view additional pages

Radio Pen writes letters of fire on far-away screen

By George H. Waltz, Jr.
CATHODE-RAY tube, having a phosphorescent screen, makes it possible to broadcast to a distance messages that can be read as fast as written

SWEEPING across a mysterious screen like an invisible pencil, a beam of electrons recently penned the message of welcome that opened the National Electrical and Radio Exposition in New York City.

Seated before a small black box, Clarence L. Law, president of the New York Electrical Association, wrote his official greeting with a pencil-shaped stylus. Simultaneously, in a far corner of the exposition hall, the words of his message flashed across a screen in glowing script. As though guided by some unseen hand, a weird green spot traced out the luminous letters of fire just as they were written. This was the first public demonstration of the latest wonder of science—the cathode-ray pen.
Read the rest of this entry »

TURTLELIKE CAR BUILT OF OLD PARTS
From spare auto and motorcycle parts, a Chicago mechanic has built a freak vehicle which he calls a “turtle on wheels.” The total cost, he says, was about twenty-five dollars. Made of corrugated metal, the turtle-shell body extends beyond the wheels on each side, reducing wind resistance. On country highways, according to the builder of the strange machine, the little car makes forty-five miles an hour, driven by a motor placed at the rear. A special triangle of bumpers protects it.

I’ve always wondered what the other .56% of Ivory soap was made of. The unnatural part. Cheez Whiz? Plutonium? Vinyl?

IVORY SOAP
THE great American eye-opener is an Ivory Soap bath. A quick massage from head to toe with the mild, bubbling, copious Ivory lather, a plunge into clear, cold water, a brisk rub-down and one enjoys that feeling of exhilarating cleanness which gives mind and body a running start in the day’s work and play.

IVORY SOAP
99-44/100 % PURE

Designed for Science

In many ways the E. R. A. 1103 is the most advanced data-handling system yet devised. By tremendous speed, large storage capacity, and great programming versatility, the system assures ideal handling of the most intricate computations.

Adding to its very high speed is an exceptionally fast memory-reference system which keeps the system’s 17,408 internal storage registers directly accessible. Computing time is reduced still further — as is programming time — by use of a simplified form of two-address logic.
Read the rest of this entry »

Huge Truck FOR LAND OR WATER CARRIES SHIPLOAD OF CARGO

IMAGINE a motor truck so large that it dwarfs the biggest locomotive in the world —a veritable ship of the land, rolling on pneumatic tires as high as a bungalow. Fit this juggernaut, in your mind’s eye, with a boat-like hull, a Diesel motor, and an electric drive; add a propeller and rudder so that it can navigate in the water as well as on dry ground; fill its capacious hold with hundreds of tons of cargo, and send it roaring across the continent or through a wilderness to its destination. Then you will have a mental image of the 1,500-ton, amphibian super-truck that Eric R. Lyon, associate professor of physics at the Kansas State Agricultural College, predicts will be the freight-carrying vehicle of the future. To prove it feasible, he himself has worked out the engineering design of such a machine, which he calls the “navitruck,” and which our artist illustrates here and on the cover of this issue.
Read the rest of this entry »

See! Little British dolls attach French bears all the time! That’s why you need Ford Instruments.
Duh.

about weapons systems
…AND FORD INSTRUMENT COMPANY

Aiming a gun or a rocket from one fast moving plane and hitting another supersonic craft is beyond human capabilities. The elements of speed, ballistics, range, direction etc., must be taken into account and the aiming point computed in milliseconds.

From its earliest days, Ford Instrument Company has been specializing in weapons systems — ranging from directors and drives for heavy naval guns to rocket launching computers, AA gunfire computers and aircraft weapons systems. Complete familiarity with the military requirements of accuracy, dependability and combat-ruggedness makes Ford-designed and Ford-built instruments among the finest our armed services have at their command.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tanklike Tractor Carries Welder to Repair Job
Maneuverable as a war tank, an endless-tread tractor, just developed by Westinghouse engineers, carries a built-in welding outfit right to the point where it is needed for railway repairs. The fifteen-foot machine easily ambles across rails, runs along side slopes as steep as forty-five degrees without overturning, and climbs a ramp onto a flat car when its work of repairing battered rail ends and worn crossings is done. Its gasoline motor drives dynamos that supply current for the welding electrodes.

view additional pages

Comic-Strip “Talkies”

GIVE CHILDREN ENDLESS FUN AT HOME

By Morton Bartlett

UNIQUE comic-strip “talkies” can be given in your own home at trifling cost. The pictures are thrown upon a screen by means of a simply made magic lantern, and the children speak the lines of the various characters through a home microphone connected to an ordinary radio receiving set.

The materials are listed on page 85. The first step is to make the lantern. Its width is equal to the focal length of the magnifying glass which will be the lens. Determine this by tacking a piece of paper against the wall 10 ft. from a lighted lamp. Hold a ruler perpendicular to the paper, and run the lens, perpendicular to the ruler, along the inch marks. At some point a clear image of the lamp will be seen on the paper. The focal length may now be read from the ruler. This distance is the dimension YM in the drawings. Having found this basic dimension, cut ten pieces of wood as specified in the list.
Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like the Gillette Fusion isn’t really that new after all. Plus, this razor never, ever needs to be sharpened! The wouldn’t lie to me, right?

FIVE-BLADED RAZOR CUTS SHAVING TIME
Five blades, instead of one, are used in a new type of safety razor introduced by a French inventor. One stroke of the razor across the face is said to remove every trace of hair in its path. The speed of the resulting shave is enhanced by the fact that the razor need not be taken apart after shaving. It is merely rinsed under the faucet and screwed, head down, in its special case. The blades require no sharpening, according to the maker, and will give good service indefinitely.

view additional pages

1933 Marvels of the Auto Speed World

Great things are stirring in the speed world! Streamlined race cars, modified stock car speed creations, incredibly fast custom-built racers for assaults against time, are all parts of the changing picture of the most heart-gripping, thrilling sport in the world today—auto racing!

by ROBERT M. ROOF and LEW HOLT

WITH a new automobile speed record of 273 miles an hour recently established by Malcolm Campbell, the internationally famous British speed king, and with several new speed creations along novel lines being groomed for entry in the forthcoming Memorial Day racing classic at Indianapolis, 1933 seems destined to be written down large in speedway history.
Read the rest of this entry »

Grasshopper Death Machine Fights Farmers’ Insect Menace

FOR seven years Joseph Dillman, wheat farmer of Strasberg, N. D., stood by helplessly and watched huge swarms of grasshoppers descend upon his grain fields and lay waste to his crops. Then this practical-minded person set about to devise a death machine which would put an end to the destructive insect plagues.

He built a three-wheeled device, screened on all sides except the front. Inside of the box he mounted a propeller, which not only drives the machine forward but sucks the grasshoppers into the trap. The force of the air is claimed to be so great that it will pulverize the bugs, sifting them through the 3/4-inch mesh.

Device Dries Wash In 3 Minutes

AN ELECTRICAL clothes drier using centrifugal force is capable of rough drying the family laundry in three minutes. The dryer plugs in on any light circuit, and is small enough to fit in any out-of-the-way corner.

The clothes to be dried are suspended by a net inside a rotating cylinder. As the rotation casts the water off, air currents are drawn through the clothes to hasten the process through evaporation. A waste pipe draws off the excess water. The dryer is much easier on clothes than wringing, as well as being
much faster. It was developed in Germany.