June 29, 2007

AMAZING Electrical Tests SHOW What Happens When You Think (May, 1936)

Filed under: Medical — @ 12:03 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1936
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AMAZING Electrical Tests SHOW What Happens When You Think

By Edwin Teale

PIONEERS in an amazing new field of research recently traveled to the Loomis Laboratories, Tuxedo Park, N. Y., for the first meeting of its kind in America. The sixty scientists who compared notes are “brain-wave” experts, students of minute, telltale pulsations of electric current that come from the billions of cells in the human brain.

With supersensitive electricity-recording instruments, able to register less than a millionth of a volt of current, they are discovering curious facts about our brains and how they work. Already, these scientists have achieved such exciting feats as “photographing a dream,” watching the electrical pattern made by brain cells in solving a mathematical problem, and witnessing an “electrical storm,” piling up in the brain of an epileptic. By discovering rhythms in the varying strengths of these tiny currents, they are working toward a radically new technique in detecting and diagnosing various ailments of the brain.

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June 28, 2007

Metal Diving Suit Developed (Aug, 1938)

Filed under: Origins — @ 8:46 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1938
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Isn’t this from Innerspace?

Metal Diving Suit Developed
FITTED with ball bearing knuckle joints, which provide mobility for the wearer, a new all-metal diving suit is said to enable a diver to descend to a depth of 1,200 feet. The suit eliminates the need for air lines, having a specially designed built-in air tank. Hand-operated grappling irons are a feature of the suit.

Hidden Motors Give Life to Prehistoric Monsters (Jun, 1933)

Filed under: Robots — @ 1:27 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1933
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Hidden Motors Give Life to Prehistoric Monsters

Saber-toothed tigers, giant ground sloths, and dinosaurs, inhabitants of the earth millions of years ago, have been reproduced mechanically by the New York firm of Mess-more and Damon for exhibition this summer at the Chicago World’s Fair. Within a huge hemisphere of metal, they will give visitors a glimpse of the world as it was long before man appeared. (P.S.M., June ‘32, p. 16.) Controlled electrically, the mechanical monsters swing their heads, roll their eyes, breathe, snarl, roar, and grunt in realistic fashion. A complicated mass of cogs, wheels, bellows, and silent motors produces the life-like sounds and motions. Beneath the canvas and papier-mache hide of each animal there are from one to sixteen electric motors. An operator controls the actions of the exhibits. At the World’s Fair, they will be seen in an environment of prehistoric vegetation.

Choose Your Flavor in Lipstick (May, 1939)

Filed under: Personal Appearance — @ 1:26 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1939
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Choose Your Flavor in Lipstick
Lipstick, like gum and soda pop, can now be obtained in a choice of flavors to suit the taste of the user. The stick-form lip rouge is made in a wide variety of fruit and beverage flavors, including peach, apricot, rye, champagne, banana, and pineapple. The three young women at the right are making a taste test of orange, wine, and pineapple lipstick.

Amazing Skill with Unseen Strings gives life to Most Famous Puppets (Jun, 1933)

Filed under: Sign of the Times, Toys and Games — @ 1:25 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1933
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Amazing Skill with Unseen Strings gives life to Most Famous Puppets

Thirty Operators Working Eighteen Miles of Wire and String Are Needed to Give a Performance with the 800 Animated Actors that Are Cleverly Molded of Wood

By Robert E. Martin

EIGHT hundred performers, moved by miles of wires and string, are now touring the country presenting the most elaborate puppet show of history. Known as the Teatro dei Piccoli, “The Theater of the Little Ones,” the organization has spent eighteen years in Italy building up its cast. Tap dancers and opera singers, witches and clowns, , bull fighters and pianists, acrobats and jubilee singers, and even a Mickey Mouse give animated performances, amazingly lifelike.

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Cubic Jig-Saw Puzzle (May, 1933)

Filed under: DIY, Toys and Games — @ 1:24 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1933
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Novel Jig-Saw Puzzle MADE IN FORM OF CUBE

By George S. Greene

THIS new and unusual type of jigsaw puzzle forms a cube when assembled and has a different picture on each of its six sides. When the parts are spread out and well shuffled on the table, they resemble those of an ordinary picture puzzle, except that some of the pieces have no indication of pictures on them at all to aid in the assembly.

