January 26, 2007

NEW CAR LOCK THWARTS THIEF (Sep, 1934)

At least until the invention of the Bic Pen.

NEW CAR LOCK THWARTS THIEF
Using a cylindrical key, a recently marketed auto-bile lock for doors or ignition is said to afford protection against thieves. A thief attempting to open the lock would have to pick each of its seven plungers separately. Drilling or shearing off the lock is said to be impossible because of the hardened steel shell. The lock does not bear a number, a secret number being furnished the owner. Duplicate keys can be obtained from the factory only on presentation of the complete lock, which prevents thieves from securing a duplicate key for unlawful use.

FIRE ESCAPE TRAP IN TOP OF AUTO (Sep, 1933)

It’s all in the name. Once they changed the name of this from “FIRE ESCAPE” to “sun roof” sales took off.

FIRE ESCAPE TRAP IN TOP OF AUTO
A motor car with a fire escape is a novelty introduced by a British inventor. The top of the car is cut away to provide a large rectangular aperture, which is normally closed by a fitted panel that excludes rain and snow. If an accident should turn the car on its side, however, the panel automatically falls out, thus allowing the occupants to escape or be helped out quickly. In case of fire following a collision, the inventor declares, his innovation would be an invaluable aid to life-saving and would probably greatly reduce the number of serious injuries that occur when driver is trapped in car.

Lilliputian’s-eye viewer puts you inside tiny model (Aug, 1964)

Filed under: General — @ 12:05 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1964
Buy on Ebay

This makes those dorky 3D walk-throughs seem a lot more useful doesn’t it?

Lilliputian’s-eye viewer puts you inside tiny model

A slender optical tube fitted with 18 miniature lenses provides realistic views inside architects’, landscapers’, town planners’, and other scale models. With a camera and adapter on the eyepiece, you get photos like the circular ones at left.

The British-made Modelscope is a combination microscrope, periscope, and telescope with an aperture at one side .3 inch from the end. On the floor of a 1:200 model, this corresponds to eye level at the same scale. At other heights, it shows vistas from windows, balconies, and other points. Made by Optec Reactors, Ltd., of London, the unit is distributed in the U.S. by H. C. I. Sales Corp., NYC.

Magnesium the BANTAMWEIGHT METAL (Aug, 1946)

Magnesium the BANTAMWEIGHT METAL

How Chemists Have Put It to Work as a Jack-of-All-Trades.

By KENNETH M. SWEZEY

DURING the war magnesium was extensively used as a lightweight structural metal for aircraft parts and as pyrotechnic material for star shells, signal flares, tracer bullets, and flash and incendiary bombs. Strong, silvery white, and only two thirds as heavy as aluminum, it is the lightest of all construction metals. In the form of powder, thin sheets, or wire, it burns with a dazzling flame that water or even carbon dioxide will not put out. Never found alone in nature, magnesium is made on a tremendous scale by the electrolysis of its compounds. These compounds are among the most plentiful substances in the crust of the earth. Whole mountain ranges consist of dolomite, a double carbonate of magnesium and calcium. Asbestos, talc, and meerschaum are magnesium silicates. Epsom salts, named after the springs at Epsom, England, where they were first isolated in 1695, are magnesium sulphate. In the form of its chloride, there are nearly 6,000,000 tons of magnesium in every cubic mile of-the sea, a vast storehouse of supply.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ronnie the Riveter (Jun, 1942)

Rosie gets all the press, but very few people know about Ronnie the Riveter, the WWII icon of gay war-workers in the U.S.

Where I work It’s Chesterfield

Here’s the answer to that. . . Chesterfields are Milder, Cooler-Smoking and definitely Better-Tasting in just the way you want a good cigarette to be. And no question about it, there’s a lot more smoking pleasure in Chesterfield’s Right Combination of the world’s best cigarette tobaccos. ,

For steady enjoyment, make your next pack Chesterfields… regardless of price, there is no better cigarette made today.
Chesterfields are on the job with Smokers everywhere
They Satisfy

Particles of Smashed Atoms Traced by Special Camera (Aug, 1939)

Filed under: Science — @ 11:33 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1939
Buy on Ebay

Wow. Particle detectors have gotten a bit bigger in the past 70 years or so. Check out this picture of the new ATLAS detector going online at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Here’s a cool movie about it too.

Particles of Smashed Atoms Traced by Special Camera

Sixty-six separate photographic plates are employed in an atom camera with which Prof. T. R. Wilkins, of the University of Rochester, Rochester, N. Y., hopes to gather new scientific data on the repulsive force within the nucleus of an atom. Bombarded in a cyclotron, or atom smasher, atomic particles enter the circular camera, approach a central target, and are “scattered” through pinholes into one or more of sixty-six slots, each of which has a photographic plate bearing a special emulsion on which the atom particles leave “tracks.”

A CHAMPION GIVES YOU A LESSON WITH THE LARIAT (Jun, 1942)

Filed under: How to — @ 11:10 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1942
Buy on Ebay

How to Handle a Rope

A CHAMPION GIVES YOU A LESSON WITH THE LARIAT

By TOM ROAN

THE use of rope as a catcher goes back to the days when primitive man spread vine loops and crude grass ropes to snare animals for his food. But it took the American cowboy to become an artist with a rope. In long days in the saddle, drifting lazily with a trail herd, or hours alone during the night herding, the rope became his plaything. The comparatively simple routine of roping a horse, calf, or steer was not enough. He worked out new tricks. Step by step he progressed, until today the American cowboy is the wizard of the lariat.

To bring the fundamentals of roping to our readers we found a champion in D. H. Frank Biron, now operating the Cowtown Guest Ranch near Ramsey, N. J. Biron is an all-around “cow hand”—bronco buster, trick rider, wild-steer bulldogger. As a trick-rider and trick-roper champion he has his picture in the cowboy halls of fame from coast to coast.
Read the rest of this entry »

17 queries. 0.726 seconds.