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TV HOUSE OF MAGIC

The TV camera often lies.

Magicians work props and special gadgets to fool their audience.

By H. W. Kellick

MISTER Peepers, a role played by bespectacled Wally Cox, was nonchalantly pecking away at his typewriter in his science schoolroom on NBC when suddenly there was an explosive noise and parts of the machine went flying all over the room. The “accident” drew hearty laughs from viewers and people wondered if this was one of Wally’s own tricks which he cooked up in his spare time. ‘ As a matter of fact, this gag was a gimmick concocted by a special-effects man who redesigned a standard typewriter and inserted a spring in the carriage which sent machine parts flying in the air on cue. Read the rest of this entry »

Ketchup Pump-It
MR. D. F. Bachellor of Glendale, Calif, had an extremely active mind and when a major operation confined him to a hospital bed for a long period of convalescence, he kept right on thinking. One day a visitor mentioned how much better the world would be if someone would invent a device to get ketchup from a bottle without pounding and thumping. Bachellor weighed the problem. Read the rest of this entry »

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CREATING The SPECTACULARS

by Donald G. Cooley

SOME day New Yorkers are likely to be startled by the discovery that the dome of the Empire State Building has turned into a gigantic cigarette glowing more than 1,000 feet in the air.

Not an actual cigarette, of course, but an advertising colossus made up of a million white electric bulbs, a few thousand red ones to paint a burning tip against the night sky, and the name of the manufacturer blazoned in neon on all four sides of the world’s tallest building.
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Fascinating Toy with an educational value is this building set invented by Andrew Sommerfeld of Hadley, Salop, England. Using moulds which reproduce sections to scale of famous buildings, youngsters cast the parts in a special concrete strengthened by copper wire. Here they are finishing a church.

Prefabricated House For Defense Needs
THIS radical-looking prefabricated house is one of the many types which have’ been submitted to the Division of Defense Housing Coordination as a quick, cheap method of housing defense workers. The house weighs only a ton, and can be constructed in six days by one man. At the right is an interior view of the novel “defense” house.

This Surf Board Can’t Get Away

A NEW type surf board which cannot get away from the swimmer even if she should let go with the hands, has been recently introduced at Pacific coast bathing beaches.

What secures the board is a cutaway section in the rear for the legs of the swimmer, thus permitting her to rest in a natural swimming position.
The board also proves an aid for students of swimming.

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The ‘59 Chevy

Styling is as wild as you’ve seen . . . just as different as Santa Claus without a beard . . . That rear deck is pure Louis Armstrong—gone, man, gone! What a spot to land a Piper Cub.”

By Tom McCahill

YOU don’t need a Gallup Poll or a complete report from the Electoral College to know that Chevrolet must be considered the American buyer’s Number One Choice. No other manufacturer in the world, for that matter, has pumped out as many cars over the past 20 years as this General Motors division. Read the rest of this entry »

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The NASCAR Story

Strictly stock car racing is the hottest sport around right now. And here’s the lowdown on it.

By Tom McCahill

FROM a spark that a couple of years ago was not much bigger than the glimmer in a bridegroom’s eye, the sport of racing unmodified or strictly factory-condition stock cars has blazed forth into a roaring prairie fire of popularity. Hot rods, midgets, jalopies, modified stocks, sports cars and even the big Indianapolis racers are getting a real run for their money from this newest racing craze. During a comparatively short season from April to November, the un-souped-up stock cars attract no fewer than 5,000,000 cash customers to tracks all over the country, making them the Number One crowd-grabbers in automobile racing today. Read the rest of this entry »

EYE STOPPERS

CIRCLE-CYCLE 1/2-hp mill turns outer tire on ballbearing rollers. West Va. high schoolers built it.

HOOD buttons on collar of waterproof and wrinkleproof suit shown in Paris.

TUSK BRACE keeps Washington Zoo’s Ashoka’s ivory from squeezing trunk.

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BOAT RUNS ON SEA WATER

Free, unlimited electric power from the salty sea may soon replace gas, diesel engines in marine use.

EVERY so often someone comes up with an idea so simple and apparent that millions of Monday-morning quarterbacks promptly kick themselves and mutter “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Occasionally the idea is completely original. Usually, however, it is an old chestnut that has been kicked around until some bright lad finally dopes out a way to make it work. Ralph E. McCabe, designer and patentee of a practical, new salt water battery, does not claim to be the first to conceive the notion of extracting electric current from the ocean brine. Read the rest of this entry »

From Seattle to Miami

To Air-Mail this report: 40 HOURS

To send it by SCAN-A-FAX: 3 MINUTES

Scan-A-Fax is Fairchild’s transistorized facsimile transmission system—a new way for businessmen to communicate WHAT SCAN-A-FAX CAN DO FOR YOUR COMPANY: If your company needs to get errorless facts quickly from one place to another, Scan-A-Fax should be ideal for you. With this system, you can get memos, charts, schedules, blueprints, drawings, and photos in minutes instead of days. For example you can transmit as many as twenty 8-1/2 x 11″ documents in an hour over long-distance telephone lines or by microwave. Read the rest of this entry »

Chicago to Have World’s Most Powerful Aerial Beacon

A TWO billion candle power high intensity arc light, the biggest lamp ever mounted as an aerial beacon, soon will be projecting its beam into the sky from a tower atop one of Chicago’s tallest skyscrapers. The light, the gift of its inventor, Elmer A. Sperry, famous inventor of the high intensity arc, the gyroscopic compass, gyroscopic helms-man, is to be named the “Lindbergh Beacon,” as a permanent memorial to the colonel’s famous one-man flight to Paris. Read the rest of this entry »