This is a huge problem, on which engineers and other traffic experts are working. They never expect to see the day when all traffic signs will be exactly uniform everywhere. That is a trifle too much to expect of an imperfect world. In the biggest cities congestion may make special regulations unavoidable.

But the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads and state highway officials together have worked out a standard system of signs for rural highways, and a committee on city traffic ordinances has begun to work on a standard system of suitable signals for city streets.

DREAM OF A ROAMING MOTORIST

MARS’ CANALS NOT MAN-MADE

The so-called canals of Mars have attracted great interest among astronomers as well as the general public because the claim was put forward by some observers that they might be artificial, a sign of the existence of intelligent beings on Mars.

At the close approaches of 1924 and 1926 I undertook a careful study of the surface of Mars by photographic and direct visual observation with the 36-inch refractor of the Lick Observatory. These observations confirm the existence of a general network of dark lines and spots on Mars.

They contradict the view of former observers that these lines are narrow, uniform, straight canals arranged in regular geometrical figures. This network was found to cover the whole surface of Mars, not only the yellow-orange areas thought to be deserts, to which the canals have formerly as a rule been confined, and it exhibits, after all, not much regularity, the marks being crowded in some regions and sparsely distributed in others.

-- Robert J. Trumpler, Lick Observatory

TRAFFIC IS HARD ON WHITE PAINT

Here are a dozen paint samples taking a street test in front of the U.S. Bureau of Standards.