The House of a Thousand Servants
WHAT might be called the most unusual house in America is the home of O. H. Caldwell, of Cos Cob, Connecticut. Mr. Caldwell is a noted electrical engineer and the former Federal Radio Commissioner. This house has over a thousand servants and yet has no servant problem, for all of the servants are electrical gadgets of one kind or another that do all the work.
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Silent Telautographs Write Directions to Radio Artists
TO ELIMINATE all interfering noises in the National Broadcast Studios, engineers are installing noiseless telautographs which write out directions to performers, thus doing away with the old method of waving the hands to give signals from the control room. The telautograph is placed near the microphone, directly before the eyes of the performers, so that directions can be read without the least difficulty.
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There’s money in Simple Inventions
by CLARENCE A. O’BRIEN
Registered Patent Attorney Washington, D. C.
The greatest profit does not always come to the inventor of a complicated machine—often the inventor of some simple, much-used article stands a more favorable chance of making a fortune.
WHILE such complicated inventions as the radio, the airplane, the telephone and the electric light are among the major blessings of this modern age, yet we often lose sight of the fact that there are a greater number of simple devices which are contributing greatly to our everyday comfort, convenience, and enjoyment of life.
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Smoking Now No Effort at All—Dispenser Gives You Lighted Cigarette
SMOKING is coming to be such a convenient matter that it is a wonder any of us can resist becoming insatiable cigarette fiends. The latest device to ease the labor of lighting up a fag is an electric desk dispenser which delivers one cigarette at a time, fully lighted and ready to smoke.
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How Circus Elephants are TRAINED
by M. W.MEIER
Who wintered with the circus at Peru, Indiana, headquarters.
How do they train elephants to walk a tight rope and stand on two legs? Mr. Meier, intimately associated with the circus business, tells you all about the tricks of the trade in this fascinating elephant story, and incidentally disproves some favorite legends such as ah elephant’s ability to remember an injury for many years.
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Approval Meter
BY SAMUEL KAUFMAN
WITH the “approval meter,” program directors will no longer have to rely on laughter, applause or boos to learn just what the audience thinks of entertainment.
The method—developed by Schwerin Research Corporation—works automatically and records reaction for study later. All you do is push or pull a tiny lever at your side.
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SAN FRANCISCO FIGHTS FOR ITS CABLE CARS
“Save our cable cars,” say Frisco’s citizens. But the City Hall boys have other ideas.
By Louis Hochman
SAN FRANCISCO shakes again! In 1906 it was Nature that rocked the infant town into a mass of ashes and rubble. Today it’s human nature that is giving this Golden Gate City the shakes with a wave of public sentiment that has spread far beyond the city’s own boundaries. Once again the people of San Francisco have gathered in force to go fight City Hall. It’s a battle between practicality and sentimentality and the object of this latest uprising is once again the dinky little cable car—that ding-dong relic of the Gay Nineties that continues to clang its merry way up and down the precipitous hills of San Francisco in blissful defiance of modern science and the forces of progress.
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New for the Home
Springless Mattress, dreamed up by a Swedish inventor, is light, bouncy as innerspring types. It’s been tested for durability, is said to have orthopedic values. Secret is the core of air-filled plastic. Susquehanna Mills, N. Y. C.
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