POWER TIE CLIP by L. M. Cox Co., Santa Ana Calif., is an operating internal combustion engine. The motor has a displacement of only .01 cubic inch, with a piston hardly larger than the head of a pin. It can fly a very small model airplane, however. As a tie clip it is decorative but non-operable unless you carry with you the 1-1/2-volt battery to attach to its glow head and a drop or two of fuel. Rotary valve engine does 27,000 rpm. Gift-packed, with manual, $8.

view additional pages

Self-Propelled Surfboard

SKIMBOATING—newest fad at Cypress Gardens, Florida—is rapidly outgrowing that novelty classification. It provides you with all the thrills of aquaplaning without making you lug a boat along. Also, you can break down this self-propelled surfboard into three small sections.

Developed by Emil Hansen of Bryn Mawr, Pa., the craft has a 7-1/2-hp outboard engine housed in a watertight aluminum hull. It’s 90 inches long, 24 inches wide and weighs 120 pounds. Top speed is about 30 mph and you steer it with a rudder aft and by shifting your body.
Read the rest of this entry »

There are ICS ads in virtually every magazine I own; from the 30’s up to the 80’s. Over that time they used just about every technique imaginable to try and coax men into enrolling. This ad uses one of their favorite methods: humiliation. But not just any humiliation. No, they have to bring your kids into it. Telling a man his son is ashamed of him, so he better sign up for correspondence school is pretty low, even for ICS.

When the other kids ask…

WHAT DOES YOUR DAD DO?

How does your boy answer them?

Sure … you’re his hero. You know that. But sometimes it can get kinda tough if the other kids don’t seem to understand about the “old man.”
It’s not that you like to be chained to the same old job. Maybe you just had to leave school too soon. Maybe the war interfered. Anyway, here you are, stuck because you just don’t have enough formal training.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Uncle Sam’s Stamp Factory

By Wayne Whittaker

THE THIN FELLOW you saw in the post office the other day with that worried look might well have been one of the millions of stamp collectors in this country. He has had a harrowing year—1948— trying to keep track of the special stamps that have rolled from the presses in the U. S. Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Washington, D. C.

The last Congress may go down in history as the “Stamp Act” Congress. By congressional authorization, its members sponsored a new stamp on the average of every other week in 1948. Stamp dealers groaned. Stamp collectors groaned. Officials of the bureau groaned loudest of all, but Congress went happily on its way paying tribute to everything from the poultry industry to the Gettysburg Address.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Sweating to the Oldies, back before they were oldies.

GETTING THIN TO MUSIC

Reducing Reduced to a Science

ARE you bulky of body, and heavy of heart? Would you really like to reduce? Will you accept without cost the proof that you can? Then read what this man has done! Not long: ago, in Chicago, it was stated that the scientific secret of weight regulation had been discovered. Wallace, a leading physical director, had worked seventeen years to make the announcement. But it did not take long to prove it was true.
Read the rest of this entry »

London Hospital Constructs $200,000 Radium Mercy Bomb

CONTINUING the work begun by the late Madame Curie, eminent French pioneer in the use of radium for healing, physicists at the Westminster Hospital in London are now engaged in the construction of a $200,000 radium bomb which will greatly extend the mercy work of the beneficial rays. The 4 grammes of radium, worth $200,000, will be encased in a new tungsten alloy shell, the alloy having 1-1/2 times the density of lead. Within the shell will be a solid gold collar to further confine the Gamma rays of radium, thus preventing injury to the operators from spreading rays.

The employment of so great a quantity of radium within a single bomb permits operation at a greater distance from the patient, and at the same time produces a more effective treatment at greater depths below the body surface.

If my dad had really loved me, he would have built me one of these.

Boy Won’t Need Dad’s Car Now!
Thirteen-year-old Jimmy Richardson of Tucson, Ariz., is the envy of all his friends with a midget auto built by his father. What’s more, he rides all week on 56 cents worth of gas — the cost for one tankful. The car is made of 20-gauge steel trimmed in stainless steel for a snappy appearance. It stands 2-1/2 feet high, is five feet long and has a ground clearance of only five inches. Built on a frame of bed rail with knee action in front and regular coil springs in the rear, the entire machine weighs about 300 pounds. Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Do Prehistoric Monsters Still Exist?

Future explorers may find themselves battling “extinct” creatures which lurk in the remote corners of the world.

By Willy Ley
Author of The Lungfish, the Dodo and the Unicorn*

DINOSAURS may roam the unexplored jungles of Africa!

Native tribes near the Congo River call the creatures Mokele Mbembe. They say they’re enormous and live in caves washed out by the river at sharp turns. Some startled tribesmen have described them as having long necks, small heads and one long tusk. Others have told of a three-horned monster like that shown above, with ferocious teeth and a massive comb. All agree that the creatures kill both humans and elephants. But they never eat the flesh. Farther east in Africa, near Lake Ban-gweolo, the natives tell of a weird animal which they call Chipekwe. Because it kills hippopotamuses, not one hippo can be found in the lake. One tribe claims it hunted and killed a Chipekwe forty years ago. The strongest hunters had to jab it with their spears for days before the animal finally succumbed.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

A Diving Helmet from a Water Heater

THEY go down to the sea in old water heaters along the Atlantic coast these days, now that some young man with a leaning toward aquatic sports has proved how easy it is to make an excellent diving helmet from a metal water heater which will enable its wearer to walk comfortably on the sea floor 35 feet and more below the surface. A few feet of garden hose, two pairs of bellows, a couple of valve boxes and a cylindrical metal boiler of the type used in most homes for heating water, are the essentials for building one of these helmets.
Read the rest of this entry »

Reduce Flesh, Do Your Own Massage
Dr. Ward’s Crystal Undulator

reduces fat deposits and gives a perfect figure from neck to ankles.

Specially adapted for deep abdominal massage, removing fat, correcting indigestion, constipation and sluggish liver.
Made to conform to the anatomical irregularities of the spine, the Undulator is the rational scientific instrument for treatment of neuritis, insomnia, nervous exhaustion, lumbago, sciatica, etc. Massage with the Undulator brings immediate relief to tired muscles, fatigue, stiffness and nerve irritation. Its adaptability for use over clothing is possessed by no other instrument—not even the hand.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Have Fun in a Boat But DON’T DROWN

SWIMMIN’ time again, with a world of fun—and some serious hazards, too. As usual there’ll be tipped boats and other horseplay. G. E. Tatum, safety engineer for a public utility, offers common-sense advice on how to have fun and stay alive. In case your boat tips you overboard, Tatum says, rock it to slosh out as much water as possible, then crawl over the stern
Read the rest of this entry »

Breakable Hans Helps Air Force
Fractures of Hans’ “almost human” bones are expected to save Air Force pilots from similar injuries. Built around a metal, rubber, nylon and ball-joint spinal column, Hans is a dummy the Research and Development Command made to simulate the human body in a series of drop, crash impact, deceleration and acceleration tests. Through a cylinder and sleeve arrangement his arms and legs rotate exactly like a man’s. He has the measurements of a muscular 200-pounder. The dummy’s metal and plastic collarbones, the most easily fractured bones in humans, will snap just as would a man’s, and his vinyl-foam “skin” will show the effects of cuts or abrasions. Following each test the bones can be studied or replaced through zippered openings in the skin.