Not quite a smoke detector, it has to reach 145 degrees to go off.

Alarm Warns Of Fire In Cellar Of Home
ATTACHED on the ceiling or wall over a furnace, a new automatic fire-alarm device invented by T. E. Campbell, of Wilkinsburg, Pa., provides added protection for the home. If the furnace overheats or a fire breaks out, the alarm rings the doorbell when the temperature reaches 145 degrees, allowing time for investigation before the fire gains headway. The device is small enough to fit in the hand (insert), yet is rugged in construction, its adjustment being unaffected by hard knocks.

Given all the stories I’ve been reading at the Consumerist, it wouldn’t surprise me if the airlines still used these things.

Electronic Machine Speeds Fliqht Information to Area Offices

American Airlines has turned to an electronic machine to provide fast, accurate flight information to all its offices in the New York area. The machine, the Magne-tronic Reservisor, is already in use, handling reservations automatically. In its new utilization, information on all flights, incoming and outgoing, is fed into the whirling drum that is the machine’s “memory,”
and is then available at any airline office in the area. To obtain the information, an agent has only to push a simple combination of buttons on the branch-office keyboard. The answer is returned in flashing lights. Immediately available flight information allows the agent to answer queries at once instead of checking bulletin-board postings.

Telephones Will “Ring” With Musical Tones
Telephone users will welcome the news that the Bell Telephone Laboratories is experimenting with a new device that will eliminate the b-r-r-r-ing of present-day instruments. The gadget, using transistors, will produce pleasant musical tones resembling those of a clarinet. Sound emanates through the louvred area at the base of the set, shown in the photo with a white background.
This device requires less than 1 volt for operation; the ordinary telephone bell needs about 85 volts. A full-scale field trial of the new equipment is expected to provide enough technical data and customers’ reactions to help determine its future.

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Perfected Television Now Ready for the Public

Practical television is here! Philo Farnsworth’s compact electron camera transmitter and cathode ray receiver will bring movies, radio studio, and even outdoor scenes to every home with magical, photographic clearness.

by DEAN S. JENNINGS

MOVIES, plucked from the air . . . Football games, seen from a fireside chair . . .

Distant places, noted stars of the stage, industry at work, drama, thrills, all living on a screen in your radio set!

No dream this—for television is now perfected and ready for a hungry market, ready for your home! And before many months pass its wonders will be commonplace, its intricacies clear to every radio set owner.

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Ahh, the birth of the hanging chad.

Electricity Grades Student Papers
IMPERSONAL electricity, which never grows tired or irritated by wrong answers, will be used in several schools this winter to correct examination papers. By means of a small device invented by Joseph Sveda and Herbert Lehmann, two New Jersey high school teachers, the papers will be electrically corrected at the rate of 25 a minute.
On the examination paper, the student punches out disks corresponding to “yes” or “no,” and “true” or “false” in answer to the questions. The correct perforations set up an electrical contact when passing through the machine, and the number of contacts represents the student’s grade.

“Impossible, you say? The miracle of electronics has all but removed the word “impossible” from the dictionary.”

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Make the POP’tronics Secretary

Tell your friends that their telephone messages to you will he recorded by electronics

By TRACY DIERS

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE to have a secretary who will answer your phone and take messages at any hour of the day or night but who will demand no pay and no coffee breaks? Impossible, you say? The miracle of electronics has all but removed the word “impossible” from the dictionary.

There are two types of systems you can build which will do this job for you. The deluxe system requires two tape machines or one tape machine and one disc machine— when a call comes in, it plays a recording of instructions and then switches over to record the message. The simpler type, to be described here, requires only one recorder and anyone who can put together a small amplifier can build it.

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Two-Wheel Skates Cut Noise
Centered wheels give these new roller skates the feel and maneuverability of ice skates. The artificial-rubber wheels, rounded instead of flat, are said to be less noisy, speedier, better for pivots and sudden stops. The two-wheelers are made by the Rocket Skate Co., Burbank, Calif.

This is the tank driving around in fast-forward at the beginning of the movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

Armored Tank Attains Speed Of 114 MPH.
AN ALL-WELDED armor-plated army tank which, it is claimed, can attain a speed of 114 m.p.h. over a level road and 78 m.p.h. over rough ground was recently demonstrated at Rahway, N. J. Invented by Preston Tucker, an armament manufacturer, the tank weighs 10,000 pounds, which is 2,000 pounds less than the present conventional type. Besides machine guns, it features an anti-aircraft cannon, which is mounted in a turret atop the rear of the armored body.

Cream Whipped By Expanding Gas

AT THE push of a button, ordinary cream, subjected to a new process, can now be turned into whipping cream. The cream is first put up by the dairy in containers of automobile steel. Rendered air-tight by the elimination of oxygen, the container next receives an injection of nitrous oxide gas. As the housewife presses the button on the top of the small cask, the nitrous oxide expands, forcing out the cream under pressure and, through aeration, whips the product.

Personally, I think these wacky “turn signals” are just a fad.

AUTOMOBILE DRIVERS Flash Your Turns

New Model SIMPLEX DIRECTION SIGNAL KIT fits most ears. Gives new safety and comfort when making turns. Eliminates arm signals. Flashing parking and tail lights show other cars which way you’re going to turn. Flashes 60 to 80 times a minute. Works like factory installed models on expensive cars. Does not interfere with operation of present lights. Install it yourself. All parts furnished. For most 1942 to 1949 cars. SPECIFY MAKE AND YEAR. Adaptable to earlier cars at extra cost. MONEY BACK GUARANTEE.
DEALER INQUIRIES INVITED

Camera Gives Print in a Minute

NOW you can snap a picture and see it only a minute later. The camera that does this is an entirely new type. It’s the first production model of the Polaroid Land Camera (PS, May, ‘47, p. 150). It costs less than $100.
The camera uses a special film that gives you eight pictures. Each one costs just a little more than you’d pay for drug-store processing of ordinary prints of this size.
Contained in the roll of positive paper are eight tiny capsules of jellied reagent. When you advance the film after snapping a picture, a capsule is opened as it passes between two rollers. The jelly simultaneously develops the negative and forms a print. You pull out the print after a 60-second wait. For extra prints, you make another exposure or copy the original.
One control sets both shutter speed and lens opening. Numbers from 1 to 8 in an opening above the lens show whether the camera’s set for bright sun or poor light conditions. The camera has flash contacts.

This show looks like it was really cool. It’s basically American Inventor without the overt competition.

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BBC Puts Inventors On TV
INVENTIONS ARE the stars of one of the most popular television shows in Britain.

The Television Inventors’ Club of the British Broadcasting Corporation has been on the air for seven years. During this time more than 7000 inventions have been submitted to the club, of which 580 have been shown on the air. A quarter of these have caught the eyes of manufacturers and many are already in production.

The inventions range from a simple shirt stud which allows for the shrinkage of the collar, to a compressible ship’s fender which eases a 24,000-ton vessel against a dock.

A number of British inventors have hit the jackpot through the program. One of them actually did it with a better mousetrap, and the world has already beaten a path to his door to the tune of over a million sales. Years of patient observation taught the inventor that a mouse twists its head when approaching the bait and nibbles from below. His trap therefore springs when the bait is lifted—not pushed down. A tidy profit was also made by the inventor of a stair elevator for invalids. A moving step, carried on rails, is drawn up the staircase by a cable and winch. More than 500 inquiries poured into the BBC when this device was shown on TV.

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