Well that certainly is an interesting way to cross a harbor. I can’t imagine why the Golden Gate beat out this design. Wouldn’t you feel completely safe driving through a “boat tunnel”?

“Boat Tunnel” for Harbor Crossing

PROPOSED as a substitute for the suggested Golden Gate suspension bridge at San Francisco is an ingenious boat tunnel of unique design which, it is claimed, can be built for one-third the estimated $35,000,000 cost of a suspension bridge. This and other advantages of the design have led authorities to consider seriously the erection of the boat tunnel bridge, which would be the only one of its kind in the world. It was conceived by Cleve F. Shaffer of San Francisco.
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According to this article being a race car driver in the 1920′s was no walk in the park. It seems that many of the drivers on the race circuit would drive their actual race car from one event to the other and take off the fenders and head lights just before race time. I’m guessing life got a lot easier when people figured out you could just paint a giant Tide logo on your car and people would give you money.

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Gambling with Death on the Speedway
Auto Racing Kings Risk Lives through Love of Game and with Scant Hopes of Fame or Financial Reward

STORMING down the long straightaway on a sun-baked oval, skidding into steeply banked curves and flashing past cheering crowds in a throbbing, roaring creation of steel and rubber, may seem like sport to the casual spectator at an automobile race, but it is the hardest kind of work to the drivers. Also, it serves a practical purpose to the ordinary motor-car owner—the man in the street—for the speedway has ever been the laboratory in which the latest designs of the engineers are submitted to a fiery ordeal before being submitted to the critical public. Read the rest of this entry »

Turntable Eases Garaging

Now Frank Enos of Sausalito, Calif., just presses a button to solve what had been a difficult problem. He lives on the side of a hill, with a garage 30 feet below the level of the road and at the end of a 150-foot driveway. Backing up the hill on wet mornings was sometimes a dangerous chore, until Enos devised a turntable and installed it just before the entrance to the garage. Pressing a button puts a 1/2-horsepower geared motor to work revolving the table after Enos backs out, and he drives forward up the hill. The turntable deck is supported by 4 by 12-inch girders and 2 by 12-inch joists which are set on eight concrete piers.

TABLE FITS YOUR AUTO
Handy for light repasts, a new table may be installed in the back of the car simply by inserting four screw eyes around the sides of the interior. Adjustable supporting straps are then easily clipped on or detached. They hold the table at any desired height. The top is always level, as is shown in photo above.

Pedaling Peddler Sharpens Scissors
Both transportation and power supply for his work are furnished by the bicycle of the British scissors grinder pictured at the left. For the rear wheel of the bicycle that rolls this sharp-witted grinder from house to house in search of jobs also whirls the grinding wheels on a shaft mounted on the handlebars. A belt connects shaft and rear wheel.

This is one they got right.

REAR VIEW TV for dash of tomorrow’s auto will tell driver what’s going on behind. Universal Broadcast System made device.

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HUMAN SUBMARINE Shoots Fish with Arrows

FISH are shot with steel arrows by human submarines who cruise just below the surface of the water, in a novel variation on the sport of underwater fish hunting, which has gained great popularity along the shores of the Mediterranean. Donning goggles, and closing his nostrils with a nose clamp, the underwater hunter places one end of a rubber breathing tube in his mouth, wades into the water, and propels himself just beneath the surface by paddling with the aid of curious webfoot attachments strapped to his ankles. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2000 Popular Mechanics had an article about a guy who was riding an brand new, amazingly light 11.3 lb bike, so I’m going to call shenanigans on the 9 pounder on the second page.

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New on the Road

Engine Rests Crooked in this Mercedes Benz, a top candidate to squash the track record at Indianapolis this year. Its in-line connection to an off-center rear axle assembly adds power and gives extreme underslinging.

Squirming Irma is not the girl in the picture (who is Randee Sanford and always sits quietly) but a vigorous gadget for testing Ford springs and upholstery. It acts like a 135-pound woman squirming 11 complete squirms a minute.
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Winged Rail Car Rides on Air
CAPTIVE airplanes with clipped wings would hurtle across country at more than six miles a minute, in a “flying-railway” system proposed by a European engineer. His scheme calls for a giant new type of streamline passenger car, having stubby wing surfaces and a body like the fuselage of an airplane. At low speeds, as in starting and stopping, the vehicle rolls along standard rails on flanged wheels at front and rear. Read the rest of this entry »

Doesn’t this look like a Beastie Boys video?

Airmen Test Asbestos Suits
CLAIMED to provide considerable protection against the danger of flames from an airplane afire in mid-air, asbestos flying suits are being tested by pilots of the British Royal Air Force. The suits are light in weight and, as can be seen from the photo, do not restrict physical movement.

President Roosevelt’s personal plane which is in reality a specially designed Douglas C-54, was used by the late Chief Executive on several historic trips. Elevator made it possible for him to come aboard in his wheelchair easily.

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Good-By to the “Wobble-Stick”

By Julian Leggett

AMERICAN automobile manufacturers are agreed that the “wobble-stick” must go. As a result, the 1939 models are equipped with, or offer at small extra cost, handy little gear shifters located on the steering post to replace the long lever that stuck out of the floor in the driving compartment. Few times in automotive history-have the makers been in such accord. Perhaps other manufacturers took a tip from the favorable response which greeted the steering-post shifter introduced in 1938 by LaSalle, Cadillac and Pontiac, but more probably, they recognized it as the answer to two problems: first, how to clear the front compartment without using an expensive automatic transmission, and, second, how to eliminate noise conducted into the car by the old type lever, or wobble-stick.
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