This is pretty cool. Of course now you can do this much better and in real-time with even the cheapest PC.

Neon Lamp Traces Sound Wave’s Picture
That’s a sound wave you see in the picture above. Here demonstrating how an acoustic lens focuses sound from a horn, the wave was made visible with the device at left—an aluminum rod with a microphone and a neon lamp at the end. A small motor swings the rod in a wide arc, scanning the area. The microphone picks up the sound and turns it into electric current to feed the lamp. Wherever the sound is strongest, the light is brightest, and the wave is traced out. A complete sound photo, such as this from Bell Labs, takes 10 minutes exposure.

Child-Size Bulldozer Looks and Works Like the Real Thing

Scaled down to child-size, a pedal-operated bulldozer is a realistic model of a Caterpillar diesel tractor, complete with everything except the engine noise. The endless track rolls over four rubber-tired wheels and the tractor is steered by clutch levers just like the real thing. When one of the steering levers is pulled, the track on that side is raised, allowing the other track to swing the toy around. Another lever raises and lowers the blade. Energetic youngsters will use it to clear snow off sidewalks this winter.

This is one idea that certainly stuck around.

Prismatic Auto Mirror Cuts Headlight Glare
Glare in the rear-view mirror from the headlights of the car behind is cleverly avoided by the mirror above. Front and back surfaces of the mirror are not quite parallel; in section, the mirror is slightly wedge-shaped. For daytime, bright-reflection use, the mirror is set so that you See the bright image that bounces off its silvered rear surface in the conventional way. Read the rest of this entry »

Gas Captures Gangsters Without Bloodshed

GAS bids fair to replace bullets in bringing criminals to justice.

Experiments conducted recently by the French Gas Brigade proved that an injection of gas into an underworld hideout renders the victims helpless in short order and, more important, avoids loss of life.
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Cowboys on Wheels

BOW-AND-ARROW HUNTERS RIDE DESERT JALLOPIES

By ANDREW R. BOONE

BOUNCING over bowlders, zooming up steep embankments, plunging down gullies, two mechanical mountain goats, created from automobile odds and ends, carry Walt and Ken Wilhelm, of Yermo, Calif., on daring expeditions into the Mohave Desert. Aboard these remarkable vehicles, called Lena and Prowler, the two brothers chase jack rabbits, rope coyotes, hunt game with bows and arrows, explore remote corners of the desert, search for fossils, trail outlaws, and rescue lost travelers.
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I wonder when people started using the term suntan instead of sunburn. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was invented by Coppertone to distinguish between a “good” sunburn and a “bad” sunburn.

Sunburn Is “Made to Order” for Customers by Portrait Photographer

IF A person desires to appear in a portrait with a healthy glow of tan, Preston Duncan, Hollywood photographer, satisfies that desire by using a special lamp that sheds a golden ray of sunburn over the subject when the picture is being taken. The ray is produced so that it registers perfectly on the negative. The color is contained in the glass plate through which the light is shown.
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Music for Bossie

Do cows like music well enough to give more milk? Miss Nora Johnston of Thorpe, Surrey, in England, believes they do, and has set out to prove her theory. She travels about a large farm with a portable carillon of her own design, playing a musical accompaniment while the cows are milked. She says figures accumulated over a period of time prove that the milk yield has increased since she started her program of music for Bossie.

I don’t know if I’d really want to be swimming a foot from an outboard motor. Perhaps I’m just a coward.

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Three WATER WHEELS For The Beach

For new thrills at the beach this summer, build one or all of these novel fun wheels— the head-over-heels Aqua-roller, the Outboard Swim Spinner, or the Barrel-boat that rolls over sea or sand.

FROM far-off Holland comes the design for the first of MM’s water wheels—an Aqua-roller originated by P. C. van Petegem. A wheel of tubular floats mounted on a frame of two steel hoops rolls along the water as the bather shifts his weight from side to side inside the wheel.
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Robot Florist Dispenses Street Bouquets After Shops Close

AN AUTOMATIC flower-vending machine is the latest aid for the husband who chronically forgets the occasion of his wife’s birthday or the wedding anniversary until after the flower shops have closed.

Located at strategic points in Berlin’s shopping center, the newly-introduced vendor carries a plentiful supply of fresh cut flowers which, like gum and candy, are dispensed by depositing a coin in the slot. As a further convenience, the bouquets are wrapped when delivered.

Seems like this would be easy to defeat by simply saying to the teller: “If you press that button I’m going to shoot you in the head.”

REMOTE CONTROL LOCKS CASH DRAWER

Designed to be proof against holdups, a remote-control cash drawer has been introduced. When a bandit appears, the storekeeper has only to press a concealed foot button to lock the drawer electrically. It cannot then be opened until a key is brought from a distant place and used in combination with the regular key. The drawer is made of heavy steel plate and is securely bolted to the counter so that it cannot be pried open or carried away. Another innovation is a money locker equipped with a delayed timing control that opens it just fifteen minutes after the combination is set. There is no way to hasten the action. Signs conspicuously posted warn bandits a hold-up would be useless.

I love the label that simply says “Brains”. At first I thought that was an ingredient.

Push-Button CONCRETE MIXER

THREE men can prepare over a thousand yards of concrete a day in a towering push-button mixer near Phoenix, Ariz. The big tower has six bins which are filled by conveyor belt from stock piles of material. Orders for concrete are sent to the control room by pneumatic tube. Depending upon the order, the operator selects a disk and places it on a turntable. As the disk revolves, buttons make electrical contact to release material into the mixers. Three minutes after a driver sends up his order, the concrete is dumped into his truck.

Adjusted for inflation an automatic washing machine in 1947 cost $2000-$3000.

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How to Choose a Washer

IF YOU wanted to buy a washing machine last year, a clerk put your name on a waiting list; if you were among the 2,023,981 lucky ones, you took the first make he offered you. This year, you may find yourself in a quandary, forced to choose which of several new washers you want.

Like the 1947 cars, most of the washers resemble the prewar models. Several makes with a variety of features are available, but there are still only two “major types: the conventional, or nonautomatic washer, with either a wringer or spinner for drying clothes, and the automatic washer that washes, rinses and damp-dries clothes at the flick of a switch.
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