50 and 100 Years Ago; May 1995; Scientific American Magazine; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

MAY 1945 A recent development in plastics and electronics is a wafer-thin Vinylite plastics record, only seven inches in diameter. Each side of the disk will record approximately 15 minutes of dictation. These records can be bent, rolled, dropped, and written on with a pencil without harming the sound track. The thin plastic can be stored indefinitely, without warpage, breakage, or distortion, in an ordinary filing cabinet--100 disks to the inch--and played back at least 100 times.

A new type of Diesel engine will enable the operator to use either gas or oil as fuel without any electrical sparking device and will cut fuel consumption of gas engines by as much as 25 percent. The unit operates on a wide variety of fuels, including fuel oil, natural gas, manufactured and coke oven gases, sewage gas, and refinery by-products. Furthermore, the engine will have the same fuel economy regardless of the type of fuel used.