This is a really fun read for anyone who has ever ridden the NYC subway and wants to know how it works. I think that besides the fact that subways are all one unified system now not much has changed since this article was written 70 years ago.
Flying the Subway Express
by Donald G. Cooley
YOU shoot through a winding tunnel streaked with colored lights, dive under a river, zoom up on the other side, fly past crowded platforms, sway dizzily as you dash around a curve at breakneck speed—it’s a crashing, flashing, thrilling scene that thunders past as you ride the subway express!
Sightseers in New York soon discover the subway to be one of the city’s miracles. For five cents they can ride for hours or for days on the world’s most exciting underground railroad. When the American Legion held its big 1937 convention in New York, hundreds of Legionnaires stated that the big thrill of their outing came when they stood in the first car of a speeding subway train and found adventure around every curve.
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Very cool. This article was written back when they still had a big network of pneumatic tubes connecting all of the post offices in Manhattan.
What Happens When You Mail a Letter
By Herbert O. Johansen
With the Christmas rush on, the complex network of men and machines that speeds the mails is working in high gear.
WHEN you drop a letter in a mailbox and hear the slot lid click, you probably give the lid a couple of extra flips for good measure. In return for that effort, plus licking the stamp, you take it for granted that your message of love, business, sorrow, cheer or complaint will be delivered to the right person at the right place in the shortest possible time.
And it almost certainly will be—along with the other 127,677,738 letters that are mailed in the United States on an average day—enough letters, if their envelopes were laid end-to-end, to reach from New York to Shanghai.
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Stitching Steel Into Streamliners
Budd’s new assembly line rolls out cars like cans.
By MORTON C. WALLING
AS YOU stand on a catwalk high above the plant you can scarcely see where it ends, dim in the distance, five city blocks away. The workmen dwindle to mere specks, the gigantic U-shaped welders become tiny tweezers. Toward you stretch three long, silver caterpillars: assembly lines. Here and there comes a flicker of blue flame from an arc welder, reflected and reflected again from shining stainless steel. Occasionally there is a rumbling medley of thumps from shot welders; otherwise there is only a low hum from the thousands of workmen and machines.
Here is modern technology in action—the assembly-line system the auto industry made famous. But as the great cranes swoop down along the line and the silvery bodies roll nearer and nearer you can see they are too shiny for automobiles—and too big. Each is as long as half a dozen motor cars—a stainless steel railway coach.
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High-Voltage Magic
By Eugene M. Hanson
WHEN THE mad scientist in the movies pulls the switch and his fantastic machinery begins to hum and glow, causing flashes of man-made lightning to leap and crackle around the room, you can be fairly certain that Kenneth Strickfaden is somewhere in the picture.
Ever since he created the electrical effects for “Frankenstein,” Strickfaden’s genius has been in great demand among motion-picture producers when spectacular laboratory trickery can be made to fit into the plot.
Strickfaden not only created the effects for “Frankenstein,” but also doubled for Boris Karloff in sequences which called for million-volt sparks playing over his body.
Since then, he has added his wizardry to “Son of Frankenstein,” “Bride of Frankenstein,” and the other sequels; the “Buck Rogers,” “Flash Gordon,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Chandu,” and “Fu Manchu” features—altogether more than 50 movies in the last 15 years.
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This article is huge (50 pages) so I’ve broken it up into three parts.
Part One
Part Two
This article is huge (50 pages) so I’ve broken it up into three parts.
Part One
Part Three
This article is huge (50 pages) so I’ve broken it up into three parts.
Part Two
Part Three
The Magic Worlds of Walt Disney
By ROBERT DE ROOS
Illustrations by National Geographic photographer THOMAS NEBBIA
ONE AUTUMN EVENING in 1928, a new actor appeared at the Colony Theatre in New York in a movie called Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon ever produced with sound. He had ears bigger than Clark Gable’s, legs like rubber hose, a grin wider than Joe E. Brown’s, and a heart of gold. His name was Mickey Mouse.
Beginning that night, Mickey and his creator, Walt Disney, grabbed the world’s funny bone and have never lost their grip.
The New York Times praised the new film as “ingenious.”
“A wow!” cried the Weekly Film Review.
Thus was born history’s most influential mouse. Mickey led the way in the development of anima-tion as a new art, to the exploration of the world of animals and faraway people and of their adventures and geography.
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STRANGE INVENTIONS used by Crooked Gamblers
By Thomas M. Johnson
IT WAS after midnight at Saratoga Springs, N. Y. Dark and silent, a large residence on a side street stood apparently deserted. Its shutters were closed, its blinds drawn. But, inside, were brilliant lights and the tense atmosphere of the gambling hall. Men and women leaned over green-topped tables and a tide of chips and currency ebbed and flowed according to the caprice of various games of chance.
At the far end of the room, a big man shoved his pile of colored chips to the center of the table.
“I’ll bet the works, five grand more,” he challenged. “Who’ll cover my bet?”
There was an angry murmur of dissent.
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