Flashlights Reveal Frog Monsters
Camera Hunters Find Strange Reptiles EXTRAORDINARY flashlight photographs of strange barking and climbing frogs that inhabit the coral island of Santo Domingo in the West Indies form part of a valuable collection of reptilian life recently gathered for the American Museum of Natural History by Dr. and Mrs. G. Kingsley Noble.
In one of the most unusual scientific expeditions ever undertaken, the explorers used automatic flashlights to photograph frogs in their native haunts. Months of preparatory labor were spent in perfecting this method of photography, which Doctor Noble first practised in obtaining pictures of frogs that infest New Jersey meadows.
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Anybody have a similar shot from today?
NEW YORK SKYLINE NOW AND FIFTY YEARS AGO
Nearly half a century lies between the two views of New York City’s skyline shown in the pictures above. The two photographs were taken from the same point—a tower of the famous Brooklyn Bridge. The upper one was made only the other day and the lower one is over forty-seven years old.
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COLOR PRINTING by the yard
A NEW assembly-line technique is turning out as many as 300 prints an hour from Kodachrome and Ansco transparencies, providing seven-day service to the growing army of color photographers. The speedy apparatus that makes this possible has recently been put to work by Pavelle Color, Inc., at its plant in New York City. Electronic controls in the enlarging machines make them function almost automatically in blowing up 35-mm. transparencies to 3 by 4-1/2-inch “Printon” prints.
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That grizzly bear chair is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.
Eye-Stoppers
QUAFFER EXTRAORDINARY is Auguste Maffrey, French beer-drinking champ, who slurps up about 12 quarts of suds in 52 minutes from king-sized vat. Any challengers?
GRIZZLY-BEAR chair presented to President Andrew Johnson in 1865 won’t take a chunk from your hide when you sit down, but only a man with steady nerves can relax in it
TIBETAN GHOST TRAP imprisons visitors from space, it says here. Trap at rear is for demons who bring illness.
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CAMERA TAKES 60,000 PICTURES A SECOND
Many believed that the ultimate limit in high-speed photography had been reached when Baron Shiba, Japanese engineer, announced not long ago a camera that could take 40,500 pictures a second (P.S.M., May ‘31, p. 143). Now, however, the Japanese Institute of Aeronautical Research at Tokyo has installed an amazing camera that can take as many as 60,000 photographs in a single second’s time. It will be used to film the movement of air at high speed around models of airplane wings and struts.
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GIANT Pictures From Pigmy Prints
By H.H. Slawson
LIKE all big things that have a small beginning, the making of giant photomurals was just a little idea back in 1927, when Mrs. C. B. Goodspeed of Chicago walked into the photo studio of Kaufmann & Fabry. She carried with her a 4×5 negative of India’s famed Taj Mahal and explained to the skeptical Messrs. Kaufmann & Fabry that her idea was to have a picture large enough to cover the entire wall of an alcove in her home.
“We told her at once,” said Arthur E. Clason, the veteran photographer who eventually completed the job, “that a picture the size she wanted had never been made before. Enlargements, as known today, were unheard of. The widest paper available was only forty inches, so three strips would be required to cover her eight-foot alcove.
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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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Flying Cameras Map America for War
By ANDREW R. BOONE
FROM aerial photographs snapped by giant bombers soaring four miles above the earth, U. S. Army engineers are compiling maps that will serve as eyes for our armed forces if they ever have to wage a defensive war on American soil.
Flying out of Fort Lewis, Wash., the camera planes have recently been engaged in photographing all unmapped areas between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific, from Puget Sound to the Siskiyou Mountains of California. With their multiple cameras they make five pictures at a crack, one straight down and four at angles ahead, astern, and to the sides. Finished prints of the photographs are sent to the 29th Engineers at Portland, Ore. Here, in two old school buildings, they are turned into topographical maps showing all important features that would figure in wartime plans.
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