I love the two little vacuum tubes sticking out on top.

Sun Hat Has Built-in Radio

No, that’s not Buck Rogers. It’s just Victor T. Hoeflich and his Radio Hat. The hat works, too—it keeps the sun off your head while you listen to radio programs. The Radio Hat contains a real radio receiver-two miniature tubes, the volume control,
and the antenna (which looks like an oil-can handle) stick out on top. The rest of the circuit is inside the hat’s lining.
The hat weighs only 12 oz. The 7-oz. power supply—a flashlight cell and a B battery—is carried in the pocket. Mr. Hoeflich’s company, American Merri-Lei Corp., Brooklyn, N. Y., makes the talking benny.

THE TRANSISTOR

A picture report of progress

A tiny amplifying device first announced by Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1948 is about to appear as a versatile element in telephony.

Each step in the work on the transistor . . . from original theory to initial production technique . . . has been carried on within the Laboratories. Thus, Bell scientists demonstrate again how their skills in many fields, from theoretical physics to production engineering, help improve telephone service.
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This is actually a really good idea. Most fans have really irritating and balky aiming mechanisms. Where can I buy one of these?

Fan in Place of Light Bulb Makes Lamp Produce Breeze

You can turn a desk lamp into a ventilating unit with a recent German invention. It’s a compact fan that screws into any light-bulb socket. The three propeller blades are plastic and the device comes in a variety of colors.

Next time you bitch about trying to get your video blogging software to work, check out what this guy had to scrape together to get an amateur TV station running in 1949. He built a garage full of equipment and had three giant antennas.

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Radio ‘Ham’ Builds TV Station

California amateur sends voice and picture over transmitter made from $500 worth of war-surplus parts.

By Andrew R. Boone

PULSING through the California skies from a weather-beaten back-yard shack, the image of a beautiful brunette flows into television receivers around San Francisco Bay. The boys who have seen her call the vision Gwendolyn.

Reproduced by a collection of secondhand tubes and war-surplus video equipment, Gwendolyn represents the first standard TV image broadcast successfully and repeatedly by an amateur. Soon, from the same station, W6JDI-TV, radio ham Clarence Wolfe, Jr. hopes to televise live images.
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Words I never thought I’d say: “Wow, that girl in the Iron Lung looks sexy!”

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Metal Lungs Give Life

DEATH stands at the hospital bedside, waiting. Beneath the covers, a gasping youngster rights for breath. He is a’victim of infantile paralysis. Slowly, cruelly, the dreadful fingers of paralysis clutch at the chest muscles which pump the breath of life through his body. Soon those muscles will cease to function and the youngster will cease to breathe.

But death has not reckoned with the mechanical ingenuity of man.
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Here’s the easy, effective way to trim down waist, abdomen, hips, thighs!

New Inflatable Air Shorts provide pneumatic support plus massage to help you slenderize where you need it most!

This may well be the easiest, most comfortable trim-down method you’ve ever tried. All you do is slip into these astounding new slenderizing shorts and inflate them with the little hand pump we provide. Then merely do a few simple exercises, housework or any usual daily activity. What happens after that is likely to amaze you. The puffy, snug-fitting pockets of air which surround you actually work to provide gentle pneumatic support plus effective massage while they generate additional body heat.

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Metalized Window Curtain Aids in A-Bomb Protection

Heavy canvas window curtains, specially treated, are designed to give partial protection from the effects of an A-bomb blast. The curtains are metalized with aluminum and lead. They will help protect persons inside a building from flying glass, radioactive dust and flash burns, according to the manufacturer. They are said to be effective at distances beyond 2600 feet of the explosion. When not in use, the curtain rolls against the upper part of the casement like a window shade.

That is some pretty amazing camouflage there. Why, I almost mistook them for trees. Trees with binoculars and handguns….

Soldiers Wear Camouflage
The men in the above picture are not inhavitants of Mars. They are only British soldiers, wearing camouflage in their helmets during a mimic battle.

Really interesting article from the 40’s about combating VD. Both in terms of medical treatment (the new wonder drug penicillin) and in terms of health education (removing the taboo from talking about VD). It’s also really interesting to see the how little has changed in regards to the balance between curing illness and “promoting sexuality”. This quote from the article:

Not all experts see this as an unmixed blessing. Dr. John Stokes, syphilologist of the University of Pennsylvania, is worried about the effect on morals. “If extramarital sexual relations,” he has said, “lead neither to significant illness nor unwanted parenthood, only a few intangibles of the spirit remain to guide children of the new era from an outmoded past into an unbridled future.”

Is very similar to this one regarding the recent HPV vaccine

“Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV. Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.” – Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council

The basic idea being that people should be punished for having sex outside of marriage.

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The New Attack On Venereal Disease

Tent shows, hill-billies and a new drug are some of the weapons which may relegate syphilis and gonorrhea to the text-books in a few years

A carnival tent show in a Michigan State Fair (top photograph and opposite page) and a little bottle of creamy white liquid (above) are the new shock troops in a two-front war against venereal disease. Between them, they may wipe out this scourge of mankind within the next ten or twenty years.
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Black Light and the Criminal

Ultra-violet rays, now readily accessible to law enforcing bodies, adds another weapon to the arsenal of the government’s war on lawlessness.

THE use of filtered ultra-violet light for crime detection and identification purposes has been made available by the presentation of a comparatively low cost, yet powerful, efficient and portable black-ray quartz lamp. Specially formulated dark-colored Wood’s glass filters in the front of lamp hold back the visible light emitted by the mercury arc and allow only a concentrated beam of invisible ultra-violet, or “black light,” to pass. This ray cannot be seen by the eye, even in the dark or semi-dark, yet its radiations are absorbed by a wide variety of substances and instantly re-emitted as visible light of constant intensity and color.
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Machine Speeds Pretzel Bending

THERE are more crunchy pretzels to munch when you sip long, cold drinks this summer, thanks to a new automatic pretzel-twisting machine that rolls and ties them at the rate of 50 a minute—more than twice as fast as skilled hand twisters can make them. Developed by the American Machine & Foundry Co., of New York City, the pretzel . bender is helping to meet the increased demand of pretzel lovers, who eat millions of pounds each year. On this and the following page is the story of how pretzels march from raw dough to baked twist.
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Britain Demonstrates “Sombrero” Flame Thrower

Dubbed the “ack-pack,” Britain’s new flame thrower has an odd-shaped fuel tank that looks like a Mexican sombrero strapped to the soldier’s back. The weapon is shorter than most flame throwers of previous design. A length of flexible hose connects the fuel tank with the gun.