I like this passage:
“BLUNDERS and hoaxes have embarrassed millions of persons, have changed the course of history, and have cost their victims millions of dollars. Science itself has been the cause of blunders. Early theories, that were accepted as fact, are still used to fool a gullible public and to sell stock in perpetual motion machines and schemes to convert base metals into gold.”

Yes, that gullible, gullible public.

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The WORLD’S MOST COSTLY BLUNDERS

Eighty years before Lindbergh, the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic was reported. That blunder is no greater than other misleading tales that have fooled the world. Here are history’s outstanding blunders and hoaxes.

by H. H. SLAWSON

BLUNDERS and hoaxes have embarrassed millions of persons, have changed the course of history, and have cost their victims millions of dollars. Science itself has been the cause of blunders. Early theories, that were accepted as fact, are still used to fool a gullible public and to sell stock in perpetual motion machines and schemes to convert base metals into gold.

In many cases newspapers have been the victim of hoaxes and blunders. The general attitude is to blame the newspapers for carelessness, but speed is so important to a highly competitive news gathering organization that little time can be devoted to checking back on stories.

One of the greatest journalistic blunders occurred in 1844 when a New York newspaper reported the sensational news of the first successful flight across the Atlantic. The story gave a very convincing account of the purported landing of a balloon near Charleston, S. C, after crossing the Atlantic from Europe in the astounding time of three days.

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Very interesting article about the industrial designer Egemont Arens, who designed some of the classic consumer goods of the last century (some, like the Kitchen Aid stand mixer, are still available), and his philosophy of design, which sounds remarkably modern.

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egmont arens -industrial “humaneer”

arens’ design’s got to look good, sound good, feel good, taste good, smell good, he asks, how easy is it on the nerves?

AFTER ten years of being one of the best industrial designers in the country, Egmont Arens has now become an expert “nerve specialist.” Arens has designed everything from a locomotive to a baby carriage, from a welding torch to a cigarette lighter, from a juke box to a toy horn, and what he has discovered is that the success of any designed object is determined basically by only one thing: how easy it is on the nerves.

Trapped in the nerve-jangling complications and tensions of present-day living, Arens believes that what modern man needs most are simplicity and relaxation in his surroundings. Instead of designing solely for “sales appeal”, or “esthetic presentation” therefore, Arens concentrates on designing an object to the “specifications” of the human system. He calls it “industrial humaneering.” Arens “humaneers” an object by giving it a color and contour which are relaxing to the eye, by giving it a texture and shape which are pleasing to the touch and inviting to the grasp, by muffling any noises which may jar on the ear, by eliminating any odors which may offend the nose, and lastly—if the object is, say, a reed musical instrument or a toothbrush—by making sure it is compounded of materials which figuratively, as well as literally, will leave the user with a pleasant taste in his mouth. After making it easy on the nerves, Arens completes his humaneering of the object by making it easy on the muscles. In designing, say, a household-cleaning appliance, he will use every trick in the book to insure that in lifting, carrying, cleaning, operating and storing the appliance, the user will be required to do just as little bending, stooping, squatting, reaching, and wrenching as possible.

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Plywood Dome Will Serve as Church in Korea
All the building materials for the igloo-shaped sanctuary in the photograph above could be carried in a large pickup truck. The 39-foot hemisphere, built from 134 sheets of 1/4-inch exterior-grade plywood, will be used as a church at Naju, South Korea. Using the geodesic-dome design of architect Buckminster Fuller, the building gets its strength from the geometric pattern of the 4 by 6-1/2 foot sheets of plywood on 2 by 2-inch ribbing. It was erected in 16 hours, left, with much of the work done by small boys. The building weighs 3500 pounds.

Alas, none of the attributes included proficiency in L33t5p34k, a hot avatar or a snarky blog. How’s a modern boy to choose?

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HOW TO SELECT A MATE

You may think you know why you like certain women—but you’ll be surprised at what psychologists say about your real motives

By Norman Carlisle

WHY did you marry your wife? If you’re not married, why will you marry? Chances are that whichever of these questions fits your marital state, the answers you give will be wrong. Psychologists probing the reasons why people pick the mates they do emerge with the conclusion that men really don’t know why, for better or worse, they abandon bachelorhood.

Love and sexual attraction—the reasons usually given—are not, to psychologists anyway, reason enough. What are the real subconscious drives that propel one person into the arms of another?

Dr. R. F. Winch, of Northwestern University, has worked out the theory that you really marry on the basis of psychological need.

“In mate selection,” he claims, “each individual seeks within his or her field of eligibles for that person who gives the greatest promise of providing him or her with maximum need gratification.”

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I’m not really sure what they’re trying to say in this ad… I think it’s either: “Marvel Oil will blow up your car”, or “Marvel oil is made of atomic bombs”.

FOR POWER
AND PERFORMANCE!
MARVEL Mystery Oil
More than 30 years of scientific research have gone into Marvel Mystery Oil, to meet the lubrication demands of today’s high - compression engines. Use in crankcase, gas tank, or top cylinder oiler… the ideal cure for hydraulic valve trouble.
See your dealer or write: EMEROL MANUFACTURING CO., INC.,
Depl 234, 242 West 69th St., New York 23. New York
BE ENGINE WISE…MARVELIZE NOW!

