CHICAGO – Work on a camera designed especially to be used by members of the Lowell Expedition to photograph the canals and polar caps of the planet Mars was completed yesterday by Wm. Gaetner, Chicago maker of scientific instruments.

• No opposition whatever is anticipated in getting a location of the electric road between here and Augusta. All along the line the people are enthusiastic for the enterprise.

• Buckfield is soon to have a new industry in the business of the New England Foundry Co., a corporation just organized and capitalized at $10,000.

50 years ago, 1957

AUGUSTA – A ban on brook fishing and smoking or building of outdoor fires in the Maine woods was proclaimed today by Gov. Edmund Muskie, effective at midnight. Muskie cited a “serious forest fire hazard” – 20 or more new fires were burning as he issued the ban – and said he took the step on the recommendation of Forest Commissioner Albert D. Nutting.

• West Auburn village was threatened for a time yesterday afternoon by a new outbreak of the Minot woods fire as flames raced out of control over a mile square area. But with a slackening of the wind, firemen were able to contain the fire and last night completed surrounding the blaze with bulldozed fire breaks.

25 years ago, 1982

• The city of Lewiston will eventually haul about 15,000 tons of trash to Auburn’s steam plant under an agreement reached between the two cities to handle the town of Gorham’s waste.

WASHINGTON – Unemployment climbed to 9.4 percent of the labor force in April, a post-war record, and Democrats seized upon the report Friday as evidence that President Reagan’s economic program has delivered nothing but “pink slip after pink slip after pink slip.” Some 10.3 million Americans were out of work last month as joblessness among adult men, blue-collar workers, blacks and teen-agers was the highest in modern times, the Labor Department said.