April 25, 2008

$10,000 If You Die Laughing (Dec, 1951)

$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.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 24, 2008

Famous Manager Predicts Egg-Shaped Playhouses (Apr, 1923)

Filed under: Movies — @ 10:54 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1923

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

FOR THE KIDDIES (Dec, 1951)

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

“SPIRIT TELEVISION” - Latest Trick of Fake Spiritualists (Sep, 1939)

Filed under: Television — @ 10:48 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1939

“SPIRIT TELEVISION” - Latest Trick of Fake Spiritualists

QUICK to adapt their technique to modern styles, fake spiritualists have now introduced “psychic television” to cajole money from those who have suffered bereavement. Promised a view of a loved one who has passed away, the medium’s intended victim is seated before a window in a small, ornate cabinet resembling a television receiver. He writes the name of the dead person upon a blank sheet of paper, which is handed to him on a frame and then placed in the machine. The room darkens. A humming sound is heard from the apparatus.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 20, 2008

Mickey Mouse Goes Classical (Jan, 1941)

Filed under: Movies, Music — @ 9:51 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1941
Tags: ,

Mickey Mouse Goes Classical

By ANDREW R. BOONE

MOVING sound has been added to moving pictures to bring greater realism to the screen. Accompanying Walt Disney’s newest Technicolor creation, “Fantasia,” in which Mickey Mouse and a host of new companions perform to the rhythms of classical music, this latest Hollywood invention made its first public appearance a few weeks ago at the Broadway Theater in New York.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hand Set for Television Uses Midget Screen (Dec, 1938)

Filed under: Television — @ 9:49 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1938

Hand Set for Television Uses Midget Screen
Nicknamed a “television monocle,” a miniature unit recently on display at an exhibition in London, England, is a complete sight-and-sound receiving set. Shaped like a hand-type telephone, the apparatus has an earphone through which the user hears the sound accompanying a televised broadcast while watching the moving images flash across a small built-in screen, two inches wide, placed so that it is directly before the eyes. The instrument, which weighs just under two pounds, can be used even in a lighted room with good results, it is said. An exhibition visitor is shown at the right trying out the television hand set.

April 18, 2008

Toys from Discarded Lamp Bulbs (Nov, 1928)

Filed under: DIY, Toys and Games — @ 11:44 pm
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1928

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 17, 2008

Movie Trains Big-Game Anglers (Dec, 1938)

Filed under: Toys and Games — @ 9:33 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1938

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Get in on Television (Jul, 1931)

Filed under: Television — @ 9:33 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1931

Get in on Television

HERE is your chance to become an expert in the miracle field of sending pictures through the air. At present, George Waltz, author of this article, is not a television expert, but he will be before he gets through. Go with him and learn all that he means to learn about this absorbing subject.

By GEORGE H. WALTZ, JR.

I SAW something a few days ago that gave me a real kick. I saw, from behind the scenes, the opening night’s program broadcast from station W2XGR, the new $65,000 television broadcasting studio in New York City. Besides getting a real thrill out of it, I was inoculated with the television bug.

What if television still is a long way from perfection? What if the picture you see is small and fuzzy and none too bright? With all its present faults, and it has plenty, it still seems almost like a miracle to me.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 14, 2008

TV Transmitter goes portable (Jun, 1951)

Filed under: Television — @ 10:31 pm
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1951

TV Transmitter goes portable
This battery-operated RCA back-pack weighs 53 pounds, including batteries. Antennas for transmitting picture signals and receiving orders from a base station extend from top of pack. Range is about one mile. At rear of camera case is an electronic finder and a microphone for the narrator.

April 12, 2008

$97 Movie Made in Hollywood Kitchen (Nov, 1928)

Filed under: DIY, Movies — @ 12:41 pm
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1928

$97 Movie Made in Hollywood Kitchen

By A. L. WOOLDRIDGE Special Hollywood Correspondent

Stories of millions of dollars spent in producing ten-reel movie features have given the public an idea that only a big company could produce profit-making motion pictures. But Robert Florey, expending $97 produced a picture which is making him wealthy!

IF YOU have $100 or so, plus a few old cigar boxes, a motion picture camera, and a desire to break into the movies—as who hasn’t?—you can be your own director and cameraman and produce a motion picture worthy of exhibition in theaters throughout the country. That is, you can it you are as skillful and economical as Robert Florey, who cut his sets from cardboard and cigar boxes and produced in a Hollywood kitchen, at a total cost of $97, a movie which is being shown in United Artists theaters all over America.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 10, 2008

Pistol Projects Pictures (Feb, 1938)

Filed under: Toys and Games — @ 10:35 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Feb, 1938

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.

21 queries. 0.551 seconds.