view additional pages

King of Cymbals

An ancient Turkish formula has grown into one of the world’s most fabulous monopolies.

By H. W. Kellick

IN quiet, colonial North Quincy, Massachusetts, a small vault-like structure as impenetrable as Fort Knox reverberates with a crash echoed ’round the world by 99 per cent of the professional bands and orchestras. Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Jet Engine For Your Car

THE jet engine for automobiles is no idle rumor. Here is one, pictured on these pages—and it runs. The inventor is a young engineer, Robert Kafka, of the firm of Carney Associates, New York City.

Kafka has been working on his invention for ten years. His success is signalled by a report that the Army Air Forces Command at Wright Field has ordered three of the engines as soon as they can be built and delivered. The Air Forces will probably use them to start conventional turbines for airplanes, however, rather than to power automobiles.
Read the rest of this entry »

“Commuter” helicopter pictured at right and below is claimed to be the world’s first successful two-place co-axial rotary wing aircraft. The all-metal blades line up fore and aft above the aluminum tear-drop fuselage and all controls are contained in a single unit. In recent public tests it performed vertical take-offs and landings and turned on its own axis while hovering. The pilot is Stanley Hiller, Jr.

He kinda looks like the love child of Hugh Grant and John Kerry.

view additional pages

Meet Hans Krause

His pocket-size sculptures are soothing to handle, sweet-scented and habit-forming.

ONE PATH to serenity, say the Buddhists, is through contemplating certain objects: the sky, a tree, a design. Not relying on sight alone, the Chinese have long used hand stones—small objects combining form and smoothness in a way that makes them delicious to handle. Read the rest of this entry »

First Signing by television of a legally binding contract was consummated above when executives of the Dumont Television Laboratories in New York and officials of the Chevrolet Motor Company, two hundred miles away in Washington, D. C, put their John Henry’s on the dotted line while watching each other in the television screen. This picture was snapped at the New York end. The screen shows what was going on in Washington.

view additional pages

Why Wing-Flapping PLANES Won’t Fly

THE odd plane described here is just another manifestation of the wing-flapping idea which has cropped up periodically ever since man first considered the conquest of the air.

There is a certain brand of inventor obsessed with the idea that the only satisfactory way to achieve flight is by a literal application of bird-flight principles. To this class of inventor all present day aircraft appear completely unsatisfactory particularly in their use of airscrews rather than wing beats as a means of propulsion. Read the rest of this entry »

Initials Engraved on Fingernail

MONOGRAMED fingernails is the latest fashion in fingernail adornment. The initial is put on by an engraving sten-cil filled with warm wax. Different shades of wax are used to match the stone in the finger ring or the dress.

The Old English initial is the popular choice.

view additional pages

Beware Home-Repair Gyps

By Harry Kursh

ONE Sunday last spring I decided that the outside of my house needed painting and figured the job would cost about $750.1 looked in my New York newspaper and saw a huge display advertisement hailing a new “paint” discovery.

I immediately filled out the coupon asking a representative from the company to call for an estimate and in less than 48 hours a salesman pulled up to my front door in a slick new car. He was immaculately dressed and carried a bulging briefcase.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Tracks That Violence Leaves

Are Americans becoming addicted to violence? And if so, does the violence that can be seen daily on television, for instance, contribute to the addiction? Dr. Victor Bailey Cline, a University of Utah clinical psychologist, has started a series of experiments which seem to him to point to a definite affirmative conclusion. In a one-seat theater in his Salt Lake City laboratory, Dr. Cline, left, and an associate, Dr. John Atzet, show motion pictures of kinds and degrees of violence to subjects hung with sensors that produce a physiograph (left) of their responses to what is appearing on the screen. Read the rest of this entry »

Car Body From Airplane Fuselage
AN AIRPLANE fuselage constitutes the body of the completely streamlined car shown below. The power plant and rear wheel of a motorcycle, a Ford front axle assembly, and three “doughnut” tires complete the make-up of the cigar-shaped car. it has a 130-inch wheelbase, will go 50 miles an hour, and goes from 45 to 50 miles on a gallon of gasoline. Efficient streamlining of this car reduces wind resistance to a minimum.

view additional pages

Why Don’t We Have… SUN POWER

Old Sol has more energy than all the atom bombs in the world lumped together. And it’s free … if we can find a way to harness it.

By Frank Tinsley

EVER since James Watt built the first steam engine, inventors have been trying to harness the sun’s heat to stoke their boilers because the sun is the mightiest heat source known to man. Every hour, it floods the earth with a deluge of thermal energy equal to 21 billion tons of coal. Every day, the sun pours more potential power upon our land areas than all mankind’s muscle, fuel and working waterfalls have generated since the beginning of time. Read the rest of this entry »

The Gumby Mk 1.

Mobile Sleeping Bag designed to permit the soldier to get into immediate action without having to fight his way out of the conventional type field unit is demonstrated at right by PFC Robert Wentermuth of Newton, N. J. The suit is not intended for wear in the daytime, only for mobility in surprise attacks at night under sub-arctic conditions.