Drop to Drink

Scientists have lately announced a number of ingenious new contraptions to make sea water drinkable, but the war's ship wrecked have yet to quench their thirst with one of them. Last week two Navy chemists produced what looked like the first really practical solution. The Navy thought so well of their invention that it ran off a demonstration for newsmen.

The Navy's device, like that of Caltech's Physicist Alexander Goetz (TIME, June 7), uses chemicals to remove salts from the water. Equipment consists of a packet of chemicals the size of a deck of cards and three plastic bags resembling hot-water bottles. Sea water is mixed with one of the chemicals in the first bag, which converts the salts in the water into other compounds. These are then precipitated by another chemical and filtered out in the second and third bags. The final product: clear, fresh, slightly sulfuric water.

The water produced by the Goetz method, while drinkable, still has a high proportion of salts (e.g., about 4% of sodium citrate), has to be mixed with peppermint oil to kill the bad taste. The two Navy chemists-- Lieut. William V. Consolazio and Lieut, (j.g.) Claire R. Spealman --claim that their process gets rid of all but a trace of salt (less than half of 1% sodium chloride) and produces water more palatable, more healthful than Goetz's.

With one packet of the Consolazio-Spealman chemicals, a man in a life raft can produce a quart of drinking water in half an hour. The Navy announced that the device was ready to go into mass production as standard life-raft equipment as soon as it passes final tests by Army & Navy doctors.

Other new aids to the shipwrecked made known last week:

> The Army Air Forces have developed and already put into use a hand-powered radio transmitter by which flyers forced down at sea can call for help. A compact (35 lb.), waterproof, unsinkable affair, the transmitter has a tiny antenna which is raised into the air by a pair of balloons in a calm or a box kite when there is a wind. To signal with it, the operator simply turns a crank, which both generates power for the transmitter and automatically grinds out the SOS message.

> Hooked up to this same hand generator is another new signaling device designed to guide rescuers at night: a tiny searchlight, the size of a walnut, whose beam can be seen 65 miles away. Much more powerful than an ordinary flashlight, it has a single tungsten filament, produces a 1,500-candlepower beam, is worn on the head like a miner's lamp.

> Canadian sailors are now equipped with a new life jacket which covers the lower part of the trunk and gives its wearer better protection against burns and concussion injuries from exploding shells and depth charges in the water. Stowed in the jacket are several new gadgets to aid rescue: a yellow cap (to make its wearer more conspicuous), an electric lamp, a length of rope, a pair of stout loops for rescuers to grab. Another new item of Canadian lifeboat equipment is a supply of heavy socks impregnated with vaseline, to protect sailors from "immersion foot," a circulatory disorder that often leads to gangrene.

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