From the May 15, 1937, issue

PILLARS OF LEARNING

Detail of the monolith columns of the Mellon Institute’s beautiful new building is shown in the illustration on the front cover of this week’s Science New Letter. Those columns, which are without the distracting horizontal lines of pillars which are not in one piece, were turned on huge lathes, and only three workmen at the quarry had the skill to make them. They measure 6 feet in diameter and 42 feet high, yet no column varies more than an eighth inch in any dimension.

LEAD POISONING RATES WORST AS A HAZARD TO WORKERS

Lead poisoning, and not silicosis or any of the other newly prominent occupational diseases, is the chief hazard to the health of workers in industry, Dr. William D. McNally of Rush Medical College, Chicago, reported to the Midwest Conference on Occupational Diseases in Detroit.

Carbon monoxide and fumes from oxides of nitrogen in dynamite explosions were described as other serious industrial health hazards.

MECHANISM ‘FEELS’ ANSWERS TO EXAMINATION QUESTIONS

A new machine that can correct up to 20 examination papers a minute—scoring as many as 3,000 answers each 60 seconds—has been developed and is now under extensive test. If the enthusiastic approval of educators and employment executives is any indication, it may bring a vast change in the methods of education, vocational guidance, and mass employment.

The device “feels” the answers and tells how many are right, how many are wrong, and provides the operator with a total score for any given test. If desired, it can subtract the number of errors from number of right and even convert the result into percentage form.