March 27, 2007

Wooden Horses Help Army Cadets Learn How to Play Polo (Oct, 1924)

Filed under: Just Weird, War — @ 12:21 pm
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1924
| Buy on Ebay

Whew! It’s difficult to imagine how the army could defend us with out using Polo. I assume West Point now has some ten-million dollar, full immersion 3D polo simulator to keep our boys at peak polo readiness.

Wooden Horses Help Army Cadets Learn How to Play Polo

“Saddled” and- “bridled” a wooden horse is used by West Point cadets to practice on when they begin learning how to play polo. Tne “animal” is braced securely to the wooden floor in the center of an inclosure surrounded by wire netting. To keep the balls within striking distance at all times, the sides of the cage slope toward the center.

AUTOGIRO HALTS FLEEING ‘BANDIT’ CAR (Jun, 1933)

Filed under: Aviation, Crime and Police — @ 10:45 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1933
| Buy on Ebay

AUTOGIRO HALTS FLEEING ‘BANDIT’ CAR

To test an autogiro in a motor bandit chase, a driverless car recently was sent speeding across a field near Bryn Athyn, Pa. A windmill plane took off in pursuit, carrying Chief of Police Theodore Hollowell. Using a sub-machine gun, as at left, he peppered the car until a direct hit disabled it. Tracer bullets set the car afire. The end of the chase is shown below, with the autogiro about to land.

How Modern Surgeons Conquer Fatal Germs (Jan, 1933)

Filed under: Medical — @ 10:42 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1933
| Buy on Ebay

How Modern Surgeons Conquer Fatal Germs

By Frederic Damrau, M.D.

A SMALL item recently appeared in the newspapers. It reported a new ruling of the American College of Surgeons. In the future, all surgical thread must be tested thirteen days instead of six to insure its freedom from germs. That tiny item was buried in the back pages of the papers. Few people read it. Yet, behind it lies one of the most thrilling chapters in the whole dramatic story of death-fighting by surgery.

Less than seventy years ago, such a simple operation as the amputation of a finger was a life and death matter. In one famous European hospital, eleven out of seventeen amputations resulted in death from blood poison. Germs of infection were unsuspected. Sterilization, as we know it today, was unknown. Antiseptics were undreamed of. Doctors knew little about infection and were helpless before it. It was not until after the Civil War, that antiseptics first appeared and revolutionized the science of surgery.
Read the rest of this entry »

X-Rays of Criminals’ Skulls May Replace Fingerprints (May, 1934)

Filed under: Crime and Police — @ 10:06 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1934
| Buy on Ebay

X-Rays of Criminals’ Skulls May Replace Fingerprints

SCIENTISTS have worked out a sure means of identification of people that may some day replace fingerprinting. Scotland Yard and the U. S. Secret Service have shown interest in the method.

Already a number of instances are known where criminals have mutilated their fingertips.

According to Dr. Thomas A. Poole of Washington, the frontal sinuses of each individual, located just above the nose, are different. X-ray plate shows up these individual peculiarities.

Electricity Frisks Mattress (Apr, 1938)

Filed under: Crime and Police — @ 10:04 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1938
| Buy on Ebay

Electricity Frisks Mattress
IF PRISONERS in the Joliet and Stateville, Ill., penitentiaries should hide pistols, knives or saws in their mattresses, this machine will detect them. It is wheeled around the prison, and every mattress is subjected to its scrutiny once a day.

When Dust Explodes (Mar, 1938)

Filed under: General — @ 10:01 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Mar, 1938
| Buy on Ebay

When Dust Explodes

As destructive as a racketeer’s bomb, combustible dust exacts its toll of business.

by Volta Torrey

HAUNTING America’s castles—those gigantic, concrete structures dotting the shipping terminals—is a public enemy more deadly than all the ghosts of all the medieval citadels known to man.

“Combustible dust” is the name of this insidious foe. It lurks in 28,000 elevators, mills, factories and warehouses, a constant menace to the lives of 1,325,000 Americans and $10,000,000,000 worth of property. It explodes with more destructive violence than a gangster’s bomb, haunts industry more persistently than its many victims’ ghosts, and mocks inventors’ efforts to circumvent, ensnare or confine it.
Read the rest of this entry »

20 queries. 0.798 seconds.