The chick wearing the gloves is going to give me nightmares.

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Handy Helps for the Homemaker

“HOT SEAT” FOR HOT DOGS
Frankfurters are electrocuted in the novel cooker illustrated above. Current flowing between forks cooks them

ELECTRIC BEAUTY CABINET
Electric appliances included in this boudoir cabinet are a hair curler, water heater, iron, drier, vibrator, clipper, razor, and radio

DEEP-FAT FRYING is made safe and pleasant by the pan below. It has an inner metal ring to prevent fat from boiling over, and a thermometer (left) that fits its edge
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Well they certainly look like they’re having the time of their lives.

It’s Fun to Play This Indoor Football Game

Played by two to six persons, this game provides endless fun for members of your family or your party guests. The object of the game is to drive a table-tennis ball into one of the two goal baskets at opposite ends of the box. This is done by hitting the ball with wooden paddles attached to dowel rods, which are turned and pushed back and forth by hand. There are eight rods; the two center ones have four paddles each, the next two toward each goal have three each, while the next pair have two paddles each and the last two next to the goals have only one paddle each. Read the rest of this entry »

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Back-Yard Builders Turn Out Weird and Wonderful Dreamboats

DIG those beasts! And those home-brewed wagons with chromed jet-assist, or with magenta upholstery as tender as a baby. In thousands of U.S. garages, men who want something different are hammering metal into new shapes. The inspiration and skill vary enormously, but every car mirrors somebody’s impulse to create something new.
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Wow, diving with a ferocious dolphin. That’s pretty daring!

Daring Diver Feeds Diving Dolphins

An underwater picnic at which a diver hand-feeds a school of porpoises while at the bottom of an outdoor tank, is a novel stunt performed daily at an aquarium in Marineland, Fla. Dressed in full underwater regalia, the diver enters the tank carrying a wire basket full of small fish. Descending to the bottom, he sits on the tank floor twelve feet below the surface and feeds the aquarium’s dolphins by hand. The unusual photograph above was snapped through a window in the side of the tank as one of the graceful creatures paused only long enough to snatch up a mouthful.

Smoke Gets in His Eye — and the Pipe, Too

Smoking a pipe with his eye is the odd accomplishment of Alfred Langevin, of Canada. Shown below with a pipe stem held close to his right eye by a nose clamp, Langevin sucks smoke through an opening at the corner of his eye, which, doctors believe, is caused by an enlarged opening in the duct that normally carries away tears. By closing his mouth and holding his nose, Langevin can inhale and exhale smoke through his eye with no ill effects.

Elaborate Mechanism Works and Works to Do Nothing Well

We all know someone who works harder doing nothing than most of us work doing something, but we can’t possibly know anything that works harder at nothing than a machine built by a California hobbyist. The machine has over 700 working parts that rotate, twist, oscillate and reciprocate—all for no purpose except movement. It is the brainstorm of Lawrence Wahlstrom, a landscape artist, who calls it a flying-saucer detector. The machine not only accomplishes nothing, it is never completed—it has been under construction seven years. Each year Wahlstrom adds 50 or more moving parts to it so it can do nothing more efficiently!

This is how we end up with killer bees.

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How Science Made a Better Bee

Amazing new discoveries bring improvement to nature’s masterpiece, enabling the busy little insect to do a better job for war.

By ALFRED H. SINKS

Photographs by WILLIAM MORRIS and ROBERT F SMITH

THE tiny honeybee—far more important to both war industry and our food supply than most people realize—is getting a lot of attention nowadays. Though nature has produced few animals as remarkable as these industrious little insects, entomologists and geneticists have found the means to improve on its handiwork. They are actually producing bees that work harder and so produce more honey—bees that are more industrious and energetic, healthier, and better able to protect their bee cities against natural enemies. Truly amazing are some of the results of this partnership of science and nature, and its future achievements may be greater still.
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Tiny Car Does Big Job

ONE answer to a shopper’s prayers is this miniature, two-person convertible, called the Towne Shopper, soon to be produced by the newly formed International Motor Car Co. Designed for economy, it is priced at $595 f.o.b. San Diego and promises 45 to 50 miles to the gallon at speeds up to 50 m.p.h.

Made largely of aluminum, the flashy little coupe weighs only 600 pounds, is less than 10 feet long, providing easy maneuverability. The compact two-cylinder Onan engine, squeezed under the stub hood in the rear, leaves the larger space in the front for storing groceries or baggage. White wall tires, a radio with aerial, and a folding top add the luxury touch.

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The coming record revolution: digital discs

A laser “reads” the compact, no-wear disc to deliver superior hi-fi

By LEONARD FELDMAN

Tokyo, Japan

A Sony technician slipped a small disc into the slot of a player no larger than a portable cassette machine. I noticed the record’s shiny surface broke light into rainbow colors. Seconds later I was bathed in rich, wide-ranging stereo music that sounded better than anything I’d ever heard from discs or tapes.

Sony Corporation’s Dr. Toshi Doi, a leading digital-systems designer, explained that this was a true digital record: Information stored as number codes on its surface was being converted into music. Instead of grooves, this disc had an optical track “read” by a laser beam. I heard absolutely no surface noise or distortion and no pitch fluctuations from the spinning disc. Dynamic range, or the difference between the loudest and softest musical sounds, was awesome.
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Tank Tows Army Platoon on Skis

Sliding over the snow on skis, a platoon of soldiers was towed by a tank in recent winter maneuvers of the Russian army. With their rifles slung on straps over their shoulders, the infantrymen grasped ropes trailing from the rear of the tank, as shown in the photograph. The maneuver is expected to speed up troop movements.

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Mystery Ray Is Revealed By Photos

By WILLIAM D. HARKINS University of Chicago

RAYS of a new type, called zeta rays, were discovered recently by Dr. R. W. Ryan and the writer. These rays have attracted much attention, presumably because they were first found by photographing them, or, more strictly speaking, by photographing the tracks they produce when they shoot through air. They are not light rays, but are electrons, or charges of negative electricity, thrown out by an atom.

All owners of radio outfits are familiar with the use of electrons shot out from a hot wire, since it is the stream of these particles of matter which is made to do various “stunts” in the different types of vacuum tubes. Such a stream of electrons is also shot out from the hot wire in every electric lamp, and may be collected on a metal plate if it is inserted inside the bulb.
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The Twelve Finest American Classics – A Portfolio of Ageless Cars

By Arthur R. Railton, Automotive Editor
Color photographs by Don Honick

IN THE EIGHT PAGES which follow, Popular Mechanics salutes the Classics among the Classics—12 American automobiles chosen as the finest produced in that golden era defined as the period from 1925 to 1942.

Ranked in the order of their selection, the Classics are portrayed here in true color by Popular Mechanics photographs and sketches. The roll of honor:
1. Duesenberg 1931-J Roadster-Murphy.
2. Duesenberg 1931-J Victoria-Rollston.
3. Lincoln 1932-KB Phaeton Dual Cowl.
4. Packard 1929 Sport Phaeton.
5. Pierce Arrow 1933 Silver Arrow V12. Read the rest of this entry »