Does the idea of seeing your home movies on television sound appealing? You'll be able to soon, when the Vidicord, a new British invention that is part projector, part TV camera, becomes available.
You just plug the output of the Vidicord into your TV antenna connection, switch on the set, and sit back. There's no need to draw the curtains or turn out the lights. If there's sound on your film you'll get that, too. And you can hold any frame at the flip of a switch for an instant still.
It’s like a smart card with out the smart! It seems like you could reproduce someone’s card by just looking at a picture of it… Electric credit card A printed-circuit credit card is the key to self-service gasoline in England. The gas pump unlocks when you insert your card in a slot to fill your [...]
Blow-ups Try on one of these inflatable plastic suits for size, if you work with insecticides or other toxic chemicals. A 200-foot hose circulates cool air through the suit, providing insulation from heat as well as protection from the fumes. It’s made by Martindale Electric, Neasden Lane, London.
Shown here actual size, these two photos are part of a picture sequence made by contact printing quick-copy photographic paper (in a perforated roll) with a new and remarkable TV tube. Made by Panasonic, the 1.5-inch miniature cathode-ray tube has a fiber-optics face plate and a high-resolution electron gun, yielding pictures of 300-350 lines resolution.
With four black-and-white monitors and a 25-inch color screen, this television set of the future doesn't miss a trick—or a channel
By ARTHUR FISHER / Group Editor, Science and Engineering
The strange television set you are looking at will probably have a lot to do with the kind of set you'll be able to buy in the future, even though it is not for sale.
I first saw it in a top-secret room of an RCA plant in Indianapolis, Ind. There it sat, a 6 and a half foot long box of smoky Plexiglas wrapped around five TV screens and some mighty fancy electronics. It was being readied for a smash unveiling before a meeting of distributors, but not as an item they could ever offer to the public. Then why was it built?
Electronic newsboy Is this how you’ll get your newspaper In the future? Maybe, says Toshiba, the Japanese electronics firm that developed this facsimile receiver. It prints both sides of a sheet simultaneously, in six minutes. If mass-produced, the device would sell for an estimated $300.
I’ve always wondered how those worked! Bag Inside a Can New kind of pressurized package keeps product and propellant separate You’ve probably used hundreds of aerosol cans to dispense everything from shaving foams to vermouth with astonishing ease. But so far, these pressurized cans have only been able to dish out sprays and foams. Now [...]
What goes up and doesn't come down? A new kind of furniture called "Up." You buy it flat-as-a-pancake in a vinyl package. Cut open the vinyl and the pancake automatically expands into a modern chair. Once expanded, it cannot be recompressed and cannot be punctured.
It works like this: At the factory in Italy the furniture is molded of poly-urethane foam, and covered with stretch upholstery. Then, in a vacuum chamber, the piece is compressed to force out the air, and sealed in the airtight package. Open the package and the foam absorbs air, expanding to its
designed size and shape.
Home televiser It’s actually a miniature TV station. It plays color—or black-and-white—film cartridges through your color —or black-and-white—TV. It’s the Teleplayer. Motorola and CBS developed it for business and educational use, but intend, eventually, to put one in your home. It will be out in September for $795.
One of these days soon, a salesman will ring your doorbell and offer a special service called cable TV. "Why bother?" you may ask. "I'm perfectly satisfied with the reception I'm getting now on my five [if you're average] channels." True, you may be getting good TV reception. But CATV (Community Antenna TV) will offer you better reception, and more. Added up, here is what you will get:
• The five channels you would usually pull in with your antenna— but much sharper and clearer.
• Three, maybe four, other stations from other cities. Two or three of them will probably duplicate much of the network programing you're already getting. But one or two may be independents that you have no way of seeing, short of moving to the next town. That's a total of nine channels off the air.
• Three local channels—continuously broadcasting time/weather, news/stock ticker, and local live broadcasts—from town meetings to high-school ball games. That's 12 channels so far.
• There's more coming: pay TV on the cable. This is the most exciting home-entertainment prospect of all. Pay cable channels will cost extra.
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.
Yes, if you become a computer programmer chicks will dig you. Learn to say the words every woman loves to hear: “Do not fold, spindle or mutilate” Don’t waste your life in a dead-end job! Become a well-paid computer programmer – this free McGraw-Hill booklet tells you how. Now you can train at home in [...]
