New Ideas

GOODS & SERVICES

Turbine Auto. General Motors Corp. has built a four-passenger successor to its experimental gas-turbine car, the Firebird. The Firebird II's engine, said President Harlow Curtice, "gives promise of being able to operate with substantially the same economy as present-day automotive piston engines." Instead of wasting the tremendous blast of heat that comes out of the back of the engine, the Firebird recaptures about 80% of it by means of a heat exchanger, uses it to raise the temperature of intake air and thus improve combustion. G.M. does not plan to produce the titanium-bodied Firebird II, but it will be exhibited at G.M.'s Motorama, which starts its tour next month in Manhattan.

Steel Inspector. To find microscopic holes in strip steel before it is made into tin cans, General Electric Co. has developed a gadget that shines a powerful light on the strip to make pinholes show up. The detector can find holes less than the diameter of a human hair while the strip runs by at 2,000 ft. a minute.

Chocolate Straws. A drinking straw that turns plain milk into chocolate milk has been put on the market by Los Angeles' Frontier Foods Corp. The Flavr Straw contains a strip of sugarless chocolate that dissolves in the milk passing through. Frontier Foods plans soon to add strawberry and root-beer flavors. Price: 23-c- a dozen.

Meat Preserver. To keep poultry, beef and other meats fresh for several days without refrigeration, American Cyanamid Co. has developed a product called Acronize. It contains a minute amount of aureomycin, an antibiotic. Applied to meat, it stops the early growth of bacteria, main cause of food spoilage.

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