Popular Science

Issue date: 10-1939

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Sep, 1939

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Nov, 1939

Skin-Tone Analyzer Selects Right Color for Face Cosmetics

Skin-Tone Analyzer Selects Right Color for Face Cosmetics To determine the exact cosmetic color that will best blend with individual skin tones, a novel analyzing apparatus has just been introduced for beauty-shop use. A complicated system of lenses, prisms, and a polarizing screen is used to throw a tiny rainbow of light onto the skin […]

You Can Have Lots of Fun Making These New Toys

HOW many toys are you going to make for Christmas this year? A lot of them, we hope, because no home workshop activity gives greater satisfaction and pleasure. There is something imaginative and colorful about toys that sets them apart from ordinary shop projects. Then, too, there is the added joy of being able to give each toy to some child and share in his happiness.

Sailbike - PROPELLED BY WIND, ODD BEACH VEHICLE GIVES THRILL RIDE

WHEELING over hard-packed sand at high speeds, an odd vehicle designed and constructed by a European inventor combines features of a bicycle, a scooter, and a sailboat. Starting with the framework of a tandem bicycle, the inventor joined the front and back wheels with a tubular steel framework that supports a wooden, scooterlike platform into which was stepped a wooden mast.

Compact Copying Machine Is Portable

Compact Copying Machine Is Portable A portable photographic copying machine recently introduced is so completely contained within its own cabinet that even its developing chemicals do not have to be drained off while the unit is in transit. Simple to operate, the apparatus has an adjustable focus, a cartridge containing 200 feet of sensitized paper, […]

Double-Bowl, Single-Stem Pipe for Two-Fisted Smokers

Double-Bowl, Single-Stem Pipe for Two-Fisted Smokers FOR double – barreled smoking enjoyment, pipe lovers are invited by the proprietors of a New York City tobacco shop to try out their latest development, the twin-bowl, single-stem pipe pictured at the right. Something like burning his pipe at both ends, the smoker fills and lights both bowls, […]

Fishtail Drive PROPELS BOATS and MODEL PLANES

FOR ten years, Arthur D. Hill, Jr., a California commercial fisherman, has been observing and studying how the vibrating tails of fish enable them to dart through the water at great speeds. He also noted that birds, with their flapping wings, were still more efficient in flight than the most modern of airplanes with fixed wings. Puzzling out the principles involved, Hill determined to combine the methods of bird and fish, and he has finally developed an odd fishtail drive for Propelling model airplanes, and boats ranging from toy craft up to vessels thirty-five feet in length.

Optical Illusion Improves Visibility of Highway Markers

I’m guessing that someone’s last thought as they hurtled through the intersection right in front of a fast moving truck was “Why did someone paint ‘POTS’ on the ground?” Optical Illusion Improves Visibility of Highway Markers Optical illusions are now being turned to the cause of highway safety with the recent development by Frank McLaughlin, […]

Safety Belt Moors Baby in the Bathtub

Strapping your kid into the bathtub just seems like a bad idea. How about they just change the first sentence to: “It’s dangerous to leave a small baby unattended in the bathtub, so don’t do it.” Safety Belt Moors Baby in the Bathtub It’s dangerous to leave a small baby unattended in the bathtub, and […]

Hatching House Flies For Profit

IN AN ODD SKYSCRAPER FARM, DOMESTIC PESTS ARE RAISED FOR MANY CURIOUS PURPOSES By FRANK CAPORAEL SEVENTEEN stories above one of the busiest streets in New York City, America's strangest livestock farm has its barns and pastures. The barns are glass jars. The pastures are mesh-inclosed cages. And, the product of this skyscraper ranch is house fliesâ€”5,500,000 flies a year! The unique enterprise started ten years ago when scientists of an insecticide company wished to make exact tests of the effectiveness of their product. They