Color Simplifies Chart

If you think the colorful maze of wavy lines on this seven-element oscillogram is complex, just try to unscramble the same lines on the one without color (inset). Westinghouse oscillographers, having the same trouble, collaborated with Ansco film experts on a method of photographing the wavy-line readings in color. By placing a filter of a different color in the path of each light beam before it strikes the moving film, as many as seven readings can be produced in separate colors at the same time. Then, to record the colored lines, color film is substituted for the usual black-and-white.

TROUBLE LAMP FITS FINGER
EVERYONE who has had to repair a piece of machinery at night will appreciate the advantages of a new trouble light recently invented. The electric lamp is so small that it can be clamped to a finger of one hand, thus enabling the worker to use both hands and direct the light where needed. Wherever the hand goes, the light goes.

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Huge Organ Has Six Thousand Throats

Thirty Thousand Miles of Wire Form Nerves of Instrument for Which Fifteen Electric Motors Supply Power AS you listen to the majestic tones of a great pipe organ mere mechanical things seem far away, but behind that proscenium arch is an electrical and pneumatic system of intriguing complexity. Read the rest of this entry »

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Looking AHEAD with “BOSS KET”

By Frazier Hunt

THIS Charles F. Kettering, head of the great experimental laboratories of the General Motors company, is a dispeller of gloom and a true champion of hope.

“Why there is ten times more opportunity right now than there was in my day, thirty or forty years ago,” “Boss Ket” fairly barked at me. “It’s true that young men right now are having trouble finding a job, but that shouldn’t keep them from going ahead and learning something. If all a fellow wants out of life is a job, then he doesn’t want much, and he won’t go very far. Read the rest of this entry »

Novel Colored Postcards Made With Cancelled Stamps

Fashioning artistic postcards with cancelled postage stamps is all in the day’s work for an obscure Chinese artisan of Formosa. He sketches his scenes and then fills them in with parts of stamps, to make truly colorful pictures. Two of his best pieces of work show a lady riding in a rickshaw and a lady riding a caribou. Exceedingly intricate designs can be worked out with the stamps and the art introduced by the Chinese is destined to become quite a fad.

The Murderous Automobile

By HUGO GERNSBACK

IT is odd that automobile engineers, as a whole, for many years have concentrated on mechanical improvements of the automobile, but have done practically nothing toward improved design of cars, in the matter of reducing the hazards of the occupants, as well as of pedestrians.

It is true that we now have better brakes and so-called safety glass, but these are about the only points to which automobile engineers have paid serious attention. Read the rest of this entry »

New Golf Game Played Like Pool

THERE seems to be no end to the contraptions devised to satisfy the golf lust in mankind. The latest device is a cross between miniature golf and pool, having features of both games. The links consists of an area of greensward arranged like a pool table, and the goal of the player is to put the balls into the pockets.

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The FIRST ROCKET AIR MAIL FLIGHT

ALTHOUGH it covered only a few hundred feet, the recent flight of the “Gloria,” America’s first air mail rocket, at Greenwood lake in New Jersey, may in time be considered as significant as that first historic flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, which covered an even shorter distance. Read the rest of this entry »

COMPRESSED AIR DRIVES LOCOMOTIVE 125 MILES AN HOUR

Will steam power give way to compressed air for driving locomotives and hauling fast passenger trains? That is the vision of William E. Boyette, of Atlanta, Ga., whose amazing challenge to the iron horse—a monster truck-shaped locomotive propelled by compressed air—was about to undergo a trial run between Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla., at this writing. Read the rest of this entry »

Paddle Wheels Drive Wingless Plane

PADDLE wheels take the place of wings, stabilizers, and propeller on a new airplane designed by a University of Washington scientist to permit hovering in the air and slower landing speeds. Revolving vanes in these wheels would propel the plane and control its vertical movements. Read the rest of this entry »

How to CRACK the education barrier

Is there an “education barrier” between you and promotion? Are young college graduates being brought in to fill positions above you?

You can break down that barrier . . . gain real security, responsibility, prestige . . . surprise fellow employees and win their respect. You can match yourself against the smartest of the college boys and come out a WINNER. Here’s how!
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Static from the Stars

Because a radio ham heard strange sky noises, we may get better FM and television—and learn more about our universe.

By Herbert Yahraes

Drawings by Ray Pioch WHEN young Grote Reber was a high school sophomore, he operated 9GFZ in Wheaton, Ill., and tacked so many recognition—QSL—cards to his bedroom walls that the plaster cracked and his parents cracked down. When not communicating with El Paso, Arequipa, Capetown, Prague, and other points, he designed equipment to communicate with them even better. Nobody who knew him then will be surprised to learn that he is still in radio—listening not to the chatter of hams, but to mysterious and bothersome radio waves that come from the heart of the Milky Way. Read the rest of this entry »