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Will You Lose Your Job Because of A New Machine?

By MICHEL MOK

AN ENGLISH watchmaker’s apprentice named John Kay, in 1738, invented a flying shuttle for weaving cotton. This was the first modern labor-saving device and with its aid, one man could do the work of two.

To the amazement of the young inventor, a roar of protest rose from the English weavers when it was introduced. Thirty years later, Kay aided in the development of a second labor-saving device, the spinning jenny. When this was installed in the English cotton factories, riots broke out.

An American manufacturer named Lloyd Raymond Smith, president of the A. 0. Smith Corporation put into operation at Milwaukee, Wis., in 1920, an automatic plant for making automobile frames. His monstrous machinery turns out steel automobile frames at the rate of 10,000 per day—one every eight seconds of the day and night. ‘ Two hundred men do the work of 2,000. Only fifty of them actually touch the frames. Without doubt, the Smith plant is the most complete instance of the use of labor-saving methods to be found in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

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Where TELEVISION Stands Today

by DAVID SARNOFF

President, Radio Corporation of America What progress is being made in television? How far has it advanced today? What new developments lie in the immediate future? These pressing questions, about which the vast public waiting for television is wondering, are answered in this unusual article by Mr. Sarnoff, whose eminence in the field enables him to speak with unquestioned authority.

IMPORTANT strides are being made with television. In our development work now proceeding at Camden, N. J., we are seeking to perfect television to a point where it is capable of rendering real service before offering it to the public.
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MI Readers Suggest: Amazing Marvels of Tomorrow

Here are the 50 Golden Hammer-winning inventions for the world of 2055, selected from the thousands submitted by MI readers.

Illustrated by Gurney Miller IF YOU future-minded MI readers can bear to cast a backward glance (just to the March 1955 issue) you’ll recall a rosy forecast of the year 2055 A.D. entitled Amazing Marvels Of Tomorrow by that joyous prophet O. O. Binder. In connection with that article we announced that 50 Golden Hammers would be given for the 50 best ideas for inventions that would make the world of 2055 even jollier. From the thousands of suggestions that poured in from enthusiastic futurists we have selected the 50 below. Some of these ideas were sent in by as many as 20 different readers. In such cases, when the idea was a winner, we gave the award to the writer of the letter with the earliest postmark. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Age of Man-Made Rubber

CHEMISTS’ dream of making a better rubber than nature can produce has come true. Barely six years after the first commercial production of synthetic rubber in the United States, the industry now functions on a million-dollar scale and hopes to reach the billion-dollar class before the end of the next decade.

There are two synthetic rubbers being produced in the United States. One called thiokol is manufactured by the Thiokol Corporation, and the other, duprene, is a product of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc. Thiokol is the discovery of Dr. J. C. Patrick and has been on the market since 1930.
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The headline makes it sound like this article is about computers, but actually it’s about the birth of the electronics industry at a time when you couldn’t even get a degree in electrical engineering.

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Electrical INDUSTRY Creates Mechanical Brains

by Robert Francis

The electric eye, which functions as a virtual automatic brain, is working miracles in industry, and may soon oust the human brain and hand from the control levers of machinery. This field offers many new opportunities.

THE most promising, the most amazing and without doubt the most fascinating field of endeavor today is electronics, the baby billion-dollar industry.

Indeed there is no industry in America however large, however undeveloped, however needful of bright young minds and willing young hands, that can offer even a small percentage of the opportunities that are literally begging acceptance in electronics.
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Scientific HIGHLIGHTS of Chicago’s WORLD FAIR

It looks like the Chicago Fair were built especially for M-M fans. It is replete with the kind of mechanical wonders shown here.

While you’re casually viewing this display of priceless jewels an armed guard is watching your every move. If glass is broken, tray drops into vault.

If, when visiting the Fair, you’re curious as to the temperature at the moment, all you have to do is glance around the horizon and this world’s largest thermometer is sure to come within your view to tell you what you want to know. Read the rest of this entry »

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Escape from the pressures of modern life … Relax in contemplation after building

Your Very Own Meditator

By KEN ISAACS – PS Design Consultant

“I vant to be alone.” When Greta Garbo made her often-quoted remark, years ago, it may have had a deeper meaning than escape from pursuing newsmen. Everybody occasionally wants to be alone. We all need privacy to renew ourselves for the fast pace of modern living. As old as mankind, this inner need is today more urgent than ever before.

Mohandas Gandhi was perhaps this century’s outstanding exponent of aloneness—of personal meditation. Gandhi’s inspiration came in part from our own Henry David Thoreau, who fled to the natural solitude of Walden Pond. And Thoreau was a real soul brother of our western man of the mountains, naturalist John Muir.
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Can Russia Defeat Us With Atom Bombs?

Assuming that the Reds have enough A-bombs and the planes to deliver them—could they blast us into military, social and economic chaos by a sneak bombing attack on certain key American cities?

By Ralph Coniston

“THIS is WQZ, your favorite local station for music and news, bringing you a noonday program of recorded hit tunes. The first number on today’s show will be. …

“Just one moment, please. Here’s an important bulletin from our newsroom, just handed me. It’s date-lined Washington, D. C.

“A terrific explosion has just wrecked downtown Washington. The blast, of unknown origin, seems to have damaged communication lines out of the city.

“I can’t tell you any more because there is no more to the bulletin. So, until further news comes in we’ll return to our.
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Um… This doesn’t seem like the greatest idea.

Hitch-Hikers Get a Waiting Room of Their Own

Performing the role of the good Samaritan to the nation-wide fraternity of automobile hitch-hikers, the owner of a service station in Albion, Mich., recently established a hitchhikers’ depot hard by his row of gasoline pumps. Nailed to a tree, a large sign visible to approaching motorists at a good distance, identifies the spot, while a painted hand, with the thumb outstretched in the traditional manner, does the spade work for tired hikers.

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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. Read the rest of this entry »

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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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Wow.

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