“Radio Man” WALKS, TALKS,AND YODELS

TOWERING seven feet high, a strange “radio man” has just been completed after ten years of arduous work by August Huber, a Swiss engineer. Beneath its jointed steel body, the gigantic mechanical man is a maze of automatic switches, relays, and other controls. Microphones within the automaton’s’ ears pick up spoken commands and carry them to an intricate system of twenty electric motors that make the fantastic creature walk, talk, sing, or yodel at the will of its master. Power for these various activities is supplied by batteries concealed in the ponderous legs. When this modern monster talks through the loudspeaker installed in its chest, its lips move in time with its speech. An ultra-short-wave receiver installed in its torso enables the “radio man” to follow orders transmitted to it by radio from remote points.

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The Story of Rope

By Andrew Hamilton

THE OLD INDIAN rope trick has amazed and mystified people for generations. A fakir throws a rope above the stage where it stands without apparent support, as stiff as a rod. The trick is simply this: an unnoticed four-pronged hook at the end catches a taut piano wire in the dim light above the stage.

This vaudeville stunt is not half as amazing as the miracle of rope itself—one of mankind’s most useful tools.

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NEW WAY TO SMOKE
TOUCH A BUTTON!
LIGHTED CIGARETTES
COME OUT OF MAGIC CASE
IMAGINE this! You take a beautiful case from your vest pocket! Automatically a cigarette and a flame appear. You puff . . . and a LIGHTED, ready-to-smoke cigarette is delivered right between your lips. Smokers crowd ’round
when you use it . . . they gaze in wonder . . . everyone of them wants a Magic Case. Just use a Magic Case half a dozen times a day and you will get a money-making thrill such as you never had before. You can hand out Magic Cases almost as fast as you can take in the money.
Try it AT MY RISK
Make up to $16 a Day!
You never saw anything like the Magic Case before in your life. It’s got Novelty,
Practical Utility, Universal Demand. Let me send one to you for 15 days’ trial at my risk. Just use it . . show it . . . watch smokers reach for it . . . eager to buy. Agents are coining money fast. You can, too. Write quick.
MAGIC CASE MFRS., Dept. E-3549
4234 Cozens Ave. ST. LOUIS, MO.

Odd Ferry Runs on Sunken Track
PERHAPS the strangest ferry in the world is the one operating across the gulf between St. Malo and St. Serven, Brittany.
The ferry is built on a high superstructure to allow for the rising waters during full tide in the English Channel. The superstructure rests on a set of wheels running on a submerged track set low enough in the gulf so that it in no way interferes with ocean going traffic. Large winches on shore, attached to under-water cables, supply the motive power.
The platform contains chairs and a warming house for cold weather.

First in a series of ads for the Lycoming corporation by Boris Artzybasheff.

New “ticker” for tanks

For a dependable tank “heart” — 500 horsepower’s worth of rugged air-cooled engine—U. S. Army Ordnance looks to Lycoming’s precision production.

Rumbling over rugged terrain . . . crushing enemy obstacles . . . surviving heavy fire—our “G.I.” tanks must have powerful, dependable engines to stay “alive” in combat. That’s why the Army Ordnance Corps relies on Lycoming to turn out air-cooled “tickers” for new-type tanks now in production.

Maybe you need a complete engine, or a single precision part. Maybe you have “only an idea” in the rough or blueprint stage that needs development. Or a metal product that needs precise and speedy fabrication. In any case-look to Lycoming! Lycoming has a long-tested reputation for meeting the most exacting and diverse metal-working requirements, both industrial and military. Whatever your problem—look to Lycoming!

Lycoming’s wealth of creative engineering ability,its 2-1/2 million square feet of floor space, its 6,000-plus machine tools stand ready to serve your needs.

