Pay Per View TV (Oct, 1947)
This is the earliest example I’ve seen of Pay Per View TV. The picture would come in blurred from the station and the receiver would get the decoding frequencies over your phone line and the charge would appear on your phone bill.

Color VCR and Flat Screen Television (Sep, 1954)
This article from Colliers magazine has a bunch of stuff that was really ahead of it’s time, but the two best are this picture on the left of the playback from a color VCR and this amazingly modern looking flat screen television on the right. Seriously, doesn’t that look like a 23″ LCD?

Flat Screen TV in 1958 (Jan, 1958)
While the flat-screen above looks pretty amazing, the article was a little short on the details of how it worked or if it actually worked at all. The one below is the real deal, check out the article and the linked 1996 interview with the inventor, William Ross Aiken.

Recorder stores TV stills (Jan, 1964)
Well, it’s not exactly pausing live television with a  Tivo, but this nifty device from 1964 could record up to 10 still frame grabs on a big metal foil disc spinning at 3,000 RPM.

PHONE CALLS ARE ANSWERED BY MACHINE (May, 1924)
I’d seen a lot of answering machines in later magazines but I was pretty surprised to see this one in a 1924 Popular Mechanics. It even features a dial indicator that shows how many calls the owner has missed.

Device Answers Phone and Tells Caller When You Will Return to Office (Aug, 1932)
This later product called the “Ansophone” is a an answering machine in the literal sense of the word. It will answer the phone and play a message to the caller, but it doesn’t record any incoming messages.

The Perfect Secretary—a Machine (Apr, 1933)
This gigantic contraption seems to be functionally equivalent to the first machine above. You’d think after almost a decade that the technology would allow a smaller device, not a bigger one. I’m guessing that it probably worked a lot better though.

The earliest fax-like machines actually predate these by quite a bit, but these are all culled from this site, so that’s what you get. There are more fax related articles available available here.

Secret Documents Sent by Radio (Jan, 1932)
Early fax machines all seem to have one thing in common: they weren’t really fax machines in the sense that we use it to day. The early examples are all radio-fax systems. They don’t transmit over a normal telephone line. This machine however, does have the added bonus of apparently encrypting your image.

New Radio Pen Reproduces Pictures Put on the Air (Jul, 1934)
In the 1930’s the idea of the radio-newspaper was everywhere. I have literally dozens of articles about them. This one was obviously way ahead of it’s time since you can clearly see an early print version of a Mac vs. PC ad on the left.

Television Will Carry the Mails (Mar, 1935)
While the device pictured  is another radio-fax machine, the linked article does also talk about telephone based faxes as well. As with all new technologies, pictures of scantily clad women lead the way.

Telegraph Kisses Are New Fad (May, 1938)
Now we’re getting somewhere. Long before cybersex, there was the much more low key, though decidedly more stylish telegraphisex.

“Mail Box” for Telegrams Transmits Messages (Jun, 1939)
This actually seems like a really handy machine. You write your message on a form, drop it in the slot, and it automatically gets faxed… somewhere.

Pictures by Radio (Jun, 1939)
Another radio-newspaper system, though this one actually was actually put into production and had available content for a time.

The left picture gives you a good view of the printing mechanism and picture quality. On the right is the rather handsome looking home receiver. Though with a print speed of three feet per hour, you better hope that lady is a very slow reader.

World’s First Color Fax Machine (Nov, 1947)
This article just floored me. You really have to look at the full size images to appreciate it, but this machine is gorgeous. The left image is of the print mechanism which is composed of a rotating set of actuated color pencils. And just to make sure you knew which pencil went where, they made the rollers out of colored velvet. You don’t get style like that in fax machines anymore.

The print quality is actually pretty stunning considering, you know, its a friggin color fax machine from 1946.  The output reminds me a lot of a mid 90’s era color inkjet printer.

Desk-Size Facsimile Machine (Jun, 1952)
This is the closest thing to a modern fax machine, although all of your calls have to be routed through a central switchboard.

Related posts

• SCAN-A-FAX
• Secret Documents Sent by Radio
• New Radio Pen Reproduces Pictures Put on the Air
• Telecar
• Electronic newsboy
• The Man Who Made Radio Talk

MACHINE MEASURES BEAUTY OF FACE
According to the article this machine, designed by Max Factor, will measure the beauty of a woman’s face. I’m not really sure how that’s supposed to work, but the picture looks like a scene right out of a Frankenstein meets Hellraiser movie. Here’s another article that provides different view of this instrument of torture beauty.

Woman Invents Dimple Machine
I guess this would work. If you consider annoying red welts to be dimples.

“Glamour Bonnet” Provides Vacuum to Aid Complexion
According to the inventor of this device, the Glamour Bonnet provides an effect that is “…similar to what a person feels who climbs a high mountain or flies high in a plane…”. That’s right ladies, just remember that the secret to looking good (or at least thinking you look good) is hypoxia.

Stencil for Lipstick
I really can’t speak definitively on this, since I’ve never actually applied lipstick. However it seems to me that the job of positioning and holding this one-size fit’s all stencil while applying the lipstick might actually be more difficult than the original task.

