New Slant on Bicycles

EVERY man his own streamline is the idea of Fred Strecker, English rider, in the bicycle design at right.

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IDEAS AT WORK
A MONTHLY PICTURE REPORT ABOUT SCIENCE IN INDUSTRY

New turbines help meet soaring demand for power In New York, an electric power expert looked at a wall chart. A jagged line, crawling across a graph, showed a soaring sweep upwards. It was like the fever chart of a patient with double lobar pneumonia. “You see that line?” the power man asked. “That is the amount of electric power America is using today. If it goes up at the same rate in 1949 we are going to have to add more paper to the top of the chart.” Read the rest of this entry »

MAGIC NUMBERS: For years, in the brooding manor house overlooking a little Scotch village, John Napier worked in mysterious seclusion. Some of his 16th century neighbors even suggested that he was dabbling in witchcraft. But there was no black magic about the ivory calculating “Bones” he invented to help merchants figure their accounts. Read the rest of this entry »

I just thought this was so ridiculous I had to post it.

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THE HOMOSEXUAL WHO WRECKED AN EMPIRE

His queer pleasures drove him to treason—and started a world war!

By STEFAN v. S. RUBELCU

THE APARTMENT was a decorator’s dream, luxuriously tricked out with all kinds of feminine frills and heavy with the sickening sweet odors of perfume and incense. Almost daintily, the figure in the lush room touched a manicured finger to a baroque wooden floral decoration on the pearl-inlaid wall panelling. Noiselessly, a door slid open, disclosing a capacious closet crammed with obviously expensive female apparel.
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KILL RATS WITHOUT POISON

This proven exterminator won’t kill Livestock, Pets or Poultry—Gets Rats Every Time. K-R-O is made from Red Squill, a raticide recommended by U.S. Dept. Agr. (Bul. 1533). Ready-Mixed, 35c and $1.00; Powder, 75c. All Druggists. Results or Your Money Back. K-R-O Company, Springfield, O.

K-R-O KILLS RATS ONLY

The exact same quote about being assigned a phone number at birth is used in the Mechanix Illustrated article Your Telephone Of Tomorrow (Sep, 1956). If you haven’t read that one, be sure to check it out, it pretty much predicts modern cell phones.

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Voices Across the Land

Night and day I keep singing—humming and thrumming:

It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and want,

Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech,

In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the shine drying,

A copper wire.

—Carl Sandburg

Under a Telephone Pole Screwdriver and splicing knife hanging from his belt, the telephone man keeps history’s happiest invention humming from coast to coast. He watches over 265 million miles of wire, waging war against storm, disaster and pesky animals that chew up or nest in his equipment. He hoists his lines over mountains with helicopters, shoots them across canyons with bow and arrow, strings them through dark conduits far beneath great cities. To every home and office, he gains ready entrance, exuding courtesy and helpfulness.
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If the bombing had been pushed back a year, do you think the war would have lasted? If not, then you could make the case that Japan got nuked because this guy was trying to build a uranium light bulb.

Also, I find the exclamation point at the end of this sentence strangely disturbing:

(Little did they realize that their know-how would one day give America a head start in the race towards history’s grimmest goal!)

He advanced the bombing of Hiroshima by at least a year!

This is a “now it can be told” story of wartime research.

It started back in post World War I days when Dr. Harvey C. Rentschler, Director of Research for the Westinghouse Lamp Division, and Dr. J. W. Marden, an associate, decided to determine the melting point of a rare mineral . . . uranium.
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This seems appropriate. I’ll be in San Diego (well, actually Carlsbad) from tomorrow morning until Sunday. So I probably won’t have any new posts until next week

a VAST wonderland

IF you start vacation planning now and send for the new All-Year Club book, your eagerness to be right out here in Southern California will admit of delay no later than early this summer. This book of 73 large photographs, beautifully done in rotogravure, so faithfully tells the Southern California story that only a vacation here will answer the longing.
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HELPING HIM TO MAINTAIN THE NATIONS HIGHWAYS OF SPEECH

Telephone men need good equipment to do a good job and to give you good service. Western Electric apparatus is right in design and right in quality—made specially to fit the needs of the Bell Telephone System.

Quick, nation-wide delivery by Western Electric, dramatic in time of fire, flood or other emergency, is no less important in meeting the day-by-day requirements of Bell System service.

BELL SYSTEM SERVICE IS BASED ON Western Electric QUALITY

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Statues from Snapshots

By WALTER E. BURTON

YOUR favorite snapshots can be made into attractive statuettes for your desk or piano, top by following the methods outlined in this article. All that is needed is a piece of cardboard, a saw, and glue.

SOMETHING different in photographic decorations can be easily produced by converting pictures of friends, buildings, animals or other objects into attractive “photo-figures.” Read the rest of this entry »

Back Seat Control Shows Beginners How to Drive
COPYING the dual control idea from army training planes, a back seat drive with steering wheel, clutch and brake pedals has been built into an automobile by an enterprising dealer to help beginners learn the fine points of driving their new cars. The photograph shows how the back seat controls are built into the car. This system of instruction has proven unusually efficient.

Makin’ friends Winnebago style.

When it’s time for a little refreshment, a Winnebago motor home can be there waiting. With a spacious lounge, a well-stocked galley and plenty of cool comfort—the kind that makes good company reluctant to leave.

Head for the beach this summer in America’s favorite welcome wagon: A Winnebago motor home Start making friends Winnebago style.

We give you more.

Winnebago