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Show FLOWMETER KEEPS TAB ;! ON THE 'GAS' YOU USE; ' INVENTION OF AVIATOR Major Schroeder (at -top); the newly devised "flowmeter" and Lieutenant Lieuten-ant Elsey. By RUSS SIMONTON. . N. E. A. Staff Correspondent, Is tho engine of your automobile giving you every mile that's in the gas?" Tho flowmeter, invented by Major R. W. Schroeder, world's altitude champion, and designed and perfected by Lieutenant George W. Elsey, Schroeder's chief observer, will answer ans-wer the questtion for you. "Flowmeter," sounds "awful technical techni-cal and everything," but in fact it is a simple and necessary instrument to do a simple and necessary job. Its lit-jtle lit-jtle indicator shows the numberof gallons gal-lons a minute Of the fluid going through it. The machine was developed so that Major Schroeder in his battles with high-altitude might know every minute min-ute whether his engine was giving him all tho power it could from the gasoline. gaso-line. When Elsey began the construction of tho first Schroeder flowmeter, there were no good .flowmeters. A few types on '. the--;inarket were largo and cumbersome and inaccurate. Schroeder Schroe-der had to have a light and compact instrument of absolute accuracy. The present instrumnet is foui inhes long and "weighs less than one pound. It has only one moving part. The gasoline flows into the bottom of the instrument and has to pass through r narrow slot to reach, the carburetor. car-buretor. The harder It flows (that is the faster) the harder it" pushes against a little pump that threatens to close the slot and shut off the flow. The gasoline alwaj-s wins the battle with the pump and pushes it up the slot. An indicator marks the height of the pump and that's the number of gallons a minute. "We are now working," says Lieutenant Lieu-tenant Elsey, "to combine the flowmeter flow-meter with the speedometer. When wo succeed we will have an instrument that will show at a glance exactly how many miles an hour the motorist is getting on a gallon of gasoline." Major Schroeder has a model on his own automobile. "I found that it was more economical economi-cal for me to travel at 23 miles an hour than at 25 miles an hour," he says, "while at 30 miles I was burning far more gas than at 28 miles. Now, if 1 wanted to travel most of the time at 25 miles the flowmeter would tell me how to adjust my carburetor so that I could travel efficiently at this rate." The flowmeter has many places of value. It will measure any liquid and can be mado to measure the flow of I gases. It fills a long-felt want in . scores of industries. Lieutenant Elsey, who worked night and day on the problem for many months, is a graduate of Stanford University Uni-versity and entered the aviation service serv-ice at the outbreak of the war. His work on the flowmeter is considered consid-ered an achievement by other officers at McCook-field, Dayton, O. oo |