PROFESSOR AUSTIN INVENTS WAR INSTRUMENTS

Professor F. E. Austin '95 of the Thayer School, has recently completed two new inventions which promise to be of great use to the government in the near future. The first of these inventions is a new system of signalling with lights, called the Visual Signal System. The apparatus consists of four lamps arranged in the form of a square. A lamp glowing steadily means a dash, while a "flickering lamp signifies a dot. All the characters of the continental code may be sent, as well as other code symbols and figures.

' The new system is designed to do away with colored lamps, which the present government system includes, thus enabling signalling over a much greater distance. The Visual System is capable of being used to send messages over fifteen miles. By means of the four lamps, each letter is sent as a whole at one operation, thus rendering the sending much more rapid than with the single light system. The whole apparatus is very light in weight, and is therefore applicable to aeroplanes.

The second invention which Professor Austin has made, is a device for automatically drawing on paper a map of the route passed over by the vehicle to which the machine is attached. The official name of the device is the Automatic Mapper. The scale of the desired map is determined beforehand: the device is attached to any kind of a conveyance and when the vehicle has passed over the route the map is completely drawn. In addition to the map, the device will draw a profile of the road traversed. The map can be drawn very quickly and with the greatest accuracy. It has a wide application in making road maps and geological surveys, and may be applied to draw the course of a steamship or an aeroplane. Both inventions have been given thorough tryouts and have proved successful.