Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight; Or, on the Border for Uncle Sam
1912
Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight; Or, on the Border for Uncle Sam
1912
It's 1912, and the future belongs to boys with inventions. Tom Swift has done it again: a noiseless airship motor that promises to change everything. But before Tom can celebrate, trouble arrives in the form of airship smugglers slipping across the Canadian border with illicit cargo, and the sleepy town of Shopton finds itself tangled in a government investigation. When customs agent Mr. Whitford needs someone with technical savvy to crack the case, Tom volunteers his services, his brains, and most importantly, his brilliant new searchlight: a beam powerful enough to pierce the darkest night and catch smugglers in the act. Alongside his loyal friend Ned and the towering Koku, Tom races to the border, his inventions his only weapons against a shadowy criminal network and the return of his old rival Andy Foger, whose suspicious presence casts doubt on everyone. What follows is breathless adventure: midnight flights, inventive problem-solving, and the simple thrill of a clever kid outwitting grown-up criminals. This is early twentieth-century American optimism distilled into adventure fiction, where genius youth serve their country and ingenuity always wins the day.
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“the St. Lawrence. They're working now in the neighborhood of Huntington, Canada, and the dividing line between the British possessions and New York State, runs along solid ground there. It's a wild and desolate part of country, too, and I haven't many men up there.””
— Victor Appleton
“And he then related how he had accidently discovered a new way to connect the wires, so as to get, from a dynamo and a storage battery a much stronger, and different, current than usual.””
— Victor Appleton
“lots of them. One was in the Eiffel Tower, during the Paris Exposition. I didn't see that, but I have read about it. Another is in one of the twin lighthouses at the Highlands, on the Atlantic coast of New Jersey, just above Asbury Park. That light is of ninety-five million candle power, and the lighthouse keeper there told me it was visible, on a clear night, as far as the New Haven, Connecticut, lighthouse, a distance of fifty miles.””
— Victor Appleton
“Don't worry, father. I'm not going far this time. Only to the Canadian border, and that's only a few hundred miles. But I want to see if I can cut the current off, and turn it on again. When a thing happens by accident you never know whether you can get just exactly the same conditions again." Tom shut off the current from the dynamo, and the powerful beam of light died out. Then he turned it on once more, and it glowed as brightly as before. He did this several times, and each time it was a success. "Hurrah!" cried Tom. "To-morrow I'll start on my latest invention, a great searchlight!””
— Victor Appleton
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Appleton, Victor. Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight; Or, on the Border for Uncle Sam. Lex, lex-books.com/book/tom-swift-and-his-great-searchlight-or-on-the-border-for-uncle-sam-2738a0e2-1624-4cca-9a13-9396f14a88b7.Appleton, V. (1912). Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight; Or, on the Border for Uncle Sam. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/tom-swift-and-his-great-searchlight-or-on-the-border-for-uncle-sam-2738a0e2-1624-4cca-9a13-9396f14a88b7Appleton, Victor. Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight; Or, on the Border for Uncle Sam. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/tom-swift-and-his-great-searchlight-or-on-the-border-for-uncle-sam-2738a0e2-1624-4cca-9a13-9396f14a88b7.
