Giant Outdoor Billiards Now Played With Mechanical Cue
WHILE golf and autos have gone midget, billiards has reversed the process and gone giant. This unusual condition came to pass recently in Seattle, where the outdoor billiard table you see in the photo at the left was built.
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.
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.
Toys from Discarded Lamp Bulbs
Spectacular Fireworks Amuse and delight the kiddies by hooking a lamp in which the filament has been broken in circuit with a spark coil. Brilliant, weird, light results.
Gravity Experiment To prove that cold air weighs more than warm, heat the air in one of two carefully balanced bulbs from which the tips have been broken. The cold end will sink.
This looks like the grandpappy of all those fishing video games that are so popular right now.
Movie Trains Big-Game Anglers
ALL the thrills of deep-sea fishing, from hooking a giant swordfish to fighting it in toward a boat, are provided for the entertainment of sportsmen on land by an ingenious amusement device. Seated before a translucent motion-picture screen, the angler grasps an actual big-game fishing rod and reel fitted with a line that runs to a revolving drum placed just below the screen.
Pistol Projects Pictures
Pictures are “shot” onto a viewing screen by a novel flash-light gun recently introduced as a toy for children. As shown at the left, pulling the trigger operates a pawl to move, one frame at a time, an endless strip of picture film in front of a battery-operated lamp. Simultaneously, the trigger makes an electrical contact to light the lamp and project the picture onto the screen.
Builds Turret-Type Midget Racing Car
BELIEVED to be the smallest electric-powered type in the world, a streamlined midget racing auto built by William Dube, of Worcester, Mass., is 31 inches high, 36 inches wide and six feet long. The novel car features a turret compartment for the driver and is said to be capable of a speed of 55 m.p.h. Four springs on each wheel provide knee-action riding.
New 1978 Electronic Games
A host of video and nonvideo electronic games, many using microprocessors, promises the public more stimulating fun for leisure time.
BY KRIS JENSEN
A COUPLE of years ago, an electronic video game consisted of a simple “black box” that, when connected to a TV receiver, produced little more than some version of video table tennis. In some cases today, that black box is virtually a personal computer. Now there are games whose color images try your gambling instincts at blackjack, your “destroy” capability against an enemy tank, your patience and fortitude through a maze while a “cat” attempts to devour you, your artistic talent with computer-drawn pictures, or your knowledge of math and history. And that is just the beginning in video games!
Inventing Puzzles is Hobby of Professor
WHEN C. A. Jacobson, professor of chemistry at West Virginia University and the inventor of numerous pieces of laboratory equipment and a calculating machine, needs diversion, he turns to constructing puzzles. His interest in puzzles dates back forty years and he has been inventing them for more than twenty-five. His latest is a complicated block puzzle of unusual construction. One form of this puzzle is intended for use as a base for an inkwell. Professor Jacobson is shown here with a few puzzles from the huge collection he has acquired. One of Jacobson’s earliest puzzles was purchased by the famous Jack London.
THIS TOY AIRPLANE DOES EVERYTHING BUT FLY
At three years of age, Sam Swindle, of Athens, Ga., is “pilot” of a miniature airplane. It was built for him by his father, a master mechanic. Though its clipped wings make it impossible for it to leave the earth, the tiny machine actually travels along the ground under the power of a small gasoline engine and gives the boy all the thrills of real flying.
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.
Rubber Bands Drive This Baby Auto Three Miles
by DICK COLE
Here’s something distinctly new in the way of midget autos. Powered by a battery of rubber bands from old inner tubes, it will cover a distance of three miles at a surprising clip—and on one winding. Seated at the wheel you’ll be the envy of all the youngsters in town.
Be there the boy with soul so dead, Who to himself has never said: “Gee, I wish I had a baby auto.”
THIS article will make those wishes come true. Here is a nifty looking baby with clutch, two forward speeds and reverse, and Free Wheeling. The design is simple; the materials are cheap; which brings the building of this miniature car within the scope or the average mechanically minded boy’s pocket book.
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