March 30, 2006

LOBSTERS ARE LIKE PEOPLE (Jun, 1952)

Filed under: General, Just Weird, Scary, Taxidermy — @ 10:50 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1952
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The Truman one is kinda cute and the De Gaulle one looks like it should be in the Dark Crystal.


LOBSTERS ARE LIKE PEOPLE

Jean Sulpice, Parisian restaurateur, believes that lobsters and people have similar features. These “portraits” seem to prove the artist’s contention.

With a few props (a cigar, glasses and hats) and his lobster shells, the Frenchman created these caricatures of two famous international figures.

ANYONE WHO HAS seen Paris knows about Place Pigalle—and knows that almost anything can be found there. That is why it is no surprise to learn that in the city of artists, one Pigalle restaurateur is an artist who hangs his work from the ceiling. More surprising is his medium—lobster shells!

Page 2 Captions:
Left, no label is needed to identify De Gaulle. Right, not so easy to recognize is the figure of the French president. Vincent Auriol

Fine wire holds the various parts of the figures together in their lifelike poses

Hanging from the ceiling in a somewhat frightening array are scores of examples of the artist’s work in a variety of subjects

Jet-Age Custom Car (Sep, 1954)

Filed under: Automotive — @ 10:39 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1954
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What this really reminds me of is the car from The Ambiguously Gay Duo

Jet-Age Custom Car
No flames spout from the tail pipes of a custom-built three-wheeled car, but that is about the only difference between it and a space ship! The engine is a 60-horsepower V8 mounted in the rear. A single front wheel is suspended on a motorcycle fork. The sheet-metal body is welded to the frame. Air scoops on each side of the body ventilate the engine. The 10 tail pipes permit the hot air from the engine to escape. The unusual car was built by Stanley M. Eakin of Grove City, Ohio. It took six years of his spare time. Top speed is about 90 miles per hour.

Dissatisfaction- AMERICA’S GREATEST ASSET (Apr, 1954)

Filed under: Advertisements — @ 10:27 am
Source: Scientific American ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1954
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Dissatisfaction- AMERICA’S GREATEST ASSET

Opportunities to create better products exist in every home and industry in America today. But only a few, dissatisfied men and women recognize these opportunities. Such leaders are advancing their respective industries. They possess vision. They are spurred by initiative. Feather dusters have no place in their planning.

Since 1938, Meletron has been producing excellent instruments that are used by every major aircraft manufacturer. But we are constantly testing new materials and devising new methods. Leadership in this industry imposes the obligation to improve, because tomorrow’s standards will be higher. Dis-
satisfaction with what has been accomplished, plus a determination to improve, is America’s greatest asset.

March 29, 2006

Scariest Magazine Cover (Aug, 1938)

Filed under: General, Scary — @ 2:01 pm
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1938
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I dunno, but this just makes me think of John Wayne Gacy.

Water Rocket (Dec, 1955)

Filed under: Origins, Toys and Games — @ 1:55 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1955
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Jet-Propelled Rocket. For flights several hundred feet straight up. fill the eight-inch plastic rocket one-third full of water, pump in air (inset) and press a trigger. In flight, water ejected by compressed air makes a visible jet stream.

Early Porsche (Sep, 1953)

Filed under: Automotive, Origins — @ 1:26 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1953
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Looks like it would be a lot of fun to try getting into that.

New German Sports Car Called 125-Mile-an-Hour Speedster
A recent entry in the sports-car field is this Porsche racer from Germany—a more powerful and faster machine than the model previously offered by the same maker. Power has been boosted from 70 to 80 horsepower and maximum speed, it is reported, from about 110 to 125 miles an hour. Body design has been revamped, too, with the result that the new model has a body a few inches lower than its predecessor.

Lucky Kid’s Midget Tractor (Sep, 1949)

Filed under: Automotive, Toys and Games — @ 11:13 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1949
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Lucky kid, I want a tractor too!

Our next award goes to a proud wife and mother, Mrs. S. C. Manila, of Boyceville. Wisconsin. Her letter reads, “I cannot help but forward the enclosed, snapshot of a tractor my husband made for our youngsters. It really has created envy in everyone who sees it. It stops traffic and all children just must touch it and ride in it. I am sure your readers will be interested. It is powered with a 2/3-hp. engine and will pull four coaster wagons carrying 12 children. Our boy in the snapshot is just four years old.”

Breathing Balloon for Big Breasts (Sep, 1949)

Filed under: Impractical, Personal Appearance, Useless Tech — @ 10:44 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1949
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Or I guess I should say “developing your form”. You know, if that’s what you want.

Breathing Balloon
will develop your form, if that’s what you want. It’ll also train you to breathe deeply by measuring your lung capacity by means of the shut-off valve. Moore’s, 14548 Forrer Ave., Detroit, Michigan.

