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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“VACUUM-TUBE” SIGNS YIELD LIGHT AT SMALL COST
“Vacuum-tube” signs, consisting of continuous glass tubing bent into lettering or numerals, the whole being lighted by either direct or alternating current at common voltages, are new advertising features. As many as three lines of script or number units may be arranged in one sign, which displays a deep-red or orange color when illuminated. The operating cost is negligible, as only from 8 to 10 watts are required for any length or number of units. No noticeable heat is radiated from the tubing, which is thus said to yield a “cold” light.

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.

Baby-Feeding Gadgets Form Odd Collection
RANGING from crude clay cups used by the “mound builders” to the latest sanitary nursing bottle, baby-feeding gadgets collected as a hobby by Dr. D. Edward Overton, of Garden City, N.Y., record 500 years of history. Among the fifty or more items in Dr. Overton’s collection are early nursing bottles with nipples of ivory, tin, whalebone, and glass. Some of the glass bottles are shaped like human heads. Others, resembling powderhorns, were produced by pioneers from cow horns by tying a piece of thin leather over the small end to form the nipple. Whale-oil wicks in the lower compartment of one “two-story” metal feeder made it possible to heat the milk contained in the upper section.

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.

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END OF ANOTHER NAZI DREAM . . .
THIS WAS GERMANY’S FLIVVER
“PEOPLE’S CAR” PROMISED BY HITLER IS ERSATZ JEEP

BACK in the thirties, when Germany’s war preparations were weighing heavily on her people, Nazi leaders dangled before the public a vision of a wonderful “poor man’s car” soon to pour from the factories. It was to be an automotive marvel, light, fast, roomy, and inexpensive; and it would reward Germans for the low wages, long hours, and shortages.

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WONDERS OF ANT LIFE SEEN IN GLASS HOME
Between two photographic plates, held in a wooden frame, a New Hampshire naturalist placed dirt and thus constructed an anthouse with transparent walls. By this means the activity of an insect city is easily studied. The tunnels and subterranean chambers made by the ants are clearly visible and their work can be seen from each side of the glass home. The transparent cages offer more varied activity than a goldfish bowl, and the ants require much less attention than goldfish. The case is provided with a handle.

Isn’t this from Innerspace?

Metal Diving Suit Developed
FITTED with ball bearing knuckle joints, which provide mobility for the wearer, a new all-metal diving suit is said to enable a diver to descend to a depth of 1,200 feet. The suit eliminates the need for air lines, having a specially designed built-in air tank. Hand-operated grappling irons are a feature of the suit.