Printed circuit boards are one of those things we’re so used to the you never really think about how people made electronics before them.

Wireless Wiring for Radios
THAT repairman’s headache, the jumble of wires on the bottom of a radio, may join crystal sets in the museum. Two new processes mass-produce neat circuits, easy to check for trouble. They promise to do for average radios what printed circuits (PSM May ‘46, p. 131) are doing for miniatures.

In a system invented by A. M. Hathaway and developed by Spraywire Labs, of Minneapolis, a plastic panel is covered by a Scotch-tape stencil of the circuit. Through this, grooves are sandblasted, then spray-gunned full of atomized metal. Two guns can spray more than 1,000 units an hour.
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Halloween Habiliments

COSTUME SUGGESTIONS BY HI SIBLEY

UNIQUE Hallowe’en costumes of the type illustrated can be made at small outlay for material. The three-legged twins, for instance, require a special coat and shoes, but old pajamas will provide the trouser legs. The perambulating dog house is constructed from a large cardboard carton and painted green with a red roof. Brown “coveralls” and a dog mask should be worn by the person inside.
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This stuff looks like it was a hell of a lot harder before iMovie.

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Action Titles Pep Up Your Movies

By JOHN H. WOOD

TITLES containing or implying action do much to improve home movies, and making them can be just as much fun as shooting regular scenes. You can easily devise many ingenious titles your audience will be certain to appreciate.

Taking a picture of a title upside down, then turning the piece of film around and splicing it so the action is reversed is an old trick, but one for which new variations are constantly being contrived by 16-mm. movie makers. Charles H. Taylor, of Chicago, suggests two such variations.
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Plastic Toys Learn to Crawl Wiggle and Pop
ALTHOUGH metals for toys are more plentiful now, the war-born use of plastic substitutes is still enjoying a well-earned popularity with the toy makers— and the youngsters. Here are three new recruits to the growing ranks of plastic toys.

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This Man Has X-ray Eyes!

By West Peterson

I picked up a piece of chalk, walked to the blackboard and scribbled “Mechanix Illustrated.” Kuda Bux, the Indian mystic, accepted the chalk from me and wrote the title of this magazine again. Not only that, he copied my handwriting.

“You shouldn’t forget to dot the i,” he admonished.

I pulled a dime out of my pocket and held it in the palm of my hand.

“You want to know the date—yes?” Bux said. “It’s 1939.”

“Okay,” I said. “See if you can read this.”
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Stationette is a three-wheel car with a simplified airplane construction. It has a four-cylinder water-cooled rear engine. Martin Develop. Co., Rochelle Park, N. J., hopes to sell the two-passenger auto under $1000.

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Meet Professor Shrinkproof

John Derrig’s home is his laboratory and his family the guinea pigs. They all take a heating so he can test fabrics the hard way.

By Wilfred Weiss

DOROTHY Derrig was coming down the walk in front of her house at Bound Brook, N. J., in an exquisite sheer-net party dress. Suddenly her husband John whipped around the corner with the garden hose, like a fireman who had overslept a three-alarmer. He squirted the full spray on his pretty wife and soaked that long, lovely gown from neck to hemline.

“It’s just fine, John,” she stood there and remarked sweetly—without making a move to dash back into the house and look up the nearest divorce lawyer in the classified phone book. “See, it hasn’t lost a bit of its crispness! The water is rolling right off.”
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Blind Make Junk Auto Tires Into Useful Articles

THE Minneapolis Society for the Blind in seeking ways of keeping the minds of its blind occupied struck upon a novel method of manufacturing rubber door mats from old automobile tires. Since the materials required cost practically nothing the workei receives a fair profit and produces a product that is bought not out of pity, but because it is useful.

The tires are cut into strips thirty-six inches long and three-quarters of an inch wide. They are then punched with holes spaced two and one-half inches apart and woven on a wire frame. Three-quarter inch washers, punched also from scrap rubber, form spacers for forming the design.

Toy firemen Make Lawn Sprinkling Play

JACKIE gets a shower and keeps the lawn sprinkled with a miniature pumping fire cart his father, B. A. Clark, of Minneapolis, built for him.

Two firemen that actually work a pump on the sprinkler keep Jackie amused while taking care of his father’s lawn. The fire department sprinkler was built on an ordinary coaster wagon. It pulls the garden hose along wherever Jackie takes it.

The stream of water operates a device that moves the two miniature figures working the pump. A fire chief stands before them, watching their work. Mr. Clark reports he did not have to bother about watering the lawn or keeping Jackie cool after he built the toy fire cart.

I suppose this is technically possible if the box contained a Bose-Einstein condensate, but I have my doubts.

Wanted: Men to Sell Sunbeams
PLANS to market sunbeams, containing quantities of healthful ultra-violet rays with vitamines, have been put forward by the University of Cincinnati. The rays are put up in small packages, and are filtered out with quartz or other transparent substances.

This is long before it was called Air Force One. It’s a pity the current one isn’t painted to look like an eagle. Maybe we can get Stephen Colbert to lobby for it.

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“White House” To Roam Sky

Luxurious new Independence replaces the travel-worn Sacred Cow to speed President’s aerial travels.

WHEN the President of the United States travels, a 315-mile-an-hour plane speeds him swiftly and safely to his destination.

Named the Independence, after President Truman’s home city in Missouri, the special new Douglas DC-6 cruises 100 miles an hour faster than the Sacred Cow, the DC-4 that carried Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and other high officials to 55 nations in trips totaling 431,000 miles. Extra gasoline tanks give the Independence a range up to 4,400 miles, and a pressurized cabin permits high-altitude flight. A blue-and-tan exterior design, representing the American eagle, outwardly distinguishes the flying White House from other craft of its type.
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