Science: New Wrinkles

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Supersonic Gatling Gun. Designed to kill in the split-second world of supersonic aircraft, a 20-mm. cannon that spews 8,000 shells a minute was announced this week by General Electric, co-developer with Army Ordnance of the gun for the Air Force. The cannon, nicknamed the Vulcan, has six rotating barrels that fire in succession, is patterned directly after the hand-cranked rapid-fire gun invented in 1862 by American Richard J. Gatling and used in the Spanish-American War.

Compact Eye. The extremely sensitive radar that can distinguish closely adjacent targets, e.g., boats in an amphibious landing is now cumbersome and complex. Last week Sylvania Electric Products Inc disclosed a new cathode-ray tube that will cut the size of present radar receiving units by about four-fifths. Developed with the Navy, the "wamoscope" (a derivative of wave-modulated oscilloscope) uses a single tube to detect, amplify and display target blips, eliminating a dozen tubes and components, including such standard terns as detectors and amplifiers. All three armed forces are excited about the wammy. Said Dr. Robert Guthrie, Navy radar expert: "This is a very, very neat achievement in design."

Telephone TV. A "picturephone" that conveys both the voice and picture of a caller was announced by Bell Telephone Laboratories. A mlniature TV camera flashes a head-and-shoulders picture of the caller over an ordinary telephone wire to a small screen at the other end of the line. The picture, composed of 2,400 dots changes every two seconds (the standard TV picture changes 30 times a second) can be cut off or on by flicking a switch. Bell scientists, who have watched and listened to each other on a hookup between New York and Los Angeles, refuse to guess when the picturephone will be offerd to the public, or how much it will cost. But a company spokesman says; "We wouldn't be monkeying around with the thing if we didn't believe we could offer it to telephone subscribers in the not too distant future."