Preserving Our History in a Tomb
“CRYPT OF CIVILIZATION” WILL RE-CREATE OUR DAILY LIFE FOR PEOPLE OF 8113 A.D.
THE YEAR is 8113. Spired cities built by the ancient people of the twentieth century have long since crumbled to dust. Of the airplanes and automobiles in which they traveled, not a rusted scrap remains. Their perishable tools, utensils, books, magazines, and newspapers have vanished completely. What learning they possessed is but dimly known. But where Oglethorpe University once stood, in what was Atlanta, Ga., a band of archaeologists has just unearthed a door of stainless steel. They break it open—and find themselves in a treasure house of the past. Pictures and records, perfectly preserved through the ages, tell them in every detail the long-forgotten story of what life was like in 1938.
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MIRACLES Worked by Engineers in Endless Fight for Water
By JESSE F. GELDERS
SEARING the fields of forty states, one of the worst droughts in the history of the Weather Bureau gripped the United States during the summer and fall of last year. Growing corn blistered to husks. Rivers ran dry. The contents of reservoirs, supplying great cities, sank lower day by day. Officials rationed water like war-time food and millions of people, who had taken this common fluid for granted, realized suddenly it was immensely precious.
In some places, miracles of engineering skill brought new supplies in the nick of time. Less fortunate were a number of smaller towns. With no water left anywhere within reach of their pipelines, they virtually had to have little lakes shipped to them by railway, the water coming in long trains of tank cars.
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This piece and it’s companion article, 40 Years in the Future were published in the November 1968 issue of Mechanix Illustrated.
You also might want to see the editors introduction to the first issue, then called Modern Mechanics.
40 Years Ago
AUTHOR Donald G. Cooley with Weston Farmer was co-editor of Modern Mechanics, later to be renamed Mechanix Illustrated, when the magazine was first published in November 1928. Mr. Cooley subsequently became full-time editor of MI before embarking on a career as a free-lance writer. Today Mr. Cooley is recognized as one of the foremost medical writers in the world with a number of highly regarded books bearing his name.
THE bank building in Robbinsdale, Minn., a sleepy suburb of Minneapolis, bore a sign on its brick exterior: Home of Fawcett Publications— More than 2,000,000 Readers a Month. It was a three-story building without elevators. A long flight of stairs that reversed itself at a landing where a pert redhead ran the switchboard brought you to the third floor, an expanse that bustled, buzzed, rustled, clattered and often echoed a belly-laugh as half a hundred editors, associates and secretaries went about their business.
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Well, we do have flat-screen computers you can write on that fit in a briefcase, but I’m still waiting to take my 250 MPH car to a business meeting in another domed city. Perhaps by the end of the year.
40 Years in the Future
By James R. Berry
IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.
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Wow, it’s pretty hard to imagine a time when copper was cheaper than paper.
Write Letters on Copper “Paper”
ARIZONANS have thought up a clever idea for getting rid of the surplus copper mined in the state. They are making the metal do duty as paper, and writing business and personal letters on it. The sheets are one-thousandth of an inch thick, and according to testimony make very substantial material for typing. Below is shown a steno inditing a letter on one of the copper sheets of business stationery.
IT’S NEW!
WATER TOWER dominating landscape at General Motors’ new 320-acre Technical Center in Detroit stands 140 feet high, holds up to 250,000 gallons.
FRENCH POWER-BARROW using a two-hp motor handles loads of over. 1,200 lbs. with remarkable ease, is for small volume goods-handling.
RIOT CARS of Rome, Italy, carry twin nozzle turrets that send streams of red dye into the midst of over-ardent demonstrators—an effective dampener.
SMALLEST JET in the world: the British Somers-Kendall SK-1 just before its maiden flight Two-seater has moving V-type tail, retractable extra landing wheels on wingtips.
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This is a weirdly disjointed tale of William Beebe’s Dr. S. H. Williams attempt to find a “lost world” full of dinosaurs in what is now Guyana. Beebe makes constant reference to his guide/pack mule as “my black” or “my faithful black” yet never mentions the man’s name. He also gets quite upset with his Indian guides because they were only willing to travel with him a certain distance from their homes. Obviously this meant that he was really close to finding his “lost world” and they, being the cowardly savages that they were, refused to get any closer for fear of dinosaur attack. After all, how could they abandon him after he’d so generously provided them with colored beads and calico?
Then there is this:
“Well, the little boat was chug-chugging merrily along when all of a sudden a chicken which we were keeping on board for future reference seemed to experience an unguarded moment. For with a tremendous swishing of feathers it flew overboard.”
Keeping a chicken for “future reference”? Is that a euphemism for “future consumption”? Or did he periodically examine it just to affirm that yup, it’s still a chicken?
Update: I read the intro to this completely wrong. The explorer was Dr. S. H. Williams not William Beebe. Sorry for the mix-up.
Braving Jungle Perils to Seek the Lost World
By JAMES NEVIN MILLER
In the heart of the British Guiana jungle there rises a huge plateau upon which, legend has it, there exists today scores of prehistoric reptilian monsters. The story here presented is that of a scientist’s thrilling search for the lost plateau.
A STRANGE story about yellow Indians; mice that look like kangaroos; eels able to give a man a substantial electric shock; armies of ants that number millions and march in regular formation for over six hours continuously while driving all animal life before them; rivers chock-full of weird-looking parasites; and waterfalls at least five times higher than our own spectacular Niagara, is told by Dr. S. H. Williams, naturalist of the University of Pittsburgh.
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Fighting Chinese Pirates with U.S. Marines
by JOHN CLOVELLY
Seven Yankee gunboats, patrolling the Yangtze river in conjunction with those of other nations, wage constant war against the bandits who infest this district which boasts one-third of the world’s population. Little known activities of this romantic branch of the foreign service are described in this article.
WHILE riding through an almost endless succession of dangerous rapids, whirlpools and currents in the Yangtze River, about 160 miles above Hankow, a merchant vessel operated by an American, named Captain Baker, suddenly went aground. It was night-time and a stone’s throw away could be dimly seen the craggy outlines of the shore.
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New Photocell Eyes Protect Baby Cribs From Kidnapers
ANOTHER use has been found for that mysterious power known as electricity, and this time it will find favor with all mothers. The photo-electric cell, popularly known as the “eye which never sleeps,” has been mounted on baby’s crib. It watches throughout the night, ringing an alarm the instant anyone tries to reach into the crib.
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Foreign Villages to Dominate 1934 World’s Fair
by WILLIAM L. COLLINS
Amid ultra-modern structures, old villages from far-off lands will be reproduced in detail at Chicago’s second edition of A Century of Progress, Resembling a League of Nations, the World’s Fair will present an entirely new exposition to attract visitors. Here is the first complete story of new attractions now being rushed to completion.
THE 1934 Century of Progress is bursting forth on the shores of Lake Michigan like an amazing League of Nations.
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