Secret Documents Sent by Radio

M. BELIN, a French inventor, has perfected a machine known as the “Belinogram”, which makes it possible to send by wireless with absolute safety documents of the most secret nature. The sending machine Belin has developed decomposes the message, document or photograph, while the receiver employed assembles the electrical impulses into the original form. Any other machine, although receiving the same document, finds the signals altogether distorted and of no value whatever.

Huh, apparently at some time after this article was published an extra ‘e’ was added to employee because in this article it’s all employes and employe.

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Heroes of the Switchboard and Phone Lines

FIRES, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes— these are some of the hazards that bring drama into the work of telephone employes. Keeping communication lines open during disasters is a vital matter. As long as nature behaves herself, as long as things go along normally, the work of the lineman, the operator, and the man on the test board is routine, but when trouble begins heroes are made.

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FIRE-ALARM CALLS SENT OUT WITH PERFORATED PLATES

By means of perforated plates fitted into the transmitting apparatus in the fire telegraph dispatching equipment of the new central station in the Bronx, New York City, alarms are relayed automatically to outlying stations. Simultaneous signals are sounded in a number of fire houses by means of electric connections formed when current is sent through the plates.

New Device Converts Flame Into Electricity to Run Radio

A DEVICE which converts the heat of gasoline or kerosene directly into electric current has been invented by Dr. Otto Herman, of St. Louis, Mo., who claims that it is the first practical application of the phenomena of thermo-electricity to the commercial field of radio.
The “Thermotron,” as the inventor calls it, is built at present to operate any standard radio receiving set, using the new two-volt variety of tubes, for a period of 160 hours on a gallon of fuel.

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This article is an exploration of the changes that will be brought on by the rise of solid-state electronics. The author does a very good job extrapolating what will be possible, with very few of the flights of fancy such as flying cars and domed cities that are common to articles of this genre. Almost every product he discusses is available now.

People do have video crib monitors, solar panels are available, but are not quite efficient enough to power a house, as he predicted. Video phones are only now really practical because of the bandwidth limitations spelled out in the article. We don’t have ultrasonic washing machines in our houses, but ultrasonics are used in a number of areas for cleaning. We do (did) rent movies for our color VCRs, and there are megahertz range computers managing very complicated factory production with very little human intervention. Not to mention touch tone phones and microwave ovens. Plus, if you showed that picture of a flat screen tv on the first page to someone without any context they’d probably guess that someone had hacked an LCD monitor to look all “retro”. By the way, if you’re interested in flat screen TVs, you should check out this one from 1958.

I’ve actually been wanting to post this article for a few years. When I was posting this piece about a pocket transistor radio, I noticed that the author used the word “stereatronics”, which I’d never heard. I googled it and found the complete text of this article, with no pictures, here. After reading it I learned that stereatronics was a word created for this article, which they hoped would catch on. It didn’t. I thought it would be perfect to post to the site, so I tracked down a copy. Then when I got it I realized that Colliers magazine was 11×14″ and I couldn’t fit it on my scanner. However, I recently bought an 11×17″ scanner for the site, and so here it is.

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Stereatronics - A New Science that Will Change Your Way of Life

Tiny solids are turning the electronics industry upside down. Some vibrate, others change light to energy or energy to light, or direct current to alternating. Together, they spell revolution

A NEW science, stereatronics, has been creeping up on us in the last few years and has started to make major changes in the way we live. Few of us have noticed any difference; the changes have come so quietly that even many of the people who are closest to the new science are surprised at what it has been doing. Yet the evidences have been all about us.

—Television sets are a great deal less expensive now than they were a relatively few months ago.

—More and more tape recorders are being sold. Five years back, they were too costly for most people. Ten years ago, they weren’t to be had at any price.

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Amazing Devices Lure Store Window Shoppers

HOW to get the passerby to look into his window has long been a paramount problem with the window displayman. He employs sparkling lighting effects, gorgeous creations of crepe paper artistry, unusual devices, flaming posters . . .

You pass them by with a casual eye.

And then . . . along comes the trick window display. An ingenious merchant has placed on exhibit a glass plate. Nothing unusual about that. But … on the glass plate is a silver dollar which is, without any visible propelling power, slowly waltzing around the plate in an upright, spinning position! It catches your eye. The subtle, psychological force of advertising takes hold. And there you are.

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Few things are as useless to a businessman as information that reaches him too late

When vital business information is tardy, something or someone usually suffers. Production is slowed up. A customer has to wait. A decision is delayed.

Remedy: Bell System Data-Phone* service. Connected with the business machine-virtually any type —it converts data (from punched cards or tapes) into a special “tone” language and transmits it over the same nationwide telephone network you use for voice communications.

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New Take-Along Telephones Give You Pushbutton Calling to Any Number

This amazing phone system could handle thousands of calls simultaneously, patching yours directly into a phone exchange

By JOHN R. FREE

The caller pushed the portable phone’s off-hook button. For a split second, the telephone—a new type of computerized, walkie-talkie-size portable—”chatted” inaudibly with a minicomputer in another building. Then I heard a familiar dial tone, and the caller tapped the pushbutton keyboard, placing a call around the world to Australia.

Motorola’s Communications Division was demonstrating its Dynatac phone system in a New York Hilton penthouse suite. For each call, the portable was tied directly into a telephone exchange several blocks away over an ultra-high-frequency (uhf) radio signal. Dynatac bypasses the mobile-telephone operators required to place calls with conventional mobile and portable phones.

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Well, it is cordless. I doesn’t look all that convenient to tote around though.

Cordless phone

Shown in its recharging tray (immediate right), the Satellite Phone communicates via radio to a transponder (center), which is connected to the phone line. Transmitter and receiver built into a phone (far right) make it cordless. It’s $395 with charger from Keltner Research, 2126 S. Kalamath, Denver, Colo. 80223.

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SECRETS OF THE Wire Tappers

By ROBERT E. MARTIN

HOW do crime sleuths “tune in” on the meetings of gangster mobs? How do police detectives provide prosecuting attorneys with phonograph records of telephone conversations that contain damaging evidence against criminals? Most of this work is done by expert wire tappers, specialists in the art of scientific eavesdropping, and how they do it and the ingenious equipment they use is graphically illustrated in the photographs on these pages.

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GARRULOUS MAILBOX on New York street answers questions about postal service via two-way communications system inside.

Bricks Test Storm Resistance of Phone Wires
To determine how well telephone wires will carry the extra weight of ice during snow and sleet storms, engineers string bricks along experimental open-wire lines at the Bell Laboratories field station in Chester, N. J. It has been found that an accumulation of ice one inch in radial thickness adds about twenty-two ounces to a foot of wire, or 200 pounds on a 150-foot span.