New Take-Along Telephones Give You Pushbutton Calling to Any Number
This amazing phone system could handle thousands of calls simultaneously, patching yours directly into a phone exchange
By JOHN R. FREE
The caller pushed the portable phone’s off-hook button. For a split second, the telephone—a new type of computerized, walkie-talkie-size portable—”chatted” inaudibly with a minicomputer in another building. Then I heard a familiar dial tone, and the caller tapped the pushbutton keyboard, placing a call around the world to Australia.
Motorola’s Communications Division was demonstrating its Dynatac phone system in a New York Hilton penthouse suite. For each call, the portable was tied directly into a telephone exchange several blocks away over an ultra-high-frequency (uhf) radio signal. Dynatac bypasses the mobile-telephone operators required to place calls with conventional mobile and portable phones.
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Well, it is cordless. I doesn’t look all that convenient to tote around though.
Cordless phone
Shown in its recharging tray (immediate right), the Satellite Phone communicates via radio to a transponder (center), which is connected to the phone line. Transmitter and receiver built into a phone (far right) make it cordless. It’s $395 with charger from Keltner Research, 2126 S. Kalamath, Denver, Colo. 80223.
Putting Color Into the Movies
Everyone has seen the new color-talkies on the screen, but few people know how the startlingly life-like color effects are produced. This article gives the story of how technicolor films are made.
by RAY FRASER
BACK in 1915, Herbert T. Kalmus, a struggling chemistry instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, invented a camera which took two pictures at the same click.
He had hopes that it would prove helpful to the country constable in trapping the speeding motorist. The picture thus obtained would prove scientifically the speed at which the automobile was traveling and also register the number of the vehicle.
When he tried to find his way to a practical application, he found that one camera of this type would cost more than the sum total of taxes collected by most townships for a single year. But he felt he had an idea and clung to it tenaciously.
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I wonder if Gene Shalit already had that crazy mustache when he wrote this in 1966. I was looking for a picture of him to link to and I found this instead. (warning: may not be safe for work. Contains 8-bit music and pictures of Gene Shalit)
Also check out: HOW TO SELECT A MATE (Jan, 1965), and The Truth About Petting (Jan, 1937)
boy… girl… computer
New dating craze sweeps the campus
PRODUCED BY GENE SHALIT, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PHILLIP HARRINGTON
Out of computers, faster than the eye can blink, fly letters stacked with names of college guys and girls—taped, scanned, checked and matched. Into the mails speed the compatible pairs, into P.O. boxes at schools across the land. Eager boys grab their phones… anxious coeds wait in dorms … a thousand burrrrrrrings jar the air . . . snow-job conversations start, and yeses are exchanged: A nationwild dating spree is on. Thousands of boys and girls who’ve never met plan weekends together, for now that punch-card dating’s here, can flings be far behind? And oh, it’s so right, baby. The Great God Computer has sent the word. Fate. Destiny. Go-go-go.
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These machines appear in just about every computer history time line I’ve ever seen. In 1911 the Hollerith Tabulating Machine company merged with the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and the patents for these tabulators became the basis for their primary product line of punched card systems. You might know C-T-R better by it’s current name.
As an aside, one thing I’ve noticed as I’ve started scanning earlier and earlier magazines is that sometime in the late 1920’s somebody decided that paragraphs that ran the length of an entire page were not entirely helpful and writers started making them much shorter. Whoever is responsible for this change has my profound thanks.
If you’d like to see how the technology advanced, here are articles about the 1940 , 1950 and 1960 censuses.
THE MECHANICAL WORK OF THE TWELFTH CENSUS.
BY EDWARD W. BYRN.
Now that the Census Bureau has been made a permanent branch of the government, it attains the dignity and importance which its merits deserve. A popular impression prevailing among a large number of people is that the main part of the work of the Census is the taking of it, that is to say, the gathering of the data. That nothing could be more erroneous is evidenced by the fact that by legislative enactment a single month only was allowed for the taking of the Twelfth Census, while two years were given within which to tabulate the data. The data collected can have no meaning or value to the legislator and the student of sociology and political economy until classified into categories which form a basis for comparisons and conclusions.
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Penniless INVENTOR Gets Million for Photo Machine
Ten years ago a penniless prisoner of the Bolsheviks; today an American millionaire! This fascinating story tells how a young Russian inventor persevered through years of discouragement and finally perfected a machine for taking automatic photos which he sold for a million dollars.
By ORVILLE H. KNEEN
BEGINNING in 1888 with the first crude gum-dispenser, hundreds of different steel-encased, gear-spring, lever-plus salesmen have been invented, down to the latest which pleasantly says “thank you” as it digests your nickel. But until a few short months ago the very idea of automatic portraiture seemed absurd. Certainly anyone familiar with the complicated and highly technical process of adjusting the light, posing a trembling sitter, waiting for an elusive smile or appearance of sanity, developing and fixing plate or film, and finally making recognizable prints, would be the last to turn the job over to machinery.
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I had no idea that people were working on in-flight refueling this early.
FILLING STATIONS of the SKY
How Fuel Is Passed From One Plane to Another to Keep Record Shattering Endurance Flyers Aloft Hour After Hour Ever wonder how endurance flyers managed to take on fuel, oil and food when on their record-breaking jaunts? The special technique employed by their sky tank wagons is graphically explained in the drawings and photos on these pages.
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The Age of Mechanical Marvels
ICE age, stone age, steel age, and now— The Age of Mechanical Miracles!
And we are living in the midst of it! Within a bare score of years airplanes have developed from frail-powered kites to tremendous craft that span oceans in one jump. Radio has disclosed its miracles in millions of homes, and is reaching out toward the wonders of television.
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In 1938 New York had roughly seven million people and the FDNY had ONE ambulance. Wow.
New Hospital on Wheels
By John E. Lodge
BRINGS FIRST AID TO MEN WHO FIGHT NEW YORK’S FIRES FIVE-ALARM FIRE! Thirty-five engines and trucks racing through the streets before dawn. Three hundred crack smoke eaters battling a block-square conflagration. That was the scene, a few weeks ago, when 3,000,000 feet of lumber in a big Brooklyn, N.Y., yard turned into billowing clouds of smoke and darting streamers of flame.
For hours, the firemen fought to keep the blaze from spreading. One man was carried out with a broken leg. Another was hurried from the scene with blood streaming from a gashed hand. Still others staggered about with eyes so inflamed they could hardly see. By the time the blaze was under control, twenty-one firemen were on the injured list. In aiding them, New York City’s new $10,000 fire ambulance—an amazingly complete, ninety-mile-an-hour hospital on wheels—played an important part. The big fire was its spectacular initiation into service.
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