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Eccentric Cycles

BIZARRE bikes are back! In bicycling’s early days, granddaddy went wild over eccentric cycles. Then, bike tastes leveled off. But the comeback of the bicycle industry has changed things.

In 1948, almost three million bikes (eccentric and otherwise) were turned out. Currently, the U. S. owns 14 million cycles – a fifth of the world’s total. Even exclusive Skidmore College bowed to the trend and introduced a course in Bi-Psychology!

So, purloin a peek at the two-wheelers on these pages and you’ll begin to realize how far the fad has gone since you last looked.
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Kiddies Taught Traffic Laws
A MINIATURE roadway complete with signs, stop-and-go lights, crossings and safety zones is being used to teach pedestrian and auto traffic regulations to school children in Brentwood, England. The lessons are made interesting for the tots by letting them drive miniature autos over the “highway,” impersonate policemen, etc.

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Creating MOVIES in a TEST TUBE

Cobwebs of rubber cement, ice cream from potatoes, candy windows, rain that is not wet, these and others movie chemists conjure.

by EARL THEISEN

IN THE motion picture world it is not possible to control nature. The movie-makers must fabricate artificial snow storms; glass that will not cut; fogs that can be controlled; bubbling, hot lava from volcanoes that are not erupting; and thousands of other things which are needed in creating movies. It is the chemist with his test tubes and laboratories who makes effects possible in great movie production. He is called upon to satisfy the various demands of the director at a moment’s notice.

To produce the effect of brisk coldness, such as vapor coming from the breath of an actor, dry ice, which is made from carbon dioxide, is placed in the mouth. Because of the extreme cold of this dry ice, the result is a mist coming from the mouth similar to the one seen in cold climates. So as not to freeze the mouth, the dry ice is placed in a container in the actor’s mouth. This same chemical “dry ice” is used in scenes where steaming tea kettles and boiling water is seen. The dry ice makes the water seem to boil.
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This article also contains pictures of an early version of a breathalizer called the “Drunk-O-Meter” and an early automatic speed trap camera.

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COPS ON THE CAMPUS

At the Traffic institute, veteran officers —finest in the country—are pumped full of facts on how accidents happen and how to help motorists behave

By Clifford B. Hicks

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED police officers from every section of the country have been learning the finer points of traffic enforcement at Northwestern University’s Traffic Institute since 1936. It’s not entirely coincidence that the national death rate per 100,000,000 vehicle miles has been cut more than half—since 1936.

Even faculty members don’t suggest that the institute is solely responsible for this startling reduction in fatalities. Yet during the past 12 years those 1700 officers, crammed with knowledge of how accidents happen and what to do to prevent them, have taken over key positions on traffic police forces throughout the country. And the institute’s sister organization, the Traffic Division of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, has probed traffic enforcement in 60 cities, counties and states and made recommendations that invariably have brought surprising slashes in the accident rate.
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Plastic Mask for Gridders
Football players are protected against facial injury, or the aggravation of old injuries, by a new plastic mask. Use of a transparent material instead of metal to guard the nose permits increased vision. A resilient padding on the inside of the protective mask cushions the player’s face against impact.

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MONSTERS IN YOUR TOOL CHEST
By Barnett Fowler

DON’T ASK ME WHY, but I took these pictures. And now, to cap it all, I’m submitting them, in case your readers might be interested. Tools can’t talk back, and maybe it’s just as well. However, mute as they are, tools make fine animal crackers if they’re touched up with a spot of paint and posed just right. Pliers and clothesline tighteners, hinges and lawn sprinklers can become pleasant little “monsters” that will pose willingly for your camera. We even converted an old furnace damper control into a moose or a strange little creature with an upturned nose, depending upon how you look at him. Almost any tool or piece of junk can be made into an odd being of one kind or another. Best of all. it’s fun for kids as well as adults. Why not open your tool chest and try it yourself?

This seems like a really good way to kill your dogs, not to mention just cruel. I don’t really know how fast dogs can run, but 35 mph seems a bit high, doesn’t it?

Car Exercises Dogs

With six racing dogs to keep in top shape, Dewey Blanton of Columbus, Ohio, has developed a “canine exerciser” that fastens to his station wagon. Blanton built a frame to support a long plank beside the vehicle. Springs fastened to the plank are attached to the dogs’ collars, permitting the dogs to run wide. Longer chains keep the dogs in check. The broad plank bumper prevents injury to the dogs as they race along at 35 miles per hour. Best of all, the dogs seem to love the exerciser.

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Stage Your PUBLICITY SHOT

By RICHARD W. EMERY

COMPETITION in the sale of publicity shots is keen and it takes more than just luck to sell an editor. The successful free-lance photographer knows that a good publicity shot must be built around a basic idea that will attract a great amount of attention. If not, his work will never see print. The basic idea may be to entertain, instruct or arouse curiosity, or its purpose may be to kindle a desire to possess something, to go somewhere or to do some particular thing.

There are many reasons for planning setup shots. Advanced planning enables you to create a picture in which the basic idea is presented forcefully and in such a manner that the picture completely tells a story or strongly conveys one thought.
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Rumpus-Room Clock
DESIGNED BY JUAN OLIVER
IF THE game room must have a clock—and time is all too likely to pass unnoticed there if none is provided—let it by all means be an amusing one. The smiling gentleman illustrated will tactfully remind you and your guests when it’s time to call it a day, and just as cheerfully welcome you back again for hours of fun. He can be kept on the home bar, on one of the shelves behind it, or wherever he will be in plain sight.
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Transatlantic Roller Coaster Designed to Bomb U.S.A

Hitler’s blueprints found; mighty winged missiles were to be used in 1946

WHEN the Allied invasion upset the Nazis’ plans, they had a supersonic, 3,000-mile-range rocket in the works. Already in the blueprint stage was its successor —a true rocket bomber of equal speed and range. Actual sketches and plans for it are shown on page 110.

Rocket projects were Hitler’s equivalent of America’s Manhattan District Project. Blueprints for atomic bombs are still tightly guarded secrets, but the Nazis’ detailed plans for push-button, transoceanic war have now been exposed. They are a clue to developments that may reasonably be expected if there is another war.
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Lenses Promise No-Hands Phone

BEING a good engineer, Dr. Winston E. Kock is a lazy man. He thinks it’s too much trouble to lift up a handset every time you want to talk over the telephone. His idea of a telephone is a little black box you never touch—just talk and listen to.

Since Dr. Kock is a physicist-engineer for Bell Telephone Laboratories, he did something about his idea. He developed lenses that focus sound, a necessary preliminary to the lazy-man’s telephone. The telephone itself is still only an idea, but the lenses have been made and should have many uses.

You can understand why lenses are necessary if you’ve ever held an old-fashioned telephone receiver near the transmitter. The transmitter picks up the receiver’s sound, which keeps going around the circuit until it is a howl. A lens would direct the receiver’s sound at the user and keep it away from the transmitter. (”Intercom” systems do have combination receiver-transmitters, but you must press a switch to talk—more work than holding a handset.
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Electricity Prevents Burial Alive
WHAT is claimed as an infallible test of death has been proposed to the French Academy of Medicine. This test consists in applying electric heat to the leg or some other part of the supposedly dead body, using the modern device called a diathermy apparatus. Passage of the diathermy current raises the part of the body to which it is applied several degrees in temperature. If the person is only apparently dead this heat will spread slowly through the body and may be detected after a few minutes by a slight rise of temperature. If temperature does not rise after 30 minutes then burial may proceed. When a test on a body has been made there is no danger that it will be buried alive, as has frequently happened.