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Are Skyscrapers Bombproof?

American Type of Building May Be Answer to Raiders

AMERICAN skyscrapers, often the butt of foreigners’ jokes, stand ready to attain a new and indispensable usefulness. In the view of experts, they constitute a highly satisfactory, if not impregnable, defense against all types of bomb attacks. Even without added safeguards, they can safely protect millions of city dwellers and workers from explosives, gas, and incendiaries. And by the addition of sandbags and steel in vital sectors, they can be made almost as safe as the most elaborate shelter. Read the rest of this entry »

These ads for Ford Instruments are so weird. They are all for military components and they all use puppets… Could you imagine Boeing using Miss Piggy in an ad for cruise missiles?

naval fire-control… AND FORD INSTRUMENT COMPANY

Firing at a target many miles away from a pitching and rolling ship, steaming at full speed, requires rapid, complicated computations. Special computers and drives must do this job.

Throughout the past forty years, engineers of Ford Instrument Company have been specialists in this field — from their design of the earliest Rangekeeper in World War I to the latest great Naval electro-mechanical-electronic computers. As in their missile and aircraft instruments, their nuclear controls and weapon systems, the criteria of dependability and precision are the characteristics of Ford designed and manufactured computers and controls. Read the rest of this entry »

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Secrets of the Mystery Gun that Shelled Paris

By COL. HENRY W. MILLER

Chief Artillery Engineer, A.E.F.

The secrets of the Paris Gun! For the first time in any magazine, Modern Mechanics here reveals the inside facts concerning the most startling and closely-guarded mystery of the World war—the official story of the giant German guns which, in 1918, dropped shells on Paris from a distance of 75 miles, a feat so incredible that artillery experts refused to believe it possible, thinking for a time that the shells were bombs dropped by high-flying aircraft. After the war the guns were destroyed and all information concerning them locked in secret archives. It was declared high treason, punishable by death, for anyone who possessed vital information concerning the guns ever to divulge it. Nevertheless, Col. Miller, author of this article and of the gripping book, “The Paris Gun,” obtained military pictures and technical secrets from confidential German sources which has enabled him to reveal to Modern Mechanics’ readers the astonishing story of the longest range guns the world has ever known.
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I just think “Death Angel” is a cool name for a plane.

New Boeing “Death Angel” to be World’s Fastest Bomber

THE latest addition to Uncle Sam’s air forces is a veritable flying fortress-Dubbed the “Death Angel” because she is capable of attaining highest speed of any bomber and can carry a ton of explosives, four machine guns fore and aft and a crew of five men, the giant Boeing bombing plane shown above will prove one of the nation’s most fearful weapons. The plane has a wing spread of 86 feet and is powered by two 575 h.p. motors mounted in the wings.

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World’s Greatest Radio Listening Post

RADIO fans take pride in the number of stations they can “log” and verify, especially if these are at a great distance. Contests for the most successful listening are as popular, now that one may hear Australia or South America, as they were in the days when people sat up in the hope of hearing Pittsburgh or Schenectady. However, the prize for the world’s most systematic listening should go to Mdlle. Marianne (the personification of the French Republic, as Uncle Sam is that of the United States). She has erected the world’s most elaborate receiving station for the purpose of listening to and recording broadcasts, as illustrated here.
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Safety Computer Forecasts Atomic Fall-out Pattern

How “safe” is it to test an atom bomb ? Will wind-blown radioactive dust or charged rain clouds endanger life or crops in inhabited regions?

The National Bureau of Standards recently developed a “portable” analog computer to assist in predicting radioactive fall-out from a nuclear explosion. The fall-out pattern appears instantly on oscilloscope (left of photo) after weather data and the size and type of bomb are “told to” the computer by setting dials. As computers go, “portable” means that it will fit into a truck.

Wind-carried fall-out even from “small” atomic tests has traveled as far as Paris and Tokyo when caught in the “jet stream” of the upper atmosphere.

German Firemen Protected by Odd Sprinkler System

IT’S a far cry from the old bucket brigade to modern fire-fighting efficiency. Even now the American fireman is known as a “smoke-eater,” but that term would hardly fit the present day fire laddie in Germany, for with the new portable sprinkler system adopted by some of the larger cities of that country a fireman may approach quite close to the flames without becoming singed.

The outfit, which looks like a deep sea diver’s uniform is equipped with a sprinkler helmet which operates off a connection attached to the nozzle of the hose. The fireman can control the spray by a simple movement of a hand lever.

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“Nerve Center” Guards New York

ARMY AIR CORPS SETS UP ELABORATE DEFENSE SYSTEM AMERICA’S most elaborate air-defense information center has just been completed in New York City. It is the best equipped in the world. Minute-by-minute reports from more than 6,000 field observers will enable Air Corps experts, working” at tables that resemble pieces from a giant jig-saw puzzle, to plot the progress of enemy bombers and to direct the swift climb and attack of interceptor planes. Read the rest of this entry »

What good is a $10.00 raise … if it then costs you $12.00 more to live?

Sure WE all want a raise . . . but raises today are bad medicine. And here’s why… Suppose you do get a raise . . . and a lot of others get one, too. What happens? The cost of manufacturing goes up. Naturally your boss has to add this increase in cost to the price he asks the retailer. And the retailer, in turn, raises his price to the consumer… that’s YOU.

So what good is a raise if your living costs go up even faster?
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What About Those… SECRET WEAPONS?

Every war has its weird whispers about death rays, super gases and invisible submarines.

By Clive Howard

THE businessman got the word from the son of a scientist who heard it from a college professor working in nuclear research. Now it’s traveling with a speed that would embarrass sound. From tongue to tongue, from ear to ear the whispers twist the story about America’s newest secret weapon.

What is it? You mean you haven’t heard? Well, at last report it was a combination Geiger-radar-rocket-fire control unit which detects atom-bomb bearing planes and directs robot missiles, at them automatically!

Thus begins a new chapter in the fantastic history of the secret war weapon—a history that goes back almost to the beginning of time. Probably the original story about a secret weapon made the rounds shortly after a man discovered that a large rock could kill an enemy.
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U.S. Navy Inventions Build Great Industries

by John Edwin Hogg, Lieut., U.S.N.R.

An amazing scientific workshop afloat —that is the peace-time function of Uncle Sam’s Navy. The discoveries made by navy engineers and scientists have been responsible for the creation of vast new industries, from which you benefit in many ways, as told here.

TO THE average person, perhaps, the American navy is a tremendous engine of destruction draining the Federal treasury of approximately $350,000,000 every year, and serving no useful purpose to the nation except in time of ‘war.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The American navy in times of peace is a great progressive institution that extends its ramifications into many fields—scientific, mechanical, social, and diplomatic. Read the rest of this entry »

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Smoke ~ The Modern Armor

By FAIRFAX DOWNEY

Armor plate for soldiers went out of style with the Knights of the Round Table, but modern armies go into battle clad in an entirely new type of protective armor—smoke! Important recent advances in the wartime use of smoke screens are set forth in this authoritative article.

WHEN knights joined combat with dragons in the old wonder tales, the monsters did not depend on their tough scales to protect them, but puffed out heavy snorts of smoke through their dilated nostrils. Most of the stories relate that the knights went right ahead regardless and slew the dragons. Still there must have been some occasions, which did not appeal to the story tellers as good material, when the hero, lost in his adversary’s fog, suddenly found the dragon on his neck and became a casualty.
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