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U.S. Armed Forces Will Buy Your Invention

Once again the National Inventors Council is calling for military gadgets. Here’s your chance to make a fortune as well as help your country.

By Ralph Coniston

AMERICAN inventors are on the verge of handing Russia a major defeat on the propaganda front. The Soviets have been jamming our Voice of America broadcasts and for the past year the nation’s top electronics scientists have been working on a method to counter the Red’s activities, at the suggestion of the National Inventors Council. And now officials report that success is near.
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MICRO-THIN plastic rain cape can be folded to fit in cigarette-size package, even when wet. Mighty handy for rainy gallivanters.

Gas Replaces The Noose
FOLLOWING the lead set by Nevada, Arizona and Colorado in the quick and painless method of executing criminals by gas, Wyoming has installed a lethal gas chamber to replace the noose, a now fast disappearing method of capital punishment. The Wyoming death chamber, manufactured by a Denver, Colorado, firm, is claimed to be the most humane yet devised. Several other states are said to be considering the adoption of gas chambers for legal executions.

Greenhouse Goes Modern

WHAT is considered as the last word in green houses recently has been completed in St. Louis at a $120,000 cost. Unlike the average greenhouse of today, the roof is practically hail proof, the top being made of an unbreakable composition.

The glass panels are made up of 24 by 26-inch panes covering 15,000 square feet, and are fastened in place with copper glazing strips.

Orange Ribbon Locates Airplanes Forced Down in Woods

IN CASE OF FORCED LANDING THE PILOT RELEASES 800 FEET OF WIDE ORANGE RIBBON WHICH RESTS ON THE TREE TOPS SHOWING THE PLANE’S LOCATION TO SEARCHING AIRMEN,THOUGH CONCEALED BY TREES.

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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 »