Science: Dust Trap

Mountain-clear air must be used in the sealed rooms where bombsights are made and serviced. There can be no dust in the powdered milk that feeds civilian populations abroad, no dirt in the blood plasma needled into wounded soldiers. For war use, raw air must be processed like any other crude material—laundered, filtered, electrified to remove impurities. From war experience with industrial air cleaning will come, after the war, a home-size electric dust-catcher that will cost no more to buy and run than an electric refrigerator.

Called the Precipitron, this electrostatic air cleaner developed by Westinghouse now stands silent guard in the...