Hallowell High School - Venture Yearbook (Hallowell, ME)

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24 The VENTURE apart or to combine elements in some definite way to serve some particular end. Perhaps the greatest of the more recent scientific inventions is tele- vision. A group of sixty men recent- ly witnessed in a large research laboratory in New York City, a thrill- ing demonstration of the first practi- cal system for transmitting sight as well as sound. The system had been developed by scientists of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. As the six- ty men looked into the magic screen, they saw the animated face of Her- bert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, shot across miles of wire with the speed of light. He was talking to them from a desk telephone in Wash- ington, and as they listened, they saw his lips move to form each word. To-day, he was saying, as his eyes so many miles distant looked into theirs, we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in history. Human genius has destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown. Today there has been created a marvelous agency for whatever the future may hold. The faces changed on the screen, a telephone girl appeared, then tele- phone officials in New York chatted with colleagues in Washington. Friends smiled across the miles. Long distance vision by wire was at last a fact. This was not all, however, vision by radio was likewise suddenly real- ized. Living images leaped across the ether, and landed on the screen before which the sixty sat spell- bound. The form of a blackface comedian. transformed into ether waves, for an instantaneous fiight across space, appeared on the screen while his jokes were made audible by a radio loud-speaker. Television is, in its development, typical of the new era in invention- an era when creative men no longer labor single-handed to perfect their ideas, but join forces in systematic research and experiment to solve dif- ficult problems. One man did not invent television, it was the work of a group of scientists and engineers, all coordinating their efforts towards the goal. After this final demonstra- tion, television was sent back to the laboratories which originated it, with the terse instruction, Condition it for commerce. If this invention is made practical for commercial use, there is no doubt that in a very short time we shall see distant men and events by means of radio as we sit in our homes, with as much ease as we now listen to far-away voices and music. One cannot refrain from a gasp of astonishment in trying to conceive the prospect of seeing baseball and football games, all kinds of races, boxing-matches, and similar events transpiring before one's eyes, as if one were in a ring-side seat or on the grandstand. Imagine its uses for opera, vaude- ville, and business. We are unable to claim that this can not be done, for it has been done. Nor does tele- vision stand alone! Let us make a brief review of similar startling de- velopments in other fields. Interest in aviation has, perhaps, never been so keen as at the present time. Records in height and dis- tance are being constantly broken. Small all-steel aeroplanes attain a speed of nearly three hundred miles an hour. A huge sea-plane was re- cently built in Germany, capable of carrying a load of one hundred and ten passengers. Designers of airplane craft the world over embody in their work all the knowledge gained from a minute study of aeronautics since the first successful flight of a heavier-than- air machine, over a score of years ago. Painstaking research has re- sulted in the construction of planes

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The VENTURE 23 We leave the honor of our beloved school, as well as the practical con- duct of its affairs, chiefly to you. Guard well the trust we leave. Work together, put aside personal consid- erations and desire for individual glory. In all things, put the school first. Hand on to 1929 our splendid example of loyalty. Undergraduates : Again we appeal to you. Support your school in every respect. Coop- erate with the faculty in their effort to keep the school in the forefront of progress. Do what you are asked to do, not grudgingly, but promptly, willingly and efficiently. Go out for athletics. Never mind if your chances of making the team are slight: you are helping the school perhaps as much as its star player, and without his reward of personal glory. Here, again, put aside all per- sonal considerations and work for the common good. In all things work to build up what those who went before you helped to create. If you make mistakes, profit by themg do not make the same mis- takes again. Study to obtain self- controlg he who lacks it, lacks one of life's best agencies, but he who pos- sesses it heads one of the keys to success. Play the game, be square, whether on the athletic field or in the class room. Lastly bear always in mind 1927's motto, Labor omnia vincit, Labor conquers all. Stephenson. THE QUESTION Surrounded by numerous pieces of chemical apparatus, a man attired in a fiowing black robe, gazes at the seething contents of a test tube just withdrawn from the flames of a small furnace, noting carefully the changes as the substance cools. The reddish glowufrom the open door of the furnace, playing upon his sallow features, discloses as many changes there as in the contents of the tube. Now his face in the flickering light looks dull and weary, again it glows with an almost hideous expression of savage joy, as his dreams seem about to be realized. At last, after years of hardship, uncomplainingly endured, after experiment upon ex- perimentg test upon test, made under the most disheartening conditions, he has achieved the well-nigh impos- sible. There is gold-ever so little it is true, but real gold-in the tube. See! See the dull, yellowish gleam! One final test of that precious sub- stance and then- Suddenly, he stoops, gazes intent- ly for some minutes at the metal he holds. His eyes must deceive him! There can't be any further change there, and yet, slowly, very slowly, a new tint is replacing the old. The tube slips from his nerveless fingers, and the man sinks into a chair, im- mobile except for the long white fingers creeping so slowly through his unkempt hair. He is a pathetic figure of disappointment! Failure again, when success seemed so cer- tain! It would not be hard to picture the radiant joy that man would have felt could he only have known the aid his failure was destined to be to mankind in the future years. So it has always been and will always be in the history of the world, the fu- ture rests upon the past. It has taken uncounted thousands of years to build the foundation for the huge, intricate structure of modern civili- zation. There is, therefore, little to wonder at that we of the twentieth century are able to make marvelous discoveries in the field of science. Whereas, in the nast, a man, work- ing alone, under diflicult conditions, attained some unlocked-for result, more or less valuable, as the case might be: today. groups of scientists, specialists, in their particular line, concentrate on the effort to tear

