Yay! It’s a spork.
Household Inventions Lighten the Tasks of the Homemaker
LAMP SHADE TURNS UP OR DOWN
This new-type floor lamp has a shade which can be tilted up toward the ceiling for indirect illumination or down for close work. A mercury-capsule switch automatically turns on a 150-watt bulb when the shade is turned up; an ordinary switch controls the smaller bulb for close work
SPOON AND FORK COMBINED
The new piece of cutlery illustrated at the left is a cross between a spoon and a fork. It is recommended for eating gravies, stews, peas, desserts, and many other foods. It can be used with a knife, like any fork
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Not too shabby considering Disney’s Hall of Presidents didn’t come out until 1971.
PAST PRESIDENTS “TALK” IN EXHIBIT
Five of our most famous presidents come to life in a unique historical exhibit designed by a New York inventor for display in stores and schools. Under the control of an operator offstage, figures representing Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Grover Cleveland rise in turn and deliver excerpts from some of their most famous speeches. Levers like those in a signal tower raise and seat the figures, and the voices are supplied by sixteen-inch phonograph records and reproduced by loudspeakers hidden behind the stage. Dummy microphones give the exhibit a modern touch, suggesting that these former chief executives might have assembled to take part in a present-day meeting.
That looks just like a modern butane lighter, but with a MUCH bigger fuel tank.
Gas Under Pressure Operates Lighter
Butane gas under pressure is the fuel used in a new cigarette lighter that yields more than 3000 lights before the tank is empty. A small knob is pushed with the thumb to release the jet of gas before the spark wheel is spun. When the fuel tank is empty, it is replaced with a new unit. The fuel from one tank will burn for three hours. It provides an odor-free flame and a “tasteless” light.
This looks like an early version of a defibrillator.
PHYSICIAN INVENTS Self-Starter for Dead Man’s Heart
WHAT can be done when the heart ceases to beat? Under all sorts of different conditions, a doctor often is confronted with this urgent question.
The ambulance physician faces it with the victim of heart stroke, drowning, or accident. The surgeon faces it when the pulse of an etherized patient suddenly stops. The family physician faces it when a baby is still born or when a mother’s heart stops during childbirth.
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This is one idea that certainly stuck around.
Prismatic Auto Mirror Cuts Headlight Glare
Glare in the rear-view mirror from the headlights of the car behind is cleverly avoided by the mirror above. Front and back surfaces of the mirror are not quite parallel; in section, the mirror is slightly wedge-shaped. For daytime, bright-reflection use, the mirror is set so that you See the bright image that bounces off its silvered rear surface in the conventional way.
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I wonder when people started using the term suntan instead of sunburn. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was invented by Coppertone to distinguish between a “good” sunburn and a “bad” sunburn.
Sunburn Is “Made to Order” for Customers by Portrait Photographer
IF A person desires to appear in a portrait with a healthy glow of tan, Preston Duncan, Hollywood photographer, satisfies that desire by using a special lamp that sheds a golden ray of sunburn over the subject when the picture is being taken. The ray is produced so that it registers perfectly on the negative. The color is contained in the glass plate through which the light is shown.
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Here we have the birth of the customized form letter.
Typewriter Works Automatically
To speed up routine office correspondence, such as form letters, reminders of overdue accounts, and similar business forms, an automatic typewriter recently placed on the market types prepared paragraphs of text on letterhead stationery, making it necessary for a stenographer only to fill in the salutation, address, and additional dictated material meant for a specific addressee. Electrically operated, the machine has a control dial with which any one of several prepared texts may be selected at will for automatic typing on stationery inserted in the machine.
Oh joy. The birth of musak and the blue light special.
GROCERY STORES GET MUSIC IN “WIRED - RADIO” PROGRAMS
HOUSEWIVES in New York City are now buying their groceries to the strains of concert orchestras, as the result of a recently inaugurated “wired-radio” service being offered to hotels, restaurants, and shops. Special musical programs, reproduced from high-grade recordings in a central studio, are transmitted by direct telephone lines to loudspeakers installed in fifty stores of a large grocery chain.
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It’s hard to imagine a hospital without a P.A. system.
Loudspeakers Page Hospital Doctors
No time is lost in calling any particular physician in one of New York’s big hospitals, where a new paging system has just been installed. When a telephone call for a doctor is received at the central switchboard, it is referred to an operator who, finding the doctor is in the hospital, repeats his name before a microphone. Eighty-five loudspeakers in the corridors and ante-rooms of the hospital broadcast the message. Wherever he is, the doctor takes the call at the nearest telephone. Western Electric engineers, who installed the system, provided controls for adjusting the volume of the loudspeakers.
This is one they got right.
REAR VIEW TV for dash of tomorrow’s auto will tell driver what’s going on behind. Universal Broadcast System made device.
