TINY MICROPHONES HELP SINGER MAKE RECORD
Miniature microphones, placed on a singer’s chest and forehead, as shown above, supplement standard equipment in making electrical transcriptions at a Los Angeles, Calif., studio. By this method, the originator says, it is possible to make a record that sounds even better than the voice of the performer in person, since the small microphones pick up tones undis-torted by faulty nose or mouth technique.

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“Electric Eye” Reads Books

TWO machines employing the photoelectric cell, or “electric eye,” in a novel manner, are illustrated on this page. Each “reads” manuscript or printed text and, without human intervention, converts it into a form more available for use.

At the left, we have the “Semagraph,” an automatic typesetter. Copy prepared on a special typewriter is placed on the table of this machine, which thereupon operates a standard typesetting machine to produce “slugs” from which a newspaper or book may be printed. Read the rest of this entry »

This is so meta.

Vacuum Cleaners Vacuum-Cleaned
Because housewives generally hate to clean out vacuum-cleaner dust bags thoroughly, a Minneapolis, Minn., electrical shop does the job for them with a homemade machine. The bags are cleaned by a revolving brush set in an opening in a horizontal pipe, through which loosened dust is drawn off by a suction pump.

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New Appliances Lighten Home Chores

BOILED EGGS without shells are produced by this novel device. Raw eggs are broken into four metal cups, which are closed and lowered into a water container that is heated electrically

COCKEYED GLASSES. It’s lots of fun to serve drinks at parties in these glasses with crazy stems

TEAPOT DRIP CATCHER. The sponge-rubber bib below keeps tea from dripping and holds the lid on
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“Balloon Cops” May Clear Traffic Jams

THE traffic tangles caused by major football games has become a problem of great importance to those cities that have the larger stadiums within their bounds. For hours before and after the games the police are compelled to work at top speed to restore the normal movement of traffic, being called upon at times to handle some fifty thousand additional cars.

At the various traffic conventions held about the country this problem has received much attention but it was only recently that a plausible solution to the matter was offered.
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Static on Moving Object Forms Magnetic Field
To the shaft of an electric motor, attach a disk of hard rubber, or an old phonograph record. Electrify the disk by rubbing it with a woolen cloth. Now start the motor. Place a small magnetic compass near the edge of the whirling disk, and the needle will be deflected, showing that it has been brought into a magnetic field. Such a field is set up not only by electric current passing through a wire, a familiar phenomenon, but also by charges of static electricity on a moving object. The faster the disk spins, the greater will be the magnetic effect. This curious phenomenon was first noted by Prof. Henry A. Rowland, noted American physicist.

Apparently in 1978 time didn’t consider gypped to be an ethnic slur.

Checking Out Tomorrow

Americans spend more than $153 billion a year on food and other purchases in supermarkets and grocery stores, and have an abiding suspicion that they are getting gypped at the check-out counter. Their mistrust should be considerably allayed, and the waiting lines shortened, by the ever growing number of computers that are taking over the tally.

At a computer-equipped check-out line, all the clerk has to do is pass each item over a Cyclopean eye linked to a cash register and a scale. In a twinkling, the eye “reads” the striped UPC (Universal Product Code) symbol, by which the computer system identities the product, brand name and other pertinent information about the item. (The store manager can program into the computer price changes for specials or daily fluctuations.) Then the computer prints out both the name of the item (say, one 4-oz. can of sliced French beans) and the price on the receipt list.
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Three Magic Metals

Producing Cold With Electricity and A “Quicksilver Heart” That Beats Are Only Two of the Amazing Tests You Can Perform Easily With Simple Substances

By Raymond B. Wailes

YOU are accustomed to seeing an electric element in a toaster or radiant heater grow red-hot when current passes through it—but did you know that when electricity flows through joints of certain metals, it produces a cooling effect? Have you ever made a drop of murcury behave as if it were alive or prepared a pair of magical alloys that are solids when separate, and a liquid when mixed?

These are a few of the fascinating experiments that you can perform with metals, using three in particular that you may not have employed before in your home laboratory—mercury, antimony, and bismuth.
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