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Intergalactic Space Control Panel

A fascinating, safe, electrical toy for junior space travelers.

By Robert Brightman

“GEE, Bob, when are you ever going to finish that control panel for me?” When your youngster starts off on a tack like this and keeps it up for a few weeks there is only one way to keep peace in the family. And that is to finish the job. The control panel as it is called by my son and all his friends is one of the most fascinating toys a father can make for his boy. Essentially it consists of a six-volt transformer, a series of toggle switches and miscellaneous lights, bells, buzzers and meters.
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HOW MUCH IS ∛2589¹⁶
The Army’s ENIAC can give you the answer in a fraction off a second!

Think that’s a stumper? You should see some of the ENIAC’s problems! Brain twisters that if put to paper would run off this page and feet beyond… addition, subtraction, multiplication, division — square root, cube root, any root. Solved by an incredibly complex system of circuits operating 18,000 electronic tubes and tipping the scales at 30 tons!
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One-Man Chorus All By Himself!

PROFESSOR F. A. FIRESTONE of the University of Michigan demonstrates a device which gives him ten voices. He places a curved glass tube in his mouth and goes through the motions of singing, while he plays a nova-chord. An electrical field translates his unsung words into the sound of the novachord, and the music comes out sounding like a chorus of ten voices! It’s good for breaking leases.

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Let a Franchise Put Money in Your Pocket

If you’re an inventor with a product to sell, or a man who wants his own business, franchising could be your way to wealth.

BY JAMES JOSEPH

WHETHER you’re an inventor who has brainstormed a marketable product, or a fellow yearning to plunge into a business of your own, experts nowadays are apt to prescribe the same means of success: franchising.

Franchising your brainstormed product or service and you lease its use—and marketing —to dozens, even hundreds, of in-business-for-themselves franchisees, dealers who pay you a use fee or royalty, or both, for the privilege of cashing in on your success-laden idea. (Franchise fees range from $10 to $100,000, with the average from $6000 to $10,000; royalties run from 1% to 10% of gross sales.)
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I love that they made the airport look exactly like a giant version of the plane. Obviously the next step was to make floating airports for flying airports.

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Why Don’t We Build… FLOATING AIRPORTS

Then when the inevitable crash occurs, it will be on open water and not a crowded city such as Elizabeth, N. J.

By Frank Tinsley

THE modern four-motored air transport is a flying fire bomb. It takes off with about 5,000 gallons of high test gasoline with the explosion potential of T.N.T. In 90 per cent of all crashes, this liquid dynamite either goes off with disintegrating force or is showered over a wide area in a flaming rain that sets fire to everything it touches. That this can be a deadly menace to people living around air- ports is shown in recent statistics. The Greater New York area alone has suffered five such crack-ups in a period of four months. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a mod. mod. modular world.

Simplify, simplify! Instead of paying more for bigger, bulkier audio control components, pay less for compact Shure modular components that — singly or in combination—handle critical functions flawlessly. Cases in point: (1) the M67 and M68 Microphone Mixers, the original high-performance, low-cost mixers; (2) the M610 Feedback Controller, the compact component that permits dramatically increased gain before feedback; Read the rest of this entry »

That swamp wagon is pretty damn bad-ass.

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IT’S NEW!

SWAMP WAGON’S nine-ft. tall rear wheels have hickory treads steel-clamped to 28 in. rims weighing 700 lbs. Vehicle is designed to clamber over Florida’s soft muck bogs.

TOTCYCLIST Brad Bradley drives cut-down 125 cc Harley Davidson like a pro. Five-year-old was taught to ride 50-mph machine by his Dad. Brad began career at 18 months.

MANY-LENSED Italian Summa camera has revolving turret housing regular lens, wide angle lens and two for direct sighting. It also has hand grips and flash attachments.

NO FANCY PANTS, Solly Davis holds Geiger counter inside Goodyear’s new one-piece vinyl film anti-radiation suit Inflated by compressed air, suit is air-conditioned. Read the rest of this entry »

Ike Likes Art
GENERAL Dwight Eisenhower has been a very busy man. First it was the Army, then Columbia University, then SHAPE and now the White House could be just around the corner. A man couldn’t do the jobs Ike has done without having some means of relaxation. With Ike it’s art. When the whistle blows at the end of a tough day, the General unlimbers his art tools and makes like Rembrandt. And he does pretty well, too. One of his early pieces, a painting of an Indian head, sold for $2,600. His oils stole the show at Columbia art exhibit.

The catalog of techniques on the third page just looks like a list of environmental disasters nowadays.

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Climate Control Is Coming

If Spain could have subdued the devastating storm that swept its Armada from the English Channel in July 1588. would all the Americas be speaking Spanish today?

If Napoleon’s proud legions could have neutralized Russia’s secret ally, “General Snow” how would the map of Europe look now?

If the Nazis could have ordered gales to batter Gen. Eisenhower’s vast invasion force off Normandy on June 6, 1944, what would historians now be writing about World War II?

Armchair strategists have long de- bated the tantalizing “ifs” introduced into history by the vagaries of weather. In military operations, weather is usually a potent foe or a mighty ally. Read the rest of this entry »

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Santa Clauses, Salami-Tyers and Soap-Tasters

Like to join the Brotherhood of Odd-Jobholders? Maybe some of these weird occupations aren’t difficult, but they’re certainly unique.

By E. I. Grinda

EVERY year during two weeks of October and November, men from all aver the United States gather at the most unusual school in the world—Santa Claus College. In Albion, N. Y., they study to be genial St. Nicks, sent there by department store managers who have found that their most acute problem near the end of each year is where to get a good reliable Santa Claus.
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Flying Saucer is for advertising purposes only. Walter Galonska, left, of Germany, spent a year building it. Since free-flying machines are verboten to Germans, Galonska anchors it with a steel cable. An electric motor drives the two contra-rotating propellers. Here he shows it to Dr. Ursinus, glider plane experimenter.

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How a Sign is Painted

A water-color drawing, scaled one inch to the foot, is squared off by the pictorial painter for his own guidance in putting such outsize art work on a board with raw paint. This is shown below, overlaid on an outline sketch of picture and lettering that is keyed to serve as a color chart.
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