For some reason this reminds me of a David Lynch film…
“Tourist” Trailer for Youngsters Is Towed by a Tricycle
Touring the seashore at Venice, Calif., is a streamline trailer towed by a streamline tricycle. Tiny as it is, the miniature trailer is big enough for two little girls to “keep house” in as they play on the beach. Their grandfather built the two-wheel trailer.
I’d love to have one of those Nixie Tube Wang 360’s (page 3) on my desk.
Thinking Computers? Think Small
They’re everywhere—simple-to-operate, desk-top electronic calculating instruments
By MELVIN WHITMER
AS RECENTLY AS 15 YEARS AGO, ACCORDing to the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS), there were fewer than 25 computers at work in all of the US. That number has grown today to well over 35,000, and the AFIPS predicts that by 1975 there will be more than 85,000— representing an annual investment of $30 billion.
Understandably, the greatest increase—because of their lower initial cost—will come in the area of compact and desk-type computers. Though physically small, many of this new generation of time-savers are capable of a wider range of computations than some of the huge multi-rack installations of a decade or so ago.
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According to this article in 1952 fully 2% of the American workforce were door-to-door salesmen. I wonder what it is now? I love how they speak approvingly of one organization’s “pyramiding partnership”.
$7,000,000,000 for Door-to-Door Salesmen
By Harry Kursh
AMERICA’S fastest growing small-business opportunity is also America’s most underestimated! Few people know that a group made up of two per cent of the American working population managed to make over $7 billion last year in door-to-door selling. This fabulous figure was more than double the previous peak year. If you’re not afraid to knock on doors, you can claim your share, too.
The door-to-door selling boom—for which an even bigger year is predicted in 1952—is opening the door for thousands to become independent, self-employed salesmen, selling practically anything a family can use. Already more than 3,000 firms have men and women going from door to door for them to sell everything from nylon stockings to fire extinguishers.
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Sadly, there are all too few surprise trapdoors remaining in operation today.
Holdups Thwarted by Burglar Trapdoor
IMPRISONING bank burglars by suddenly opening up a yawning pit at their feet is the somewhat unique and highly effective means which a recently invented burglar trap employs to nip holdup schemes in the bud.
When a thief walks up to a cashier’s window and orders all hands elevated, the bank employee simply reaches down — very quickly, of course—and pushes a lever, which operates a trap door before the window. The bandit falls through the door and into the steel-walled cage below. He is ordered to hand out his arms and then turned over to the police.
The trap door in the floor is adapted to be dropped from a normal position, at the same time sliding back the top of the cage as illustrated in the accompanying diagram. When weight is removed the top automatically slides back to cover the cage.
Wow, this is a pretty impressive high-school project.
Boys Build A Cyclotron
This little atom smasher, designed by California high school students, works just like the big ones.
By Andrew R. Boone
THE young nuclear physicist who won the Nobel prize by developing the cyclotron, Ernest O. Lawrence, started out with a little glass device that looked like a frying pan. Since then, cyclotrons have become such mammoth, complex, and expensive machines that the patent holders are rarely bothered by requests for licenses to build them. But ingenious and industrious youngsters can still build cyclotrons.
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AFTER SHAVING
HERE IS A GOOD BET
Have you ever tried Listerine after shaving? You will like it.
We are so certain of this that we are willing to risk the cost of this page to tell you about it.
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X-Ray Tells if You’re Grand Opera Star
IS THE time drawing near when science will be able to devise an almost mathematical formula for making great singers out of any aspirant to musical fame? Is there any way to determine the precise physiological differences in vocal organs and other parts of the body which might account for good, bad and indifferent singing voices?
An attempt at answering the questions is being made by scientists, who have made X-ray exposures, during the actual act of singing, of the throats and heads of such famous opera stars as Lawrence Tibbet, Benjamin Gigli, Reinold Werrenrath, and others of vocal fame.
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Operating a TV station using electro-mechanical equipment looks really hard. That camera looking thingy at the bottom of the page is not in fact a camera, but an arc lamp. In front of the lamp is a spinning disc with holes punched in it which scans the light across the subject. The “camera” is actually composed of those six light-bulb looking things in front of the subject. They are just ordinary photo-electric cells.
And to view it at home? Here’s what you need:
“you will require a 60-hole scanning disc, revolving at 1200 revolutions a minute, giving 20 frames a second. Further, you will need two short-wave receivers, if you desire to pick up both image and voice frequencies. The images are transmitted on 107 meters, and the sound is sent out from W2XE’s shortwave transmitter on 49 meters.”
Latest Television Broadcast Station
CHICAGO, Toronto, Boston and Washington have recently reported the regular reception of both “sight” and “sound” signals from the new Columbia television station W2XAB, and its accompanying sound transmitter W2XE. The Columbia “telecasting” station was opened on July 21 last, when the Hon. James J. Walker, mayor of New York City, lifted the curtain from the photo-electric cells; which formally marked the opening of the station. The television transmitting apparatus and antenna systems are adjacent to the studio, which is located on the 23rd floor of the Columbia Building at 485 Madison
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