April 27, 2008

MOTOR BIKES SPEED HOME REPAIRS (Jul, 1931)

Filed under: Cool, Motorcycles — @ 8:47 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1931

MOTOR BIKES SPEED HOME REPAIRS

When anything goes wrong in the house, from the furnace to the radio, a Los Angeles, Calif., resident has but to step to the telephone and at his call instantly one of a fleet of repair motorcycles will come whizzing to the rescue.

The organizer of this novel service first got together a large staff of experts in many household crafts and trades. Then he equipped them with speedy motorcycles.

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April 13, 2008

How Scientists Visualize the REAL Flying Saucer Men (Jun, 1951)

Filed under: Cool, Just Weird, Space — @ 10:44 pm
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1951

If you like this article, you should also check these out:

How Scientists Visualize the REAL Flying Saucer Men

When scholars of the universe recreate spacemen along logical scientific lines, even those supposed weird little saucerites seem ordinary by comparison.

By I. B. Neer

PRYING eyes of science are probing into space again in the hope of detecting life on other planets. Armed with new facts, previously accepted theories about what lies beyond the Earth are being discarded by scientists every day and the possibility grows more and more distinct that creatures, more fantastic than our most vivid imaginations could conjure up, may inhabit the planets around us. They make those startling stories of weird little men in flying saucers seem tame by comparison.

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March 14, 2008

Tires Piled Up 150 Feet High Sell Them Quickly (Apr, 1933)

Filed under: Cool — @ 1:54 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1933

Tires Piled Up 150 Feet High Sell Them Quickly

TO ATTRACT attention, a Hollywood garage owner who had a large stock of used tires he wanted to dispose of stacked up a couple of hundred of them and put a life-like dummy on the top.

The stunt got results. While waiting to see if the stack would fall, an astonishingly large number of people bought tires, bringing the depression to an end as far as the tire dealer was concerned.

The secret of the stacking lies in the telegraph pole running up through the center, thus holding the column vertical. In the accompanying photograph the dummy is seen atop the tires which were piled over 150 feet in height. Most spectators actually believed the dummy was real; and wondered how he got there. There’s a hint in this spectacle for other tire dealers in like predicament.

February 19, 2008

Steampunk Remote Controled Train (Nov, 1936)

Robot Engine Built in Japan Is Driven by Remote Control

Automatic train control is understood to be a feature of a mysterious robot locomotive model built in Japan. Streamlined, but of a design unlike any conventional locomotive, the details of its mechanism have not been revealed. It is believed, however, that it will be operated electrically by remote control and will be equipped with a braking mechanism which will stop it automatically if the rails ahead become dangerous.

February 15, 2008

FLYING SUPERWEAPON? (Apr, 1946)

Filed under: Cool — @ 12:39 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1946

Certainly looks like a space ship to me.

FLYING SUPERWEAPON?

Would you say that this queer-looking contraption was a jet-propelled life raft, a plane fuselage flying without wings, or some other super-secret, odd invention just released for public view? Perhaps, if you turn the picture upside down and think of reflections on water as you reexamine it, you will be able to tell. It’s the conning tower of a German submarine sunk alongside its dock at Hamburg. Note the radar antenna. Lt. Arthur L. Schoeni, of the Navy Department, sent the photo in.

January 30, 2008

Bizarre Eat Shops Built to Lure Trade (Apr, 1934)

Filed under: Cool — @ 2:03 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1934

That flower pot tearoom is pretty awesome.

Bizarre Eat Shops Built to Lure Trade

CONES!
An ice cream maker’s specialty is cones. His shops throughout the city are shaped like inverted cones, thus advertising his wares and drawing attention.

HOT DOGS are purveyed by this eat shop, so the showman instincts of the proprietor have caused him to model the exterior of his stand after a puppy.

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Trailer Combines Home and Office (Jul, 1939)

Filed under: Automotive, Cool — @ 2:01 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1939

Add an internet connection and this looks like a pretty spiffy place to live and work.

