Bye-bye bookie
It’s self-service at a Paris track. Put a 10-franc note in a machine, push a win, place, or show button, and another numbered to match your horse. Out pops your ticket. Or, as with any vending machine, it could keep your money and give you nothing—but that’s gambling.

Normally I don’t post articles without pictures, but this one just floored me. This little blurb from 53 years ago perfectly sums up the greenhouse effect and global warming.

Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature
Earth’s ground temperature is rising 1-1/2 degrees a century as a result of carbon dioxide discharged from the burning of about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal and oil yearly. According to Dr. Gilbert N. Plass of the Johns Hopkins University, this discharge augments a blanket of gas around the world which is raising the temperature in the same manner glass heats a greenhouse. By 2080, he predicts the air’s carbon-dioxide content will double, resulting in an average temperature rise of at least four percent. If most of man’s industrial growth were over a period of several thousand years, instead of being crowded within the last century, oceans would have absorbed most of the excess carbon dioxide. But because of the slow circulation of the seas, they have had little effect in reducing the amount of the gas as man’s smoke-making abilities have multiplied over the past hundred years.

Yes, now you too can cook eggs on a flying disk!

view additional pages

Look! It’s Flying Disks Again!

PARIS has its flying saucer, but it is called “The Magic Plate.” It is a two-pound aluminum disk that floats in air without apparent support.

It moves up and down. It rotates. It lifts an ornate chandelier with bulbs burning continuously as it spins. If such trickery doesn’t prove that the plate is magic, it will fry eggs to a golden brown with nothing between it and the table but air!

Actually, of course, it is no more “magical” than the magic of electricity and the phenomenon of induction.

Below the plate, concealed in the table, are two concentric coils. The inner coil sets up a magnetic field that repels the tray, forcing it into the air. To keep the tray from slipping sideways out of the lifting field, a large outer coil is used. This develops a conical field, tapering toward the top, to keep the plate centered.

A third field makes the disk rotate. Four coils create it. Once the tray starts spinning, it does so for a long period even after the rotation coils are turned off because the drag of friction is almost nonexistent.

The chandelier weighs one pound. Its bulbs are lighted by induced current. The aluminum tray gets hotter than an ordinary electric iron, providing ample heat for egg frying.

What’s it all for? It is strictly a stunt used in Parisian store windows to attract customers and impress them with the magic of electricity.

Tired Of TV?
A certain New York executive was, so he took his 19 in. receiver, remounted the front on a swivel and now he and his friends find the set much more stimulating.

Salvaged Bomb Makes Juvenile Space Ship
Its central structure a discarded 500-pound aerial bomb, a juvenile “space ship” gives two-foot-power transportation to Gene Montoya of Honolulu. The space ship was built by Gene’s father, D. L. Montoya, in a single week end at a cost of less than a dollar. The surplus bomb is lined with rubber padding and the wire wheels are from another juvenile vehicle.

Transients Build Skyscraper Wigwams
ALONG the shore of Medicine Lake, near Minneapolis, Minn., homeless, unemployed men have built one of the strangest communities in America—a white man’s village of tepees and skyscraper wigwams.

Originally started as a minor relief project, the camp now covers 93 acres and is one of Minnesota’s largest relief depots.

Local building and wrecking companies. donate material for the structures which range from a two-person hut to a three-story community dwelling. These buildings have the customary Indian ridge poles, but the sides are covered with shingles instead of skin. The interiors are attractively equipped with rustic furniture.
Read the rest of this entry »

Gee. I wonder what magnanimous lobby could have paid for that study….

Women and Smokers Have Steadier Nerves, Device Proves
WOMEN are better than men when it comes to a steady hand and certainty of aim, according to Dr. H. H. Seashore, University of Southern California psychologist. More startling, perhaps, is the discovery that tobacco-users are steadier than non-users. To carry out his experiments, the doctor employs an unique device. A pistol handle is grasped by the subject so that rays from a tiny mirror are deflected through a grid into a photoelectric cell which automatically records hand tremors.

Camera Records “Eye Interest” of Reader for Items on Page

Researchers using an improved tool virtually look through the eyes of a reader to determine what interests him in advertising, art and reading material. Blinders or glasses cause him to move his head as he glances at different sections of a page. A small spotlight affixed to his head focuses a beam of light on a reproduction of the page just above the reading rack, in the identical area observed by the subject. A camera behind the subject, snapping at a constant speed of two frames per second, records the exact location, duration and sequence of every glance. The film is then read and analyzed. It shows time for each pause.

Obsolete Autos Utilized To Teach Safe Driving
A NOVEL and practical way of training high school students to be safe drivers has been developed at the Lane Technical School in Chicago, Ill. Obsolete autos are cut down until only the driver’s seat, brake, clutch and shifting lever controls remain. These are used as desks by the students.
The controls are wired to lamps mounted on a panel in the classroom which enables the instructor, William A. Sears, to check each student’s reaction to traffic situations flashed onto a motion picture screen. After this primary instruction, the students drive real cars over a $35,000 practice course featuring every type of lane, curve, grade, etc.

Machine Builds Muscles

THE young lady below is getting all the beneficial effects of rowing and riding from the machine on which she is exercising. It strengthens and stimulates muscles and internal organs.