“Magic Chair” for Beauty
This is the one item on this list that looks like it might actually be useful, it’s just a home gym. Though I doubt you’d have any luck reducing the size of your chin as the caption for this image indicates.

SHIELD ON EYEGLASSES PROTECTS THE NOSE
Besides the fact that this thing just looks ridiculous, do you think the inventor considered what the user would look like when they took it off at the end of the day? A white nosed raccoon, that’s what you’d look like.

Beautifully Sucked
This device is supposed to suck all of the dirt and grime from your pores, but all I can think about is “the machine” from the Princess Bride.

Freckleproof Cape Protects Bather
If you are so prone to sunburn that you have to wear a polka-dotted hazmat suit just to go outdoors, perhaps Florida is not the right place for you to live.

Expand Your Chest with THE PSYCHO-EXPANDER
These magazines are rife with products promising women to “develop their form” and teach them to increase their “lung capacity” but I’m particularly fond of the PSYCHO-EXPANDER.

Breathing Balloon for Big Breasts
Here’s another device for “developing your form”, plus it lets you measure your lung capacity, that must be what women bought it for, right?

BEARD IS REMOVED WITH MUD AND USE OF X-RAYS
This is the only device on the list that is meant for men, and also the only one that looks like it’s actually harmful. Very harmful. Terrifyingly harmful. Using radiation to remove hair is sort of like amputating your leg to lose weight.

Whole Cigarette Factory Contained in Single Tobacco Can
I’m not entirely sure that’s tobacco he’s rolling up there.

Remote Smoking Apparatus
This one is actually kind of neat, but it’d probably be better for smoking something else…

Ash Tray Fits Cigarette
Dude, just get an ashtray. Or don’t. It seems like you’d end up grabbing the end of the cigarette and the weight of this thing would break your cigarette in half.

Invalid “Fed” Cigarettes on a Stick
Thank god someone has solved the age old problem of how to smoke in a hospital bed when both of your arms are broken! And people say nicotine isn’t addictive?

Wrist Lighter
How on earth is this actually easier than a normal lighter?

Pipe Holster
If you thought cell phone holsters were the dumbest looking things on earth, think again.

Vest-Pocket Ash Tray
And when you miss the ashtray you get to burn a nice hole in your vest, or get a pocket full of ashes.

Cigarette Holder for Nudists
You really don’t want to know where that guy kept his cigarettes before this was invented.

Cigarette Case Keeps Account of Smokes Given to Friends
I think that anyone cheap enough to need one of these would be too cheap to actually buy one.

Keeps Smoke Out Of Eyes
And blow it into somebody else’s eyes.

Trained Cockroach Smuggles Smokes
Ok, this one is just cool. Plus, if you’re stuck in solitary it’s actually pretty damn useful.

NEW CIGARETTE PUT UP IN WATERPROOF PAPER
This sounds like a pretty good idea but you really have to wonder what kind of god awful chemical they used to make it waterproof.

Safety Holder for Fag Smokers
And finally this ridiculously giant ashtray ring thing. It’s only redeeming quality is that if you squint hard enough you could swear this was a black and white snapshot from one of those Star Trek TNG episodes where Picard goes all gangster in the holodeck.

Related posts

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Cooky Jar Diving Bell
These two brothers both made homemade diving helmets. Their first model used a water tank and their second, designed to increase visibility, used their mother’s pilfered cooky jar.


Build a Diving Helmet from a Water Heater
Not content with just showing projects made by their readers, this 1932 article from How To Build It magazine (a spinoff of Modern Mechanix) teaches kids how to make their own diving helmet from a water heater. Air is pumped in via a pair of small bellows. You’d better hope your little brother doesn’t get tired pumping those things!

Building a Tin Can Diving Helmet
There must have been some issues with Modern Mechanix’ first design because barely a year and a half later they published these new and improved diving helmet plans. I must say the air pumping system on this one looks a lot more functional.

Take Thrilling Underwater Cruise in ONE-MAN SUB
If anything this project seems even more dangerous than the diving helmets. You basically seal yourself into a (hopefully) air-tight tin can and have your friends drag you along 30 feet beneath the surface at 15 MPH behind their boat.

“Suicide Club”
Just in case you were wondering if anyone actually followed the plans and built any of these things, here’s a short 1935 article about a group of Los Angeles youths dubbed “The Suicide Club”. Not only did they build and use these contraptions, but they did it with the approval of the city playgrounds department.

DIY Gas Mask
This one doesn’t quite fit the theme, but suffocation is suffocation and you really have to wonder about any gas mask that requires you to hold your nose.

By the way: This is the first post in a new series called “From the Archives” designed to give newer readers a look at some of the best posts from the last few years. The archives have gotten pretty big now; almost 4,000 posts, with over 9,000 images, and there are lots of great articles in there. So once or twice a week I’m going to pick a topic that ties together a number of articles from the archives and try to form some sort of narrative around them.

I would also like to open up this section for guest posts from any of our readers. If you have a particular subject you like, have expertise in, or have noticed some pattern such as “Everything Cool in the 1930’s was designed in Germany”, please send me an email and let me know what you have in mind. Feel free to make it as long or short as you like and to include links to other sites and sources.