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New Wiring Idea May Make the All-Electric House Come True

Spread out in the photographs above are symbols of what electrical engineers see as a revolution in home wiring. They show what can, in an ideally wired house, be done with a new type of electrical control. It’s called remote control, or relay switching.

The young housewife is showing how, from a single bedside panel with remote control switches, she can turn on the percolator in the kitchen, turn radios on or off, light up a flood lamp in the yard for a late-homecoming husband.
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Hydraulic Control OPENS Garage Door

OPERATED from ordinary water pipes with pressure furnished by a simple pipe attachment, an inexpensive new device for opening and closing garage doors from the driver’s seat of the automobile proves a great convenience to motorists. It will open or close, lock or unlock garage doors without the driver’s leaving the machine.

A simple and easily-handled hydraulic device, consisting of two valves, one valve with lock and key, is placed in a convenient location on the edge of the driveway where it is within easy reach of the driver’s arm. The other valve is placed inside the garage. Either valve opens and closes the doors.

Latest in Homes Has Skyscraper Frame and Glass Walls

CUBICAL in construction and designed to build for $2500 or less, the model house shown in the photo at the left has just been completed in Syosset, Long Island. It is intended to serve the needs of families whose income is $1800 a year or less.

Simple modernistic lines, with no fancy and expensive curlicues, characterize the design. Steel is used for the framework, giving it the durability of a skyscraper skeleton. Much glass is used to admit plenty of light. Read the rest of this entry »

Combination Stool and Dryer Saves Steps for Housewife

AN EXTREMELY convenient and serviceable device to have around the kitchen or wash house is the combination clothes dryer and kitchen stool, shown at the right. It serves ordinarily as a stool, but when it is desired to utilize it as dryer, the metal rods are pulled up through the holes in the seat and locked in place so that they stand out horizontally. Read the rest of this entry »

Lamp Shade in Football Motif
SOMETHING distinctly unique in the way of desk lamps was introduced at a University of Southern California sorority house. The shade was cut from parchment and made to resemble a football helmet, while the upright, cast in metal, forms a football. The lamp attracted wide attention and gave a sportive air to the room which it decorated.

Ash Tray Breathes and inhales the smoke that usually drifts over into a non-smoker’s eye. It draws all smoke down into the stand and keeps the room free of fumes, too. Penny Martin, of Los Angeles, is shown using this new and welcome invention. It operates electrically, uses house current.

James Liddy’s Bedsprings

By Alfred Lief

ONE day in 1853 James E. Liddy, a carriage maker’s blacksmith, drove his wife into Watertown, N. Y., in their buggy. They were newlyweds. Young Liddy was rather irked, waiting in the seat so long. He fidgeted and bounced on the coil-spring cushion seat—then suddenly his expression changed. Read the rest of this entry »

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CITY WITHIN A CITY

Equal in size to ten 10-story buildings, New York’s Interstate Commerce Center will have an Indoor highway.

THEY gasped when Tom Mix rode his horse right through the swinging doors and into .a western saloon. They laughed when Olsen and Johnson drove a midget car into the elevator of a modern building and then through the halls to a lawyer’s office. (In Hollywood, anything can happen.) Read the rest of this entry »

This article was published during Science and Mechanics’ brief attempt to compete with Rolling Stone. I can just see some editor saying “We need to sex this magazine up!” Of course they could have just changed the name to S&M magazine…

Eye-Stopper of the Month

We’ve been getting a lot of complaints lately, especially from parents. “When are you going to publish an Eye-Stopper who isn’t clad in a skimpy bikini?” they ask. Well here she is, gracefully demonstrating American Standard’s new Ultra Bath. The oval “bathing pool” measures 5 feet long by 42 inches wide and 16 inches deep. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo Wallpaper
THROW out that wallpaper! Away with plaster! Your home may now have magnificent new walls—walls covered seemingly with rare and beautiful materials such as hare-wood, woven rattan, marble, even snakeskin—all practically indistinguishable from the real thing.

The Di-Noc Company of Cleveland makes it possible. Using a record-sized camera they take color shots of the material to be reproduced, etch the exposures so obtained on copper plates, and use the plates for printing by the gravure process on an extremely thin paperbacked film. Film with backing is transferred in large areas to any flat surface and the backing stripped away.

Greenhouse Goes Modern

WHAT is considered as the last word in green houses recently has been completed in St. Louis at a $120,000 cost. Unlike the average greenhouse of today, the roof is practically hail proof, the top being made of an unbreakable composition.

The glass panels are made up of 24 by 26-inch panes covering 15,000 square feet, and are fastened in place with copper glazing strips.

Ketchup Pump-It
MR. D. F. Bachellor of Glendale, Calif, had an extremely active mind and when a major operation confined him to a hospital bed for a long period of convalescence, he kept right on thinking. One day a visitor mentioned how much better the world would be if someone would invent a device to get ketchup from a bottle without pounding and thumping. Bachellor weighed the problem. Read the rest of this entry »