I think I’ll pass.

Be the “Tom Brown” of Your Town

You may have the talent to develop into a Saxophone wizard like Tom Brown, of the famous Tom Brown’s Clown Band, the highest priced musical act, and enjoy this most pleasant of vocations. Buescher Instruments have helped make famous Tom Brown, Paul Whiteman, Joseph C. Smith, Clyde C. Doerr, Bennie Krueger, Dan Russo, Paul Specht, Carl Fenton, Ross Gorman, Arnold Johnson, Nathan Glantz and thousands of others. $500 to $1,000 weekly for but two hours a day is not uncommon for musicians of such ability to earn.

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Englishman Invents Portable Player Piano Powered by Hand Pedals

VACATIONISTS have never wanted for musical entertainment on their sojourns in out of the way places, for manufacturers have been quick to meet the demand with portable radios, phonographs, and the like. And now, along comes an English inventor, W. R. Wearham, and rigs up a portable player piano which can be folded up in two sections and carried in a harp-shaped case.

The chief feature of this piano is that the foot pedal which supplies the motive power is supplanted by a hand pedal, the pneumatic action operating directly on the keyboard, as shown in the photo at the left. The piano has as fine a tone quality as any other player piano and weighs less than most portable radio sets.

Camera Worn Like Wrist Watch Loads Thirty Six Pictures

Latest in the line of miniature cameras is a tiny affair worn like a wrist watch. Sighted easily by raising the wrist to eye level, it carries a load of thirty-six exposures despite its diminutive size. It has an f4.5 lens and a focusing scale graduating from one foot to infinity.

MEGAPHONE AMPLIFIES HARMONICA MUSIC

THE volume of a harmonica can be increased for playing in public, especially in large auditoriums or outdoors, by amplifying the sound with a medium-sized megaphone.

A slot is cut in the megaphone about 3 in. from the mouthpiece, and oyer this is riveted a metal holder made as illustrated below with two lips to grip the harmonica, which is of the “marine band” type.

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RADIO Movies in Color

By ALFRED ALBELLI

Television in color is now an accomplished mechanical fact. Mr. Albelli, in this article, tells how the broadcasting device works and points out the possibilities of color radio movies for everybody.

RADIO movies loom as a strong possibility now that color television has been reached.

The man who forecasts motion pictures by radio is none other than Dr. Herbert Ives, research engineer at the Bell Laboratories in New York City.

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Balloons Are Booming

Dream up a new inflatable toy and you’ll also inflate your bankroll.

By John Noah

“WHY do so few people have new ideas for toy balloons?” That’s the question that puzzles H. W. McConnell, president of one of America’s largest toy-balloon companies.

Balloon sales are booming and retail outlets are begging for new types to market —but the fresh ideas don’t seem to come. For want of amateur inventors, virtually every toy balloon that McConnell and many other balloon men produce must be devised by someone within the industry.

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MUSIC MADE VISIBLE IN WEIRD MOVIE

Futuristic patterns of light and shadow are projected upon a movie screen to accompany the music of Wagner’s “Song to the Evening Star,” in a unique sound film recently completed for exhibition in a New York theater. Marching rhymically across the audience’s field of view, the odd designs were produced by trick photography, with the aid of bracelets, toy balls, silks, and crushed tissue ribbons.

PHOTO AND MESSAGE ON PHONOGRAPH POST CARD

Here is a new way to send a greeting to a friend. Phonograph records on post cards have been made before, but now a German inventor has combined the record with a real photograph. The sender has his picture taken, records his voice on top of it, and the result is a personal record ready for the mail. A long message is recorded on several post cards, each one numbered.

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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$10,000 If You Die Laughing

Insurance against laughicide is all in the day’s business for these Mad Hatters of the comic greeting-card industry.

By Edward Dembitz

“WHY don’t you write?” the card asks tenderly. “Is your hand broken?” You lift the cover and, wham, a miniature metal bear-trap clamps down on your finger!

“Well, now it is!” jeers the caption. “Now you’ve got a real excuse for not writing.”

If this card kills you, don’t worry about it. The Barker Greeting Card Company of Cincinnati even has that one figured out— they’ve taken out an insurance policy which pays $10,000 to the heirs of anyone who laughs himself to death over one of their products.

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I love how this guy makes such bold predictions about what the future of movie theaters will be like, but fails to anticipate little innovations like sound. The Jazz Singer came out only 4 years after this article was published and there were already short format talkies playing in NYC in 1923.

Famous Manager Predicts Egg-Shaped Playhouses

Plans to Paint Movie Theater Sets on Walls with Light THE day is coming soon when we shall not merely look at the movies; we shall live in them. By scientific blending of color-light painting with action and music, by consummate artistic realism, we shall be transported to a vivid land of drama, where pulsating, colorful life springs from the very walls of the theater in which we sit. While the drama unfolds before us, we shall be encompassed by ever changing lifelike scenes—now the crashing waves of a sea; now the shadows of a great forest; now the towering buildings and the crowded streets of a city—projected in color on the walls about us.

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I don’t really care about the space phone, but that outfit is awesome, not to mention the machine shop.

FOR THE KIDDIES

PHONY PONIES are miniature plastic race horses with Mexican Jumping beans strapped under saddles to propel them. Reveil Toys, Los Angeles. $1.

FIX-IT TRUCK carries its own tools, including a wrench, jack, screwdriver and hammer plus a spare tire. Ideal Toys, 200 Fifth Ave.. N.Y.C. $1.30.

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