Scientific Research and Invention 129 
out need of a costly third rail or overhead wire 
system, generates the power it consumes on the 
Canadian National Railways. Some 300,000,000 
pounds of artificial silk, known as rayon among silk 
manufacturers, was made from cellulose during 
1929. Elmer A. Sperry, inventor of the gyroscope 
compass, super-power searchlights and airway bea- 
cons, has just adapted an electrical machine for test- 
ing the rails of the great railways’ system of the 
nation. A “Robot chemist” or an automaton with 
an electric eye, radio brains and magnet hands 
recently functioned without human supervision in an 
improvised laboratory before the New York Elec- 
trical Society in New York. It helped in producing 
an economic cold light, in analyzing a sample weigh- 
ing a millionth of a gram, and in demonstrating a 
photo-electric cell used to control analysis in new 
scientific apparatus. 
Samuel W. Parr states that the American output 
of chemical products alone has advanced in fifty 
years from an insignificant sum to more than $2,000,- 
000,000 annually. 
The American Chemical Society reports a tre- 
mendous increase in research by which pure and 
practical science has been advanced, and calls for 
half a million dollars more for the fund to report 
scientific knowledge. In his address at Dearborn, 
Michigan, on October 21, 1929, President Hoover 
said: “If we would have our country improve its 
standard of living and at the same time accommos 
date itself to increasing population, we must main-