Word: silica
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...will put on sale a hatlike home hair dryer for women, the "Turbanette." Price: $6.95. (It will soon go on sale in 30 other stores in 16 other cities.) The inventor, John Moore, ex-aircraft engineer at Lockheed, got the idea from seeing aircraft engines packed with sacks containing silica gel (a deliquescent powder) to protect them from moisture. The turban of cotton muslin packed with silica gel will dry a woman's hair-after washing-in half an hour...
Each hair, say Emmelin & Feldberg, has a flexible bladder at its base. The hair itself is hollow and stiffened with silica. At the tip is a tiny bulb like a cork stuck on the end of a hypodermic needle. When the hair touches a victim, the bulb breaks off, exposing a point so exquisitely sharp that it slips right through the skin. Pressure on the hair shaft squeezes the bladder and injects poison into the victim's tissues. The result: a hot, burning sensation followed by a longer-lasting itching...
Iron would be brought by barge from deposits on Texada Island, about 50 miles upcoast from Vancouver. The necessary fluxes-limestone and silica-were near by. Electric heat would melt the ore; fuel would be required only as a reducing and carbonizing agent. A primary advantage: power costs were estimated at less than one mill per kwh, probably the cheapest in Canada. Plans were to handle 130 tons of ore from Texada daily, to turn out 65 tons of "high quality iron cheaply and economically," with the initial output earmarked for B.C.'s burgeoning postwar industry (TIME...
Within the box raged a miniature storm of aluminum powder, churned by compressed air. With each breath the miners inhaled about five million tiny aluminum particles. The doctors' theory: aluminum powder forms a coating around silica powder in the air sacs, prevents formation of lung-eating silicic acid...
Miners liked the treatment so well that some drove 40 miles a day to get it. They reported immediate relief from the dry, hacking cough characteristic of silicosis. But whether aluminum dust will vanquish silica dust permanently, neither doctor nor miner could yet say. Nor had they yet found out whether it prevents tuberculosis, which often ends the silicosis sufferer's life...