Trailer Combines Home and Office

Home and office are combined in a custom-built trailer just completed for an executive whose business keeps him touring the country. Equipped with desks, typewriter, and electric dictating machine, it also provides the owner and his wife with satinwood-furnished living quarters, an upper-deck observation lounge, a tiled bathroom with hot and cold shower, and a stainless-steel kitchen with a range burning bottled gas. Telephones connect office, power car, and galley; and an air-conditioning plant maintains year-round comfort.

January 25, 2008

KITE + BALLOON=KYTOON (Aug, 1950)

Filed under: Cool — @ 2:04 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1950

KITE + BALLOON=KYTOON

ON CALM DAYS, kite enthusiast Domina Jalbert felt frustrated. Although he had kites of all types, he simply couldn’t make one fly when there wasn’t any breeze.

This frustration led to the Kytoon, a hybrid sky rider that combines the best features of the kite with the best of the balloon. Even the name, Kytoon, is a combination of kite and balloon.

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December 12, 2007

Man of the Monsters (May, 1947)

Filed under: Cool — @ 8:01 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1947
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Man of the Monsters

Here’s a genius who makes prehistoric monsters that “live.”

BY LUIS HOCHMAN

SOME learned scientists and explorers are content to probe Mother Earth for moldy remnants of prehistoric monsters, but not George Harold Messmore. This energetic little man with big ideas and accomplishments to match simply built himself a dinosaur factory in the heart of New York and proceeded to turn out his own staggering array of life-size, breathing, eating, fighting, snarling, replicas of the huge creatures that roamed the earth long before man had a tail to hang by. Powered by from one to 17 silent motors, operating a complicated mass of cogs, wheels, cams, chains, and bellows beneath canvas and papier-mache hides, huge dinosaurs, stegosaurs, allosaurs, saber-tooth tigers, mastodons and other monsters lash their tails, blink their eyes, gnash their teeth, swing their heads and limbs and emit frightful howls and screams. (Their vocal renditions issue from small phonograph recordings in their throats, but the secret of how these voice-noises were figured out still lies locked in Messmore’s brain.)

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December 10, 2007

Periscope House (May, 1947)

Filed under: Cool, Photography — @ 1:01 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1947

This is pretty awesome. Anyone know if it’s still around?

Periscope House

YOU walk across the green-lawned, palm-hemmed park overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California, and climb the stairs to the little house in the picture above. Your party gathers around a circular rail in the center, the door is closed and at first all is darkness.

Then, slowly and as if by magic, the scene you left outdoors a few minutes before appears on the revolvable table in front of you. Colors are perfectly natural. Strollers in the park move about, quite oblivious to their observers.

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December 3, 2007

Builds Playhouse From Oil Cans (Jan, 1935)

Filed under: Cool — @ 12:34 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1935

Builds Playhouse From Oil Cans

BY SOLDERING together 1500 quart oil cans, Edgar Speer, Ohio mechanic, has constructed a novel playhouse for his small daughter.

By laying the soldered cans on their long axis and offsetting each course at the end, Speer has achieved a log cabin effect. Large enough to accommodate three or four full grown men, the cabin is 6-1/2 feet long, 4-1/2 feet wide and 6-1/2 feet high. The project took about 2-1/2 months of Speer’s spare time. The work was done with a common blow torch and soldering iron.

November 17, 2007

English Ladies Smoke Tiny Pipes (Mar, 1934)

Filed under: Cool — @ 8:47 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Mar, 1934
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English Ladies Smoke Tiny Pipes

FEMININE smokers of London, England, are adopting a dainty little pipe now on the market. Cigarette tobacco is crumpled in the tiny bowl and lit in the approved masculine fashion. A long slender stem gives a cool smoke without staining the fingers.
The pipes are scarcely heavier than the average cigarette holder.

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