March 31, 2007

Spy Hunters Find Clews in Secret Codes (Jun, 1938)

Filed under: War — @ 8:47 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1938
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Spy Hunters Find Clews in Secret Codes

WORKING swiftly, Federal agents a few-weeks ago spread a tight dragnet over New York City. In a midtown hotel, they nabbed a former U. S. Army sergeant. At a near-by Air Corps base, they detained a foreign-born private in the Army aviation service. And as a large transatlantic liner nosed into her dock, a few days later, two secret operatives emerged from the shadows of the pier to arrest a woman attendant in the ship’s beauty shop.

Next morning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that with the capture of the two men and their attractive confederate, they had smashed a particularly dangerous ring of international spies.

The men were accused of relaying stolen military information to an unnamed foreign power through secret code messages carried abroad by the beauty-shop operator. Rumors hinted that their booty included the secret code of the Army Air Corps.

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March 30, 2007

The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Jan, 1938)

Filed under: Cool, How to, Movies — @ 10:27 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1938
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

A Famous Fairy Tale Is Brought to the Screen as the Pioneer Feature-Length Cartoon in Color

By ANDREW R. BOONE

BEHIND the black walls of an air-conditioned Hollywood studio laboratory, the shutter on a strange eight-deck camera flicked open and shut the other day, exposing the last of 362,919 frames of color film. At that instant was completed the first feature-length motion-picture cartoon ever created, one requiring more than 1,500,000 individual pen-and-ink drawings and water-color paintings. Also, at that moment, depth, a sense of perspective and distance hitherto seen only in “live action” pictures, sprang into being for cartoons.

Both the giant camera and the picture had their beginnings in a decision made four years ago by Walt Disney, famed creator of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, to produce a feature based on a well-known folk tale. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” a movie version of Grimm’s famous fairy tale filmed by the multiplane camera, is the result.

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TIN CANS MADE AT HOME WITH SIMPLE OUTFIT (Oct, 1923)

Filed under: DIY — @ 10:03 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1923
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TIN CANS MADE AT HOME WITH SIMPLE OUTFIT

Among the interesting devices lately-put on the market, is one for making tin cans at home. It consists of three small machines that are easily fastened to any workbench. A piece of tin, previously cut to size and shape, is formed by the first machine into a cylinder which is next put into the “seamer,” where it is held by a glass clamp, while the 1/8-inch lap joint is sweated together with solder and a hand soldering copper. The third machine is used for flanging the ends of the cylinder and in crimping on the circular pieces of tin that form the bottom and top of the can. This equipment is comparatively inexpensive, and was developed to meet an insistent demand from localities where the cost of a can factory is not warranted or to which the transportation charges on empty cans are excessively high.

Vacation Sets Are Compact and Efficient (Oct, 1924)

Filed under: Radio — @ 10:00 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1924
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Wow, the model with a speaker only weighs 21 lbs! That’s practically nothing! I love the picture of the girls rocking out on the beach.

Vacation Sets Are Compact and Efficient

With the growing demand of radio fans for sets that they can take away with them on their vacations, manufacturers have been bending their efforts to the production of neat portable receivers, and two such sets are shown in our illustration.

The smaller one is a one-tube set which weighs only 4-3/4 lb. and is said to have a range of several hundred miles without an aerial, and 1,000 miles or more with an aerial. Batteries, tube, phones, aerial and ground wires are all packed neatly inside the case, which, when closed, resembles a medium-sized camera. The set is easy to operate, and is highly selective.

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Send, CARE Food Packages Abroad… $10. (Oct, 1948)

Filed under: Advertisements, War — @ 9:52 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1948
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It’s MORE FOOD for LESS MONEY

Send, CARE Food Packages Abroad… $10.

INSURED • GUARANTEED • DELIVERY
DUTY FREE • RATION FREE
NON-PROFIT • GOVERNMET APPROVED

CONTENTS:
1 lb. Braised Beef
2-8 oz. tins of Liver Pate
2-8 oz. tins of Corned Beef loaf
2 lb. Shortening
1 lb. Chocolate
2-8 oz tins of Cocoa
2 lb. Whole Milk Powder 8 oz. Egg Powder
1 lb. Apricots
1 lb. Raisins
7 lb. Flour
2 Ib. Sugar
1 Ib. Coffee (For Britain: 1/2 lb. tea) 2-3 oz. Bars of Soap 1/4 oz. Yeost

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What’s New for Your Home (Nov, 1950)

Filed under: House and Home — @ 9:43 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1950
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What’s New for Your Home

SHOWER STALL can be set up wherever there are running water and a drain. It can be connected by garden hose. Attached to the wall with screws, the stall is made splashproof by a wrap-around curtain

HAIR DRIER is an attachment for a new vacuum cleaner. With it, you can dry your hair quickly without heat. The upright is adjustable for height

LIKE SHRIMPS? You can clean them quickly with a daggerlike plastic utensil that separates shell from meat with a single thrust

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Can Huge New Atom Guns Shoot Out Biggest Secrets? (Jan, 1948)

Filed under: Science — @ 9:38 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1948
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More about the Bevatron.

