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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 »

Yes, that is Steve Jobs on a motorcycle.

Also be sure to check out the other great computer article from this issue: “The Chip”

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HIGH TECH, HIGH RISK, AND HIGH LIFE IN Silicon Valley

By MOIRA JOHNSTON

Photographs by CHARLES O’REAR

SILICON VALLEY appears on no map, but this former California prune patch, an hour’s drive south of San Francisco, is the heartland of an electronics revolution that may prove as far-reaching as the industrial revolution of the 19th century.

It is a place where fast fortunes are made, corporate head-hunting is profitable sport, and seven-day workweeks send cutting-edge technology tumbling over itself in its competitive rush to the marketplace.

Not surprisingly, flying—fast, challenging, and risky—is a sport that appeals powerfully to Silicon Valley men such as Bob Noyce, who snatches every chance to fly his twin-engine Turbo Commander to Aspen to ski, to his Intel plant in Phoenix, or just to wheel in the sky around Silicon Valley. Read the rest of this entry »

When was the last time you saw a soft drink ad with alcohol in it?

Sprite with vodka speaks for itself.

Sprite. The soft drink with a message: tingling tartness.
Switched on. Exuberant. Noisy.
Not sweet.
Not anything you’ve heard before.
Or tasted.
Get a carton of Sprite and hear how it turns vodka on.
Then taste!

If a soft drink answers don’t hang up.
Sprite has something to say!

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Meet Mr. Typewriter

He’s also known as Martin K. Tytell. the man who can provide you with a machine in any one of 147 languages.

AT least once a month, New York postal authorities get a letter addressed to Mr. Typewriter, New York. But they stopped consulting their directories long ago—the letters now go automatically to Martin K. Tytell. As sole owner of the Tytell Typewriter Company, he rents, buys and sells typewriters but his specialty is making a typewriter do what its manufacturers never thought it could do.
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Listeners Applaud Program

BY PRESSING an electric switch, radio listeners may express approval of a current radio program. Holding down a small switch attached to the base of a small lamp placed near the radio, the increased current drain is shown at the local power plant or substation.

Now being used in France, the idea was first tried out by an American power company working with an eastern broadcasting chain.

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Helicopters for Everybody

The Hoppicopter is evolving into a comfortably single-seat helicopter that will supply you with cheap air transportation.

By Frank Tinsley

BACK in the 30’s, a Seattle aeronautical engineer named Horace T. Pentecost became convinced that he could design a set of personal wings. As an engineer and student of aviation history, Pentecost was well aware of the shortcomings of man-made flapping wings, so he gave the problem an entirely different solution. In place of rosy pinions, he substituted the whirling blades of the modern helicopter. His first machine, designed for army paratroopers, was intended to supplant the clumsy and uncontrollable parachute. Read the rest of this entry »

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PIN-UP CAR PARADE

ALL GOOD THINGS must come to an end Mechanix Illustrated, with this final fanfare of eight—you count ‘em, eight!—Pin-Up Cars, winds up a series which commenced in May 1951. Owners of 79 beautifully restored old-timers have won Mi’s $25 award, the vintage of their cars ranging from an 1899 LeRoy to a 1939 Morgan three-wheeler, their quality of design and workmanship from fine to superb. Hail—and farewell! Read the rest of this entry »

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KILLER IN DISGUISE

It’s called static electricity and it can give you a big charge—one that can kill.

By Robert Hertzberg

THE PREMATURE baby had been hustled off to an incubator. The obstetrician who had brought it into the world turned his attention to the mother, still groggy from a combination of labor and anesthetic.

“Everything looks normal,” he remarked to a nurse.

Suddenly the quiet of the hospital delivery room was shattered by an explosion from the operating table. The doctor was knocked unconscious and the mother died an hour later. Read the rest of this entry »