This looks pretty fun though I’m not sure where you can buy uranium nitrate these days.
Fun with Black Light for Home Chemists
By RAYMOND B. WAILES
CHEMICALS that glow with magic colors in the dark, under invisible illumination with “black light,” have been applied to theatrical costumes and decorations with spectacular effect. Your own home laboratory can be the stage for equally striking experiments with these substances, which possess the curious property known as fluorescence. Also, you can prepare other substances that shine in the dark through the phenomenon called phosphorescence—which is distinguished from fluorescence by the fact that phosphorescent chemicals continue to glow for some time after removal from the light that excites them.
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Boy, time has a funny way of changing how we perceive things. Nowadays this could be an ad for Greenpeace or the Sierra Club. You look at it and just cringe. Well, I do. I’m sure many members of the current administration would look at this ad with a teary eye for the lost days when the U.S. was the utterly dominant industrial power in the world and the rest of the countries on earth either provided customers or raw materials.
A quick picture of the American way—
with only 5.5% of the world’s land area the U. S. is served by 46.3% of the world’s trucks
INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER
ATA Foundation Inc.
American Trucking Industry
And you thought switching to the metric system was hard…
WOULD ADD TO ALPHABET
An alphabet of forty-one letters would be an improvement over our present one of twenty-six, according to a Portland, Ore., educator. In the English language the letter “a” alone is pronounced eight different ways. He would add a new letter for each sound. With such an alphabet, he declares, a person unacquainted with the language would require only two weeks’ time to learn it.
This is one they got right.
REAR VIEW TV for dash of tomorrow’s auto will tell driver what’s going on behind. Universal Broadcast System made device.
Wow, that sure is a tiny hearing aid. You almost need giant TV magnifier to see it!
Radio – Television – Electronics – HELPFUL HINTS FOR 1950
A—Producing large-size images from TV screens of nominal dimensions, this glare-less, flat and extremely thin lightweight screen utilizes the Fresnel principle of magnification. Advantages are claimed to include good optical quality and freedom from edge distortion. The magnifying element of the screen is a thin sheet of Plexi-glas into which hundreds of tiny circular grooves are pressed. It includes a glare filter and enlarges the image from a 10-in. TV tube up to the size received on a 16-in. tube.
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This is a really interesting early article about usability design. Specifically designing user interfaces that reduce error rates and speed up operations. I think people most commonly associate bad user interfaces with software but this article shows that it they have a long and distinguished history.
Be sure to check out the insane electric meters on the fourth page. It wasn’t enough to make the dials all go in alternating directions, no, they had to share numerals between them as well!
Psychology and the Instrument Panel
Designing indicators, switches and other controls to fit the abilities of the men who will use them is a joint problem for psychologists and engineers
by Alphonse Chapanis
OUR MACHINES have become so complicated that we have been forced in recent years to start a new branch of technology: namely, re-tailoring the machines to the abilities and limitations of human beings. This activity, called human engineering, is a new departure in the application of psychological principles to industry. Up to now the main emphasis has been on selecting and training the best man for the job. Human engineering tries to fit the job to the man—any man.
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Among other innovations this article is one of the earliest references I have to stereo or surround sound, what they call “auditory perspective”. This is another article that goes further in depth about surround sound.
NEW ELECTRICAL SYSTEM GIVES VAST TONE TO
Full Orchestra on Empty Stage
Conductor, 150 Miles from Musicians, Controls Expression with Master Key
ORCHESTRAL music such as never before had been publicly heard, poured from the apparently empty stage of Constitution Hall, Washington, D. C, a few nights ago when Dr. Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, demonstrated before the National Academy of Sciences, a new electrical system of musical reproduction and transmission developed by engineers of the Bell Telephone Laboratories.
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And they look pretty spiffy too!
Quickly Donned Plastic Coveralls Protect Dress Clothes from Grease
Vinyl-plastic coveralls that don’t let grease penetrate to clothes beneath are ideally suited for the home mechanic. Quickly slipped on, zipped up the front and belted, the coveralls protect dress clothes from all dirt and stains. The material is light, strong and impervious to chemicals.