Can Huge New Atom Guns Shoot Out Biggest Secrets?

Gigantic ring-shaped machines, with 10-billion-electron-volt wallop, may transform energy into matter.

By Alden P. Armagnac
Drawings by Ray Pioch

SUPPOSE that a bullet could be fired 150,-000 miles, six times the distance around the world. Suppose that it could be given a shove to speed it up every 150 yards. Suppose, too, that it could be so aimed and guided throughout this long, fast flight that it would hit a target no bigger than a mans hat. Now suppose, furthermore, that this bullet were something that no one had ever seen or ever could see.

The experimental physicists have quit supposing such things can be done. They know they can perform the very feat that you have just been asked to imagine. They are as sure of it as you are that two and two make four. They have the blueprints for guns that will impart such tremendous energy to such particles—and they expect to have at least one of the mammoth machines operating in about three years.

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March 29, 2007

Odd Bicycle Made from Bed (Jan, 1938)

Filed under: Bicycles — @ 10:27 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1938
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That’s actually a pretty cool looking bike.

Odd Bicycle Made from Bed

An English comedian recently entertained crowds at a cycling meet by riding the odd bicycle shown above. The frame of the curious wheel was made from the head of an old iron bed, to which old bicycle parts were added.

CARBON ON DISKS MAKES COPIES OF TYPEWRITING (Dec, 1933)

Filed under: General — @ 10:26 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1933
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This looks really hard to use…

CARBON ON DISKS MAKES COPIES OF TYPEWRITING

Easily fitted to any typewriter, a new device eliminates the use of carbon paper, and its attendant muss and inconvenience, in making copies of letters and business forms. It comprises a series of swinging arms, each one bearing a replaceable disk of special carbon material, mounted on a frame that can be attached to the machine or detached in a few seconds. As many disks are inserted between the sheets as copies are desired.

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Tiny Grand Piano Can Be Played with a Toothpick (Dec, 1940)

Filed under: Useless Tech — @ 10:20 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1940
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Tiny Grand Piano Can Be Played with a Toothpick

FOUR craftsmen took six months to build a two-inch-square working model of a Steinway grand piano, illustrated at right. Played with a toothpick, it has thirty-six ivory keys and is strung like a full-size instrument. With other objects in the photo —miniature enamel furniture, and a dancing girl’s toe bell from Bombay, India, displayed on a finger —it forms part of a private collection of 28,500 curios from fifty-four countries exhibited recently in San Francisco.

World’s Largest Gorilla Preserved by New Art of Sculpturdermy (Jan, 1938)

Filed under: How to, Just Weird, Taxidermy — @ 10:14 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1938
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I love how these people kill an animal and then talk about how they have “brought it to life”. Check out the last page in this pictorial. It is really bizarre.

World’s Largest Gorilla Preserved by New Art of Sculpturdermy

In the Remarkable Series of Pictures Reproduced on these Pages, You See How Sculpture and Taxidermy Were Combined To Re-Create a Rare Animal Specimen

AMAZINGLY lifelike, the mounted body of the world’s largest gorilla, a 500-pound giant, is being put on exhibition at the Academy of Natural Sciences, in Philadelphia, Pa. The enormous brute, together with its mate and baby, were bagged by a recent West African expedition led by George Vanderbilt, New York sportsman and explorer. The delicate work of mounting the gorillas was accomplished at the Jonas Brothers Studios, in Mt. Vernon, N. Y. On these four pages, you find pictured the successive steps, combining sculpture and taxidermy, which “brought to life” the jungle family. As an initial step, the experts assembled the bones of the skeleton by means of wires and steel rods.

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WEAPON FOR MOTORISTS BRANDS THUG WITH DYE (Jan, 1933)

Filed under: Crime and Police, Impractical — @ 10:00 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1933
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WEAPON FOR MOTORISTS BRANDS THUG WITH DYE
A new weapon for the protection of motorists and shopkeepers not only subdues the most vicious thug, but also brands him for identification in case he should escape. When he is struck with the club-shaped weapon, an airtight membrane breaks, releasing a chemical similar to tear gas and also a spray of aniline dye that indelibly stains, his face, hands, and clothing, thus identifying him.

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