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He’s a Plastic Baker

Somebody forgot to tell Spencer Smilie that it couldn’t be done. So he went on cooking plastics and developed a recipe for fortune.

By Louis Hochman

IF Spencer Smilie of Beverly Hills, Calif., had studied chemistry and physics, he . might still be plodding along at his job in a plastics factory. But, unhampered by sound scientific know-how and not realizing how impossible it was supposed to be to fuse incompatible combinations of plastics, Smilie solved an unsolvable problem. Today his plastics art business—the only one of its kind in the world—is worth a small fortune. Read the rest of this entry »

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What Magicians Do When Magical Tricks Go Wrong

Mechanical ingenuity and high-speed thinking are required by magicians when something goes haywire with their tricks. Here Fred Keating, famous magic master, tells of some of his embarrassing moments.

As told to George Bailey by FRED KEATING

AT ONE time when Robert Houdin, patron saint of modern magicians, after whom the great Houdini adopted his name, was asked by the execution of what trick he judged a conjurer, he replied, “Never by the execution of any trick, but wholly by his ability to get out of a trick that fails, and covering it up.”
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What YOU should know about PATENTS

By Harry Kursh

WHAT is a patent? It is a “legal monopoly” authorized by the Constitution and granted to inventors by the U. S. Patent Office. It gives inventors the right to exclude others from making or selling their inventions.

How long does a patent last; can it be renewed?

A patent is good for 17 years. It can be renewed only by a special Act of Congress but no patent has ever been renewed in modern times.

What does it cost to get a patent?

You pay the Patent Office $30 when filing your application for a patent and another $30 when and if the patent is granted. An additional $1 is charged for each claim in excess of 20 claims. If you engage a patent attorney, the initial patent search may cost about $25. If your invention is patentable, and the attorney files the necessary papers, takes care of the drawings and follows through on your application until the patent is granted, average legal fees for a relatively uncomplicated patent will total $300-$500. Read the rest of this entry »

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CREATING The SPECTACULARS

by Donald G. Cooley

SOME day New Yorkers are likely to be startled by the discovery that the dome of the Empire State Building has turned into a gigantic cigarette glowing more than 1,000 feet in the air.

Not an actual cigarette, of course, but an advertising colossus made up of a million white electric bulbs, a few thousand red ones to paint a burning tip against the night sky, and the name of the manufacturer blazoned in neon on all four sides of the world’s tallest building.
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Making Trick PICTURES with a Home Movie Camera

by Walter E. Burton

Half the fun in making home movies lies in getting unusual shots that will mystify friends viewing your production. Taking such trick pictures is quite simple and easy, as told here.

IF YOU purchase, borrow, or receive as a present a motion picture camera, you will find the mere process of photographing everything in sight thrilling enough for the first half-dozen reels. Then you will look about for new fields to conquer. Perhaps you will undertake the making of your own dramas or comedies—movies with a plot or at least a basic theme. Read the rest of this entry »

He kinda looks like the love child of Hugh Grant and John Kerry.

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Meet Hans Krause

His pocket-size sculptures are soothing to handle, sweet-scented and habit-forming.

ONE PATH to serenity, say the Buddhists, is through contemplating certain objects: the sky, a tree, a design. Not relying on sight alone, the Chinese have long used hand stones—small objects combining form and smoothness in a way that makes them delicious to handle. Read the rest of this entry »

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He Popped Corn Into a Fortune

From buying furs to selling popcorn was quite a jump for Clyde Gould. But he made it— and sales are really popping.

By Bruce Morgan

CLYDE “Blackie” Gould, a 30-year-old Minneapolis man, had always been nuts about popcorn. Like millions of others, he ate the stuff in theaters, at fairs and sports events and he saw so much corn popping wherever he went that he felt it might be an easy way to make money. As a result he came up with a brand new idea for selling popcorn and in the first year his cash register played such a pleasing tune to the accompaniment of popping corn that his idea is destined to turn into a nationwide bonanza.
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LUCK FOR SALE

Even the best of us ore superstitious and we pay magic-charm sellers millions of dollars yearly.

By Irv Leiberman

Cleveland, Ohio Gentlemen: I notice your Life Everlasting Herb and if it is so good and luckey 1 would like to have one. Also tell me how to use it.

I remane, Mr. B. F.

THIS actual letter, typical of thousands, is the foundation stone of many a huge business fortune. It represents the average customer in a series of flourishing and highly profitable superstition transactions.

Millions of Americans are in constant and ever hopeful search for ready-made luck and herbs to solve all their problems. And hundreds of energetic salesmen sell them almost anything their heart desires for a mere pittance.
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Can You Invent a MILLION-DOLLAR FAD?

A California firm isn’t kidding when it invites you to send them your ideas for fun and games. They’ve made millions on fads— from Hula Hoops to bubbles Here’s a firm whose president may suddenly start bouncing spectacularly lively rubber balls for the chief of research and development to catch—if he can. And the executive vice-president thinks nothing of firing a blast of air from a formidable-looking plastic gun at his busy and unsuspecting secretary.

That’s the Wham-O Mfg. Co. of San Gabriel, Calif., where anybody’s idea of an amazing toy, or a novel product of almost any sort, has a chance to become a reality and be sold by the millions. Read the rest of this entry »

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Story of Paper
TAKE a look around you at home, in the office, at the store—wherever you are at any time during the day—and wherever your eye falls, yon see paper. From the cigarette you smoke to the heavy carton around bulky packages, almost everything you use has paper in it somewhere. 15 million tons is used annually in this country—over 200 pounds per person. So there is a lot to support the argument of the men and women who make paper that theirs is the most important industry in the world.

You can read part I here.

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MODERN WONDERS of an Ancient Art Part II

By H. W. MAGEE

Part II

IMAGINE a metal house coated with glass, a home with all the delicate coloring and enduring beauty, inside and out, of age-old cloisonne.

The development of porcelain enameled iron for architectural purposes makes such a home both possible and practical. As a building material, porcelain enameled iron—actually a form of glass fused on to a metal base—offers an admirable union of utility and beauty for it possesses the strength of metal plus the hardness and permanence of glass. It can be produced in any hue or combination of hues in the mineral spectrum, it is colorfast, impervious to weather, non-porous, rustproof and can be made acid-resisting. And it is good for a lifetime of service.
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Electrons at Work

How the busy family of vacuum tubes serves industry as valves, triggers and throttles of electric power.

By WILLIAM P. VOGEL, JR.

WHEN you snap your radio on; when you cross the path of an electric eye and untended doors jerk open to let you pass; when you hear your train called with strident clarity above the clamor of a vast terminal, electrons have been put to work.

Electrons are controlled by vacuum tubes. And vacuum tubes in the last 15 years have gone far afield from their original uses in communications to become the valves, triggers, and throttles of modern industry.

All vacuum tubes, from the tiny nutlike affairs in hearing-aid devices to the six-foot water-cooled giants used to handle hundreds of kilowatts in radio broadcasting and power conversion, depend upon the same principle. This principle is that electrons— those ultimate bits of electrical energy— can be rapidly and automatically controlled when they are freed from a metal conductor and jump across the empty space inside the tube. Their behavior during those microseconds can be changed in almost any way that human intelligence wants it to be changed.
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