Alternate Uses for Hot Things (Jul, 1938)

Filed under: House and Home, How to, Kitchen — @ 10:35 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1938
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Hair Drier Becomes Sawdust Blower
Upper left-—A small electric hair drier mounted on a box standing beside a jig saw will be found useful for removing sawdust as fast as it forms.

Iron Heats Water
Above—If a curling iron is sterilized with boiling water and carefully washed, it will be found useful as an immersion heater for the sick room. Also, it will prove useful when traveling, as a means of heating water for shaving or washing. Photography fans will find the curling iron valuable for heating a small amount of water when mixing chemicals. One of the advantages of this type of heater in the laboratory is the lack of flame which constitutes a menace when certain chemicals are heated.

Sealing Wax Melted Quickly And Easily With Ordinary Hair Curler
A curling iron at maximum heat will be found suitable for melting sealing wax. If a number of letters are to be sealed, this method will speed up the work and is more convenient than using matches or candles. When finished, the wax left on the iron can be scraped off easily and quickly.

Hair Appliance Speeds Paint Drying
A small electric hair drier can be used to heat a paint drying cabinet as shown in the photograph. The “cabinet” can be nothing more than a cardboard packing box. A hole should be placed in the bottom to permit the air to circulate.

Flatiron Serves As Frying Heat Source
When an electric flatiron is inverted and placed in a holder as shown by the photograph, it becomes a good heater for the frying pan when eggs or meats are to be fried. The support can be made of wood or metal.

Early ad for Asimov’s I Robot (Sep, 1952)

Filed under: Advertisements, Robots — @ 10:28 am
Source: Scientific American ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1952
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For all you us sci-fi nerds out there.

YOU are an EARTHMAN..
YOU EXIST IN THAT
Exciting INTERPLANETARY
WORLD of TOMORROW!
Here are the newest and best books on ROBOTS by the publishers of the, most popular novels in Science-Fiction.

I ROBOT by Isaac Asimov
$2.50 - A truly great book written by one of the finest science fiction writers of our time. Based on the authors famed POSITRONIC ROBOT in a dramatically warm and exciting novel of thinking machines.

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10,000 Miles of Trouble (Sep, 1949)

Filed under: Crime and Police, General, History — @ 10:07 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1949
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Ah, the valiant border patrol guarding us from “undesirable aliens”. It doesn’t seem like much has actually changed in the last 57 years.


10,000 Miles of Trouble

By Nick D. Collaer
Cheif, Border Partol Section, Immigration and Naturalization Service of the U.S. Department of Justice as told to James Nevin Miller

Here’s the Border Patrol Chief’s own story of our constant fight to keep smugglers of aliens from sneaking in with their human cargoes.

SMUGGLING aliens across our 10,000 miles of boundaries has become a big time enterprise!

Some of the crooks engaged in this illegal traffic are netting juicy fees for helping foreigners crash our gates—up to $1000 apiece for Mexicans, $1500 for Chinese and as much as $1600 for Central Europeans and Hindus.

The Border Patrol of your Immigration and Naturalization Service is confronted with an unprecedented situation in American history, especially along the 2000-mile Mexican border. There, 4600 foreigners, many of them of the most undesirable type, were caught by the San Antonio District officers in a recent two-day period!

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SECRET WEAPONS (Apr, 1944)

Filed under: Aviation, History, War — @ 9:51 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Apr, 1944
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This article is supposedly about German secret weapons, but really is a propaganda piece expounding on the superiority of American arms and engineering. My favorite quote is: “So far the Germans haven’t come through with anything approaching the new British-American jet-driven plane, which is already in production.”

As far as I know the Germans already had Me-262’s in the field at this point. The the only American jet to be deployed in the war was the P-80 and by the end of hostilities in Europe, a grand total of 4 had made it to Europe.

SECRET WEAPONS

by Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson

“Our new weapons,” says Admiral W. H. P. Blandy, “can be and are kept secret, except that the enemy receives hill knowledge of their effects.” Here, in a sober analysis. Mi’s military analyst debunks the Herrenvolk’s “secret weapon” scare.

OUT of the rumor factories of Stockholm, Bern, and Berlin come periodic threats of miracle-working Nazi “secret weapons” that will blast the Allies sky high and clinch the war overnight. Are they sheer bluff?

As this is being written, a hullabaloo is still raging in the press over the much-touted German “rocket bomb.” Dr. Goebbels himself, fanning the propaganda flames, has claimed that a whole British convoy was wiped out in the English Channel in a matter of minutes by murderous long-range rocket shells. He would have us believe that the entire North French coast is a solid mass of rocket batteries capable of lobbing 12-ton bombs over London, each one powerful enough to devastate 20 square miles.

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