Drawing Animated Cartoons for the Movies
MAKING laugh-creating animated cartoons for the movie screen in which grotesque clowns, misshapen animals, and caricatured people with funny faces and funnier habits go through their pen-and-ink performances requires not only skilled drawing by artists who “cast” the parts but careful work by the camera operator as well, to insure each scene its proper sequence on the reel. Unlike the studios where the dramatic plays are acted out, the animated cartoon is made up on an ordinary drawing board amid the familiar implements of the ink craftsman. And at times the creator of the characters is called upon to take
part in the play, performing with a group of the queer figures that seem to be balancing on pencils or bobbing about on top of a desk or table. When such human characters are combined in an animated cartoon with “sketched” characters, the exposures are made in two sections.
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Crosley Musicone
Wire coating represents years research —
WORLD’S FASTEST SELLING SPEAKER
Delicate actuating parts of loud speakers are subject to rust and deterioration. The Crosley patented actuating unit is not affected by the climate. Special impregnable coating covers the wire in the coils. Impervious bakelite instead of cardboard bobbins prevents any retention of moisture. Higher voltage is possible with resultant louder, finer tones.
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All the world trembles in fear at the sight of fierce American weaponry.
Well at least all the babies and midgets do.
BABY CANNON ADDED TO U. S. FIELD ARTILLERY
Latest addition to the artillery of the United States Army is a midget cannon, just large enough to take a .22-cal-iber cartridge. It is built exactly to scale, one inch to 100 inches, and reproduces, in all essential details, the larger guns. It enables artillerymen to practice sighting, elevating, and firing, without the expense of costly, large-caliber ammunition. By calculating the trajectory of the projectiles, the gunners’ work is simplified.
Air Driven Auto Goes Eighty Miles an Hour
Climbing steep hills covered with slippery ice is only one of the feats claimed possible for a curious air-driven automobile recently tested at Detroit, Mich. A four-bladed propeller, driven by a 100-horsepower engine, pulls it along like a tractor airplane. With a wheelbase of 132 inches and a weight of approximately 1,500 pounds, the strange machine is said to reach eighty miles an hour and cover thirty miles on a gallon of fuel. Because the wheels roll free and do not drive the car, it is not necessary for them to grip the ground as on a conventional machine.
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Ultra-Modern Homes Promise Better Health and Comfort
A NEW architectural age is dawning! Proof of this is seen in the strange new types of homes which are springing up throughout the country, presaging the day when we will be living literally in glass houses.
Our faithful old wooden and stone dwellings are primitive and unscientific, not so very far removed, so far as comfort and convenience is concerned, from the caves in which our half-human ancestors dwelt, say exponents of the new housing era. Bouncing health and inexpensive comfort are the goals towards which home designers are striving. No more muggy rooms on torrid summer days; no more dry, over-heated rooms on cold winter days. Plenty of health-giving sunlight shining through glass walls and plenty of terrace space for sun bathing and al fresco dining.
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How to Sell Inventions
by Donald G. Cooley
YOU thought all glass was invisible? Wrong. Go to the foot of the class.
Take a look at a plate glass display window the next time you pass a large department store. Observe street traffic and passers-by reflected in the glass. If the light strikes at the right angle the glass, far from being transparent, becomes a mirror efficient enough to enable you to adjust your tie or powder your nose from your reflected image.
A young Londoner named Gerald Brown took note of these obvious facts, realized that hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of window displays were handicapped, and invented an invisible glass window which gives the shopper the sensation that he can actually reach out and touch the articles on display. In the case of diamond necklaces, this is a beguiling illusion.
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From Block to Blockhead in Two Days’ Time
There’s no such thing as mass production in the dummy-making business. One day your friend Charlie McCarthy was a chunk of wood. Next afternoon he was Charlie McCarthy, ready to talk if someone would think out loud for hint. In two days a block becomes a blockhead, without benefit of factory methods. Every dummy is made to order, chiseled to fit the personality desired by the ventriloquist; only one machine operation takes place, the slitting of the dummy’s chattering chin by a handsaw. The rest is hand work. Above, you see a dummy’s brain: the finger controls which manipulate chin and eyeballs. From top down around the page are the first stages in a dummy’s life a cube of basswood or buckeye; chiseling out the face contours; shaping the mouth; screwing the head together after installing “brains,” and sawing the chin.
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Lamps of Tomorrow
When “the Lights Go on Again” After the War, They Will Be Lit by the Magic of Radio
By ALDEN P. ARMAGNAC
IMAGINE lamps that light by radio power, that stay on when they are turned off, and that kill germs in the home. Will future dwellings contain such scientific wonders? In experimental form, these and other appliances as remarkable have already been demonstrated by Samuel G. Hibben, director of applied lighting at the Westinghouse Lamp Division, Bloomfield, N. J.
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New Inventions Make the Housewife’s Work Easier
So arranged, for height and otherwise, that the door opens at the touch of the knee, this new door latch proves a great boon to housewives, especially when both hands are full.
Combination electric wall clock and switch turns off freezing unit of electric refrigerator and automatically switches it on again in a few hours, eliminating danger of temperature rise to point dangerous to food maintenance.
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New Facts About Skyscrapers
The Empire State Building, tallest in the world, is yielding up new facts to scientists studying the behavior of skyscrapers in lightning and wind storms.
WHAT is the effect of wind storms and lightning bolts on our giant skyscrapers? What is the reaction of tall buildings to gales which have been known to sweep at 100-mile-an-hour velocities at top story levels? These are some of the questions being studied by government scientists in wind tunnel tests being conducted at the Bureau of Standards with models of the Empire State Building, tallest structure in the world.
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