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

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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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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.

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.

This is an entertaining and fairly level headed “what the future will bring” piece. It covers the promise and perils of a pretty diverse set of topics: nuclear power, space travel, power transmission, aviation, food production, urban growth, race relations and even (sort-of) outsourcing.

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Science Never Stops

The world has made vast strides in the last 75 years; even greater triumphs lie ahead if mankind has the courage to go on with the job.

By Harland Manchester

Illustrations by John Gaydos

MAN, standing upon the eminence of 1947 and gazing into the future, may well be dazzled and also perplexed by the promise of science to redeem his world. New discoveries and improved techniques on a hundred fronts present golden chances for a richer and fairer existence—if man has the sense, the honesty and the guts to seize and exploit them for the good of all.

Science is a blank check, and this is no time to be niggardly in filling it out. There are, of course, the doubters, like the 19th-century patent commissioner who wanted to close his office because nothing remained to be invented. If these timid souls look about them, they will see men and women who were living when there were no telephones, electric lights, automobiles, airplanes, radios, motion pictures, antitoxin serums or antiseptic surgery, to mention a few advances of the last 75 years.
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Kerosene Lamp Powers Radio

REMOTE areas of Siberia and China use thermoelectric generators like the one shown here to convert heat from a kerosene lamp into electricity for radios.

The 20-lb. device is being studied by scientists at the Martin Co., Baltimore, Md., where similar direct conversion principles have been applied to nuclear heat sources. They paid $56 for the Russian-built device.

A series of thermocouples is arranged around the upper portion of the lamp. As each set of elements is heated at one end by the lamp, a small amount of electricity flows through the pair. Metallic fins remove the excess heat.

This is the ultimate stoner car. Use the hookah up front to get stoned, then when you get the munchies you can just hop in back and grill some hot dogs.

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Room with Bath – On Wheels

IF YOU SAW Louis Matter’s car rolling along the streets of San Diego, Calif., you’d probably consider it just another attractive automobile. But if you looked inside the car you’d find everything from a barbecue pit to an Arabian water-cooled pipe. And if Mattar really wanted to show off his wondrous vehicle he might let you take a shower bath just off the right front fender.
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I would hire this guy to sharpen my knives in a heartbeat just for the joy of seeing him put-put up the street.

Motorized Trailer Pushes Bicycle

An itinerant knife grinder has devised a “cart-before-the-horse” rig to ease his labors on long-distance bicycle journeys. When he tires of pulling his trailer, with its motor-driven grinding machinery, he hitches the motor to the wheels and the trailer pushes him.

This is really cool, though I bet it would be pretty hard to actually tell the time with it.

Monkey Tells Time By Rolling Eyes
You have to look a monkey in the eye to tell what time it is on a novelty clock manufactured in Germany. The monkey’s right eye tells the hour and the left eye the minutes. The eyeballs revolve as the minutes elapse and a line painted on each iris serves as a clock hand. At quarter past three, the monkey has a sly expression, looking out of the corners of his eyes. At six o’clock, the monkey becomes completely confused with one eye looking up, the other down.

This is pretty awesome. In the 30’s the citizens of Gainesville Texas decided to put on an all volunteer community circus. Hundreds of average citizens spent all year training for various very elaborate and skillful acts. It looks like it was amazing. According to this site, the circus had it’s ups and downs and but lasted in one form or another until 1958.

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World’s Strangest Circus PRODUCED BY AMATEURS

By A. Morton Smith

LEARNING to turn somersaults from the back of a cantering horse, to hang by one’s teeth high in the air, or to run and dance on a tight wire after the manner of circus performers, is not necessarily limited to those who have spent their lives under the big tops, or those possessed of physical development and endurance particularly fitting them to excel in this field. That the many and varied arts of the circus may be mastered by any normal person who has the will to engage in extensive practice, has been conclusively demonstrated by a unique organization in the little city of Gainesville, Texas.
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Night Club in Cave Whips Summer Heat

ST. PAUL, Minnesota, boasts a new night club said to be without equal anywhere in the world for novelty and comfort during torrid summer months. Called the “Mystic Caverns,” the club occupies a labyrinth of caves which form a natural refrigerator with a year round temperature of 48 degrees.

The subterranean chambers where the revelers disport themselves have their opening in the face of a towering sandstone cliff bordering the Mississippi. Once you step inside you are literally in the bowels of the earth, with solid sandstone walls all around you and 150 feet of solid sandrock overhead.

About eight degrees of heat make the atmosphere decidedly comfortable inside the caverns when the mercury is flirting with the hundred mark outdoors. In winter, 20 degrees of furnace heat convert the labyrinthine chambers into a cozy beer hall.

That’s a really nifty way to pump water!

CHINESE WINDMILL WATERS FARM
Adapting an Oriental idea for raising water for his own needs and to irrigate his fields, a California farmer has constructed the curious apparatus shown in the accompanying photographs. Power from a windmill, transmitted through gears, revolves a spiral-shaped tube of pipe open at both ends. The outside end dips into a water-filled ditch at each revolution. Water is thus picked up, and runs by gravity around the spiral to the hub as the wheel revolves. An opening in the hub dis-charges the water into a trough four feet above the level in the ditch, giving a sufficient lift for the irrigation purposes desired.