Wow, that’s pretty cool. I wonder why don’t they do that in the mega-chruches. Can’t you just imagine Jerry Fallwell shooting lightning from his finger tips? He’d look like a pudgy version of the Emporer from Star Wars… Oh. Mabe that’s why they don’t.

Fingertip Sermon is given by George E. Speake at a Christian Endeavor convention. One million volts arch from his body through electrodes on his fingertips. Sparks really fly when he’s on the pulpit!

Hearing Aid for Cat
“Unfortunate” heard for the first time recently when the cat’s owner, Mrs. A. H. Cooper of Fort Worth, Tex., had a hearing aid fitted to the feline. The hearing aid is the latest of a series of steps by Mrs. Cooper to improve the life of the unfortunate cat, which was born deaf, crippled in the hind legs and had no teeth until the age of two. The owner massaged the cat’s gums until the teeth finally came through and had a wheeled support built which enables the cat to scoot around the house.

One interesting side note about this passage:

“Another man who made a highly profitable find in the food field in recent years is Leo Peters, originator of the “Pak” margarine package, made out of plastic and containing a capsule for coloring. By merely kneading the “Pak,” a housewife can give a pound of margarine the appetizing hue of butter. It took Peters a long time to put the idea across, but once it was accepted by manufacturers he began collecting royalties estimated at $1,000,000 a year.”

Why, you might ask, couldn’t they just put the dye in the margarine? Well it turns out that the dairy lobby in this country had/has some serious pull. They saw margarine as competition to butter and had many laws passed that restricted the it’s appearance, primarily making it illegal to dye it to look like butter. The last state to repeal these laws was Wisconson in 1967. In Quebec, Canada it is STILL illegal to sell yellow margarine. More information on wikipedia.

Oh, and does anyone think that machine below looks at all “human-like”?

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GADGETS Can Make Your FORTUNE

By West Peterson

THIRTY-FIVE thousand inventions will be patented in the United States this year. If one of them is yours— possibly a simple gadget with universal appeal—you may reap a fortune!

Anything from a new household appliance to an improved method of food processing, from a unique use of plastics to another member of the wonder drug family can pay off huge dividends to the lucky— and skillful—discoverer. While it’s true that many inventions are now made by research teams in well-equipped laboratories, there’s still plenty of opportunity for the scientific or gadget-minded individual.

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This machine was also known as the UNIVAC 1103

ANOTHER REMINGTON RAND ELECTRONIC DEVELOPMENT
Remington Rand introduces the ERA 1103 general-purpose computer system

ADVANCED LOGICAL AND ENGINEERING FEATURES
â–  ACCOMMODATES WIDE OPTION OP DIRECT INPUT-OUTPUT DEVICES
Punched-card equipment Communications circuits Punched-paper and magnetic tapes Process-actuating mechanisms High-speed printers Graphic visual displays
â–  FLEXIBLE DATA REPRESENTATION
Alphabetic and numeric data in any code
â–  INHERENT HIGH SPEED AND LARGE CAPACITY
Coordinated electrostatic and magnetic drum storage Magnetic tape storage
â–  EFFICIENT, VERSATILE PROGRAMMING
Powerful instruction repertoire Flexible two-address logic
â–  UNEXCELLED RELIABILITY
Components of service-proved design Preventive diagnostic features Integral air conditioning
â–  LOW DATA-PROCESSING COST
For complete information about the application of the ERA 1103 to your problems, write on your business letterhead to Room 1734, 315 Fourth Ave., New York 10.

The Truman one is kinda cute and the De Gaulle one looks like it should be in the Dark Crystal.

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LOBSTERS ARE LIKE PEOPLE

Jean Sulpice, Parisian restaurateur, believes that lobsters and people have similar features. These “portraits” seem to prove the artist’s contention.

With a few props (a cigar, glasses and hats) and his lobster shells, the Frenchman created these caricatures of two famous international figures.

ANYONE WHO HAS seen Paris knows about Place Pigalle—and knows that almost anything can be found there. That is why it is no surprise to learn that in the city of artists, one Pigalle restaurateur is an artist who hangs his work from the ceiling. More surprising is his medium—lobster shells!

Page 2 Captions:
Left, no label is needed to identify De Gaulle. Right, not so easy to recognize is the figure of the French president. Vincent Auriol

Fine wire holds the various parts of the figures together in their lifelike poses

Hanging from the ceiling in a somewhat frightening array are scores of examples of the artist’s work in a variety of subjects

I dunno, but this just makes me think of John Wayne Gacy.

Ah, the valiant border patrol guarding us from “undesirable aliens”. It doesn’t seem like much has actually changed in the last 57 years.

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10,000 Miles of Trouble

By Nick D. Collaer
Cheif, Border Partol Section, Immigration and Naturalization Service of the U.S. Department of Justice as told to James Nevin Miller

Here’s the Border Patrol Chief’s own story of our constant fight to keep smugglers of aliens from sneaking in with their human cargoes.

SMUGGLING aliens across our 10,000 miles of boundaries has become a big time enterprise!

Some of the crooks engaged in this illegal traffic are netting juicy fees for helping foreigners crash our gates—up to $1000 apiece for Mexicans, $1500 for Chinese and as much as $1600 for Central Europeans and Hindus.

The Border Patrol of your Immigration and Naturalization Service is confronted with an unprecedented situation in American history, especially along the 2000-mile Mexican border. There, 4600 foreigners, many of them of the most undesirable type, were caught by the San Antonio District officers in a recent two-day period!

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