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CAMOUFLAGE CONCEALS UNSIGHTLY WATER TANK (Jun, 1936)

Filed under: Impractical — @ 1:24 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1936
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Wow, if I hadn’t read the headline I would never have known it was there!

CAMOUFLAGE CONCEALS UNSIGHTLY WATER TANK
Members of the famous art colony at Provincetown on Cape Cod, Mass., recently redecorated a local water standpipe so that it no longer constituted an eyesore to the community. Following a carefully planned camouflage scheme, the black water tank was repainted a light blue and then skillfully covered with a patchwork of other colors.

Jobs from Research (Feb, 1941)

Filed under: General — @ 1:23 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Feb, 1941
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I had no idea the term “test-tube baby” was in use in the 40’s. I thought it was invented with the modern usage, a baby conceived using in vitro-fertilization.

Be sure to check out the nifty turbine skirt on the third page.

Jobs from Research
By Everett S. Lee
Engineer-in-Charge, General Engineering Laboratory, General Electric Company

FIFTEEN million Americans are at work today in jobs that did not exist in 1900. These jobs exist today because, through research, industry has been able to develop hundreds of new products and to make them so inexpensive that people have been able to buy them, thus creating a demand for more of the products.

The recent report of over 1,700 distinct research groups in this country, affording employment to some 50,000 workers, with an annual expenditure of from 150 to 200 million dollars, with an existence dating back some forty years indicates the importance of research.

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June 27, 2007

Rose Glasses on Chickens Reduce Fighting (Dec, 1938)

Filed under: Cool, Other Animals — @ 12:13 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1938
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Rose Glasses on Chickens Reduce Fighting
There was murder going on in a New Jersey penitentiary yard. The prison chickens were killing each other. One after another, the young White Leghorns would fight among themselves to the death. Nothing was effective in preventing the quarrels until the warden tried putting rose-colored glasses on the birds. That stopped the fighting instantly. The Leghorns, the only fighters in the poultry lot, now are all equipped with aluminum-framed spectacles with center pieces extending in front of the bill.

Skeleton Made of Auto Parts Warns Motorist to Oil Up (Nov, 1938)

Filed under: Automotive, Cool — @ 12:13 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1938
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This looks like a giant prototype for the game Operation.

Skeleton Made of Auto Parts Warns Motorist to Oil Up

In front of a Green Bay, Wis., garage and service station is a startling display— a skeleton made of worn automobile parts. A mechanic, Bill Graunke, conceived the idea and collected old parts that could be assembled in the form of a human skeleton which would stand as a warning to motorists to take care of their cars by proper lubrication.

Hospital for Greenbacks (Aug, 1949)

Filed under: Cool — @ 12:12 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1949
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Hospital for Greenbacks

Millions of mutilated dollars are pieced together by money-menders at the Treasury’s Currency Redemption Division. By James Nevin Miller

TREASURY Department officials were puzzled recently when a huge, evil-smelling package arrived in the mail. In it was the ash box of a wood-burning cook stove. A letter which followed explained the whole thing, though.

It was from an old lady in Baltimore who told how her drunkard son stole the entire family fortune and hid it inside her stove. When she cooked supper that night, the currency was scorched almost beyond recognition. Hysterical with grief, she was sending the charred remnants to Washington. Could they help her?

The box was forwarded to the Currency Redemption Division and three weeks later, thanks to a unique little army of Treasury Department workers, every one of the banknotes was identified. The woman received full value for her lifetime savings.

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Opening, Closing Hand Operates Tropical “Electric” Fan (Jul, 1932)

Filed under: General — @ 12:12 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1932
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Can someone please explain to me how this is in anyway can be described as “electric”, even with the quotes.

Opening, Closing Hand Operates Tropical “Electric” Fan
INHABITANTS of the tropical countries where electricity is an expensive luxury have developed the little hand-propelled fan which Tallulah Bankhead, movie actress, is seen operating in the photo on the right.

The device consists of a four-bladed propeller fastened on a handle so it can be spun around. A piece of wire is bent, as shown, and attached to handle. Whirling motion of the propeller is produced when wire is pushed back and forth along blades. This action is obtained by flexing and contracting the hand.

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