops of cavalry have already been sent to the border, and it is believed that this is only the beginning of a general move. If intervention by the United States is declared, there is no telling the tangles with other powers that may result. The Old World is not anxious for this country to get any advantages in Mexico.
The Government has installed a new wireless station at Arlington, near Washington, D. C., which is said to be the highest power station in the world. A despatch was sent from this station on February 29, clear across the continent to San Francisco, and was taken clearly and accurately. By means of this high power station, it is believed, the secretary of the navy will be able to keep in personal touch with all the war-ships within a radius of five or six thousand miles.
The new library building of the University of California was dedicated on March 23. Mr. Herbert Putnam, for twelve years the librarian of the Congressional Library in Washington, was present and was one of the chief speakers. The new building will house one of the finest collections of books on the Pacific Coast, and the doors are thrown open wide to the public.
The United States is spending $50,000,000 a year in fighting the tree blight, and there are many more millions of loss in the forests that are being destroyed. One form of the blight seems to attack particularly the chestnut-tree, and it is believed that this useful specimen of the forest will soon be almost wholly destroyed unless some remedy can be quickly applied.
Crime Waves.—A despatch from Chicago to a Pasadena paper, under date of February 29, says that "Chicago is in the throes of one of the greatest crime waves of its history, and this is laid primarily to the fact that so many hundreds of men are without employment." We need not wonder.
Some surgeons in the Bellevue Hospital recently used a piece of gold wire to re-enforce the aorta of a patient suffering of disease of this main artery. At last reports the patient was doing well. Continued advancement is being made in the already marvelous achievements of surgery.
According to the reports of the United States Geological Survey, there are a number of anthracite beds in Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, and Washington, besides the great anthracite deposits in Pennsylvania.
On March 12 two lives were lost and a tank steamer was wrecked by one of the hardest windstorms that has ever swept over Southern California.
The earnest, eloquent appeals of Miss Florence Miller of Louisville, Kentucky, it is reported, have raised $1,000,000 for foreign missions.
The exports from this country for 1911 were over $100,000,000 greater than during any previous year.