The planes that don’t (try to) redesign people
Design of every Douglas airliner starts at a single point, you—your comfort in the air, from breathing to eating to relaxing.
Basically, this is the result of the correct aerodynamic design of Douglas planes which you can recognize in the straight-line shape from the nose right back to the single tail.
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Undersea Classroom Reveals Ocean Secrets
DOWN among the coral reefs off the Florida coast lies the world’s strangest college laboratory—the under sea classroom of the marine zoology department of the University of Miami.
Clad in bathing suits, the class sails to the laboratory site, dons diving helmets and sinks into the sea, as assistants on the boat above send fresh supplies of oxygen pulsing through the air tubes.
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Young MISTER CORD ~ TITAN of Transportation
From a battered flivver E. L. Cord has built an empire of automobiles, airplanes, ships and railroads. Here is the story of the amazing career of this young mechanic who became a financial genius.
A youth of 20 proudly drove a battered flivver out of a dealer’s yard in Los Angeles. The engine wheezed and died.
The youth spun the crank futilely. Then he pushed the car to an incline, and it rolled downward just as he got a precarious footing on the running board. He tumbled into the seat and grabbed the wheel. The motor awoke and the car chugged on.
Three weeks later the youth appeared in the yard—behind the wheel of a glisteningly maroon “speedster.”
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Fishtail Drive PROPELS BOATS and MODEL PLANES
FOR ten years, Arthur D. Hill, Jr., a California commercial fisherman, has been observing and studying how the vibrating tails of fish enable them to dart through the water at great speeds. He also noted that birds, with their flapping wings, were still more efficient in flight than the most modern of airplanes with fixed wings. Puzzling out the principles involved, Hill determined to combine the methods of bird and fish, and he has finally developed an odd fishtail drive for Propelling model airplanes, and boats ranging from toy craft up to vessels thirty-five feet in length.
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I’m guessing that someone’s last thought as they hurtled through the intersection right in front of a fast moving truck was “Why did someone paint ‘POTS’ on the ground?”
Optical Illusion Improves Visibility of Highway Markers
Optical illusions are now being turned to the cause of highway safety with the recent development by Frank McLaughlin, a Chicago, Ill., industrial designer, of road signs that are said to have a three-dimensional effect, although they are actually stenciled flat on the pavement. Designed according to a mathematical formula that applies to each letter of the alphabet, the sign’s property of seeming to stand up away from the street makes it visible to motorists 150 feet farther away than conventional road markers.
Man, you should have seen the Mormon Meteor go! The Jumping Jew and the Leaping Lutheran never had a chance.
JENKINS TUNES NEW SPEED MACHINE
Racer’s engine burnt alcohol, produces 550 horsepower at 8,500 r.p.m. to drive car at 260 m.p.h. Three Winfield carburetors feed 38,000-r.p.m. supercharger; aftercooler, on top of block, prevents pre-ignition. Compression ratio is 24 to one.
Front-wheel drive helps hold the “Mobil Special” on its course. Front wheels are individually sprung, with torsion bars replacing ordinary leaf springs. Tires’ rubber tread is only 3/32-inch thick.
Bud Winfield, who built the engine, examines completed car. Tail, narrowing to a thin line, is designed to stabilize machine while it races over a 10-mile circle on the hard-packed natural track.
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Farmer’s Car Pulls Plow over an Acre in Three Hours
Instead of hitching up a horse or tractor, one farmer harnesses his automobile to the plow. One man drives the sedan, keeping the car wheels on one side in the previous cut of the plow; his partner handles the plow. In that way they turn an acre of ground in less than three hours. The plow is attached to the rear bumper with a chain at the side toward the furrow being turned.
New Guns for Human Bullets
By George B. Waltz, Jr.
Drawings by Lester Fagans
TAKING an all-out ride in the Navy’s newest laboratory “gun” will be like sitting astride a standard aircraft rocket as it starts toward its target. This “gun” is a human centrifuge to end all centrifuges—a giant, high-speed merry-go-round capable of making a man feel like a bullet being shot from a rifle.
Scientists will use the machine to learn a good many new facts about the physiological and psychological effects of high speeds and sudden changes in speed. They will do it by subjecting pilots to tremendous forces of acceleration and deceleration. As pilots and airplane manufacturers strive to bore deeper and deeper into the “no man’s land” of supersonic and super-supersonic flight, new problems are arising. It is not now so much a question of whether the plane will hold together as: “Will the pilot?”
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Wonder Subway Built Under Skyscrapers on Stilts
Propping up multi-storied skyscrapers on stilts, burrowing beneath railway tunnels, digging out huge chunks of solid rock, thousands of workmen have just completed the most amazing engineering job of its kind on record—the construction of New York City’s newest subway, which is the very last word in underground transportation luxury.
by THOMAS M. JOHNSON
ONE winter day 62 years ago, wheels turned in the first underground railway ever operated in an American city. Really it was a block-long subterranean pneumatic tube, through which a steam-driven fan blew a singe 18-passenger car, then sucked it back.
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