REPTILE SNAPS OWN PICTURE WITH FLICK OF THE TONGUE
Too fast to be seen by the human eye, the long tongues of chameleons and toads dart in and out as they eat. Their tongue tips are tacky and the food, usually small insects, sticks to the tips and is thrown back into their mouths. To photograph the action, London Zoo technicians designed a trigger device that fires a Dawe electronic flash lamp as the tongue hits the food
Top, stopped by an exposure of two mil-lionths of a second, tongue of chameleon is fully extended as it darts after food. Below, a toad gets his dinner. Right, the circuit used in top pictures. For photos of toad, two copper plates were used, one for the toad and the second for the food. Tongue completes circuit by touching food plate. Current was too minute to be felt.

Pocket-Size Exposure Suit
Exposure, one of the biggest trials of airmen downed at sea, is curbed by an inflatable rubber suit small enough to be rolled into a pocket in the collar of a Mae West jacket. It weighs less than three ounces and provides air insulation against cold and damp. The suit is being tested in England and may soon be adopted as standard equipment for Royal Air Force crews.

This is the first in a great series of ads for New Departure ball bearings, none of which have anything to do with ball bearings.

Letter-Matic 1960?
NEW DEPARTURES OF TOMORROW
Think of dashing through your correspondence with this imaginary scribe! It converts your voice into electronic impulses which type, micro-record, fold, insert, seal, address and stamp letters almost as fast as you can dictate!
It’s just a notion now! But when some foresighted engineer works it out, you can bet New Departure will be called in to design the right ball bearings to keep these intricate parts working smoothly. New Departure works with engineers right from the planning stage to develop the exact bearing for even the newest departure in design.
NEW DEPARTURE • DIVISION OF GENERAL MOTORS • BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT

NEW DEPARTURE BALL BEARINGS
NOTHING ROLLS LIKE A BALL

Advertising Emblems Glow Weirdly In Cathode Ray Tubes
IN ONE of the most unusual of modern forms of advertising, trademarks mounted at the anode position of giant cathode ray tubes are painted in cold light of great brilliancy and dazzling color by electronic bombardment. Displayed in store windows, the tubes demonstrate to shoppers one of the many feats of the electronic tube, and at the same time display a business emblem.
Gilbert T. Schmidling, inventor of the first true cold light, coats these emblems with different chemicals, each giving off a certain color of cold light under electronic bombardment. Over 400 different shades, all of great brilliancy, have already been produced. Any number of colors may be obtained in one tube by using the different chemicals.

This just seems really sadistic to me. Why would you want this picture?

Trapped Rat Shoots Self and Photographs the Fatal Event
TRAPPED in an ingenious contrivance built by George W. Fenner, Syracuse photographer, a hungry rat shot himself and left a picture of the event in a camera trained upon the device.

A piece of bait was suspended from a wire at one end of the trap. Nibbling eagerly at the bait, the rat released a catch which dropped a spring-operated hammer, tripping the trigger of a revolver mounted at the opposite end of the trap.
The shot not only killed the rat but also cut a piece of string connected with still another spring. The latter set off a flashlight, supplying the illumination necessary to take the picture. In addition to the camera and lethal apparatus, a watch hung near the gun recorded the time of shooting.

New Phone Rings Loud or Soft
THERE’S a new telephone on the way that will let you control the loudness of its ring. And at whatever volume you adjust it to, the ringing tone will be both lower-pitched and more resonant than that of your present phone. For easier dialing, the numbers and letter prefixes are placed outside the finger wheel. Another feature is an “equalizer” that automatically adjusts the voice sound level to compensate for the difference in distance between each telephone and the central office.
The phone’s handset—transmitter, receiver, and handgrip—is slightly smaller than
earlier models, weighs 25 percent less, and is designed for a more comfortable head fit. The new instrument, developed by Bell, is still undergoing tests. Some trial installations will be made this year, but regular production, by Western Electric, will not get under way until late 1950.

Mechanics Masquerade as Men from Mars
NOT weird, helmeted men from Mars, but merely airplane mechanics carrying metal propeller-hub protectors are pictured in the curious photograph reproduced above. Because of their unwieldy shape, the hub spinners were easier to carry when held over the heads of the workmen as they walked out to install them on giant 1,200-horsepower transport-plane motors. The spinners help prevent the formation of ice on propeller hubs during winter and early-spring flying.