I love this picture.
.MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED PIN-UP CAR
1913 IMP CYCLECAR
Owner: R. F. Clouse, Auburn, Ind. Engine: two-cylinder, air-cooled, 12 horsepower. Friction drive, four speeds forward. Sheet metal body over wood frame. Independent wheel suspension, no axles. Wheelbase 100 inches. Weight 600 pounds. Original price $375. Designed by William B. Stout.
My favorite quote: “The British jet plane, Gloucester, played an important part in turning back the robot attack on London.”
Damn those robots!
.THE JET PLANES ARE HERE!
THE thrilling story of how the jet-propelled plane was developed in this country in almost complete secrecy was revealed recently. The beginnings go back to 1941.
In the fall of that year, the employees of the Statler Hotel in Boston were puzzled by the behavior of a mysterious English guest named Whitely. He ate his meals in his room, had a private telephone installed which did not go through the hotel switchboard, and asked that all his errands be handled by one bellboy. After a week, he left the hotel.
.LIGHT BEAMS Steer SUPER RACING CARS
Speeds never before attained on land may become a reality if experiments with light beam, driverless cars are successful. Here are the mechanical features that will be involved.WITH speeds, such as recently attained by the famous Sir Malcom Campbell, already approaching the point where human reflexes are too slow to insure safe control of the car, science has turned to the photo electric cell for a possible solution. A proposed driverless car involves the use of multiple electric eyes as the heart of its steering mechanism. A powerful beam of light directed at a large lens on the front of the car is concentrated on steel mirrors set at an angle in the trackbed. The reflections are “caught” by the electric eyes which convey the electrical impulses to a mechanical-electrical brain which keeps the speeding car on its course.
The use of the electric eye for this purpose is not surprising as German railway engineers have been operating trains on the Reichsbahnzentralamt of Munich in this manner for several years-Here a spotlight is mounted on the locomotive so that it throws a beam upward to a mirror on the block signal. When the signal is red the mirror reflects the beam to photo electric cells on the locomotive which automatically set the brakes. This method was described in the Modern Mechanix for November, 1934.
.The “Dynamic Control” Ocean Liner
By Hugo Gernsback
THE tendency at the present time in airplane building is toward constantly increasing size. It is probably realized by all who have concerned themselves with aircraft that the larger machines are not very far in the future. From the earliest Wright airplane, which weighed approximately 1/2 ton, to the present record holder, the DOX, which weighed fifty tons, took a period of some 26 years. The 10,000 ton airplane, projected on a like time-scale, would, therefore, make its appearance not later than the year 1952. However, with the nature of the present-day technique, it is quite possible, at this moment, that the 10,000 ton plane will be here much sooner.
.Uncle Sam’s School for Sailors
WHEN you march through the main gate of the Naval Training Station at San Diego, Calif., as a raw recruit you leave the land behind. You will spend two months learning to be a sailor before you are assigned to the battle fleet but even though you are still on dry land, things are a lot like they are at sea.
In a couple of days you will know that a floor is really a deck and you’ll not make the mistake of calling a bulkhead a wall. You will ask whether the smoking lamp is lit instead of whether you may smoke and you will be telling time by ship’s bells instead of by hours.
.
ARE YOU FIT to DRIVE an Automobile?Modern cars have become engines of destruction in hands of unsafe drivers. Here is the story of what science is doing to rate drivers’ abilities and make streets and highways safe.
by JOHN C. HARPER
THIRTY thousand people—one every fifteen minutes—were killed by automobiles in the United States last year.
During the same period 850,000 others were injured—an amazing average of one casualty every thirty seconds of the entire year.
In the hands of the unsafe driver, the modern automobile has become a terrible engine of potential destruction. Speeds of 80 and 90 miles an hour are virtually standard in all present cars; yet a speed only slightly higher—100 miles an hour—was condemned last year by the rules committee of the Indianapolis Speedway as having “gone beyond the physical limitations of the track for safe driving.”
.Inventors Patent Odd Designs for Safer Airplanes
Unusual ships, straying away from accepted designs, are being tried in an effort to increase safety and simplify air travel. Some of the ideas are shown here.
.Toy Train Delivers Rural Mail
“NECESSITY is the mother of invention.” An Oregon rancher, living a mile from the highway, proved the truth of this old maxim when he put the world’s smallest mail train in operation over a spur line between his home and the road to save his wife the trip.
The train, powered with small dry-cell batteries, makes the trip to the road every morning, pulling a tiny mail box. Upon arrival, it is stopped by a lever laid along the track.
.TAXI PLANE Picks Up FREIGHT And Passengers for AIRLINER
HIGH speed taxi planes that can come and go from a giant “mother” air transport at
will are proposed as a means of providing fast, non-stop transcontinental air service. The smaller ship, released over a city, would land at the airport to discharge and take on passengers and freight, then soar upwards again to catch up with the slower airliner.
As may be seen from the sketches, the method of launching the taxi plane is very similar to that used by the U. S. Navy in handling pursuit planes on dirigibles. A trapeze crane lifts the small ship into the hull of the transport, where passengers may be transferred to roomy quarters on the airliner.
This reminds me of all those persistence of vision gadgets like clocks and hubcaps.
.Autogiro Blades Form Screen for Floating Ads After Dark
DISPLAY advertising at night by means of a magic lantern suspended beneath an autogiro, with the rotating blades serving as a screen, is a German inventor’s latest medium for placing a product before the public eye.
The magic lantern assembly is placed in a torpedo shaped carriage equipped with vertical and horizontal rudders to keep it in perfect alignment with the autogiro flying above. It can be raised or lowered by means of a cable, for focusing the advertiser’s message on the blades. When landing, the projector is drawn up into the fuselage.
To insure perfect reproduction of the advertisement, the under sides of the rotor blades are specially treated. The autogiro has been found to be particularly adapted for this type of aerial advertising because of its ability to hover almost motionless in the air, while the blades revolve fast enough to form an uninterrupted screen.