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The VENTURE 25 able to withstand the continued strain of non-stop flights over thou- sands of miles-planes that will car- ry a huge burden and carry it at a terrific speed. Commercial airplane service is, perhaps, more extensive in Europe than in America at the present time. London to Paris via the air-route is a daily occurrence, in fact, all the important cities of European nations are linked by air-routes. The power- ful motors which sustain these air- crafts in flight are really only im- proved designs of the engines that drive high-speed racing cars. Engineers of the automotive in- dustry strive unceasingly to alter and improve in the manufacture of motors to comply with the demands of the racing world. The highly eflicient motor of a modern aeroplane is derived from engines such as the one that propelled Major Segrave in his car Mystery S over the hard sandy-beach of Daytona, Florida, at the fastest pace ever reached by man on land--two hundred and seven miles an hour. Not only in air and on land does this amazing development extend, but on water. Marine engines are but another branch of the automo- tive industry. Gar Wood, the noted builde1', owner, and pilot of speed- boats, has a record of over eighty miles an hour. No longer do we look upon mar- velously equipped luxurious cars or radios as anything other than ordi- nary adjuncts to the middle-class American home, and yet how rela- tively short a time since the first of these were introduced. A wonderful new light has been designed to guide airplanes safely to their landing fields in bad weather. The rays from this light are orange- red and are said to penetrate dense fog. The tube which gives off these rays contains neon gas and a mir- ror of the rare and costly metal cal- cium. Somebody evidently decided that sky-writing by airplane was not sufliciently an efficient or pleasing method of advertising or entertain- ment, therefore the General Electric Company has perfected a gun or cannon that will hurl images on dis- timt clouds, and rouse jaded curios- 1 y. Other inventions and developments too numerous to consider are rapidly being thrust upon us. It is with a strong mixture of feelings that we attempt to peer into the future and consider the powers that posterity may hold. Many years from now, In a land of magic things, Suppose man fails to bow To Nature's mutterings. Then shall he divide the atom, And recombine in manner new, Then shall he curb the storm, Send or withhold the dew. Yet if he grew too bold, And try to reach too far, Then like to Titan, famed of old, He shall fail from star to star. All once again shall changeg A new world shall appear. Then the Creator shall arrange, And man hold him in fear. The earth move on again. Intact, serene, and clear. 1.i PRESENTATION OF GIFTS One more school year now has passedg Comes our Commencement Day at last. I have a gift for each one hereg Accept them, please, O Classmates dear. 1. Pat, I hope, will like what I bringg It certainly is a useful thing. He'll follow the trade of his brothers, Press and clean the suits of others. For you, Joe, this flatircw now, For the suits that are brought to you. 2. They say our Johnny likes to go Two miles north to a picture showy And many a night he has walked home Through brooding darkness, all alone. Now, when the cars have ceased to run, Walking home is not much fun. This trolley car each night use, Think what you'll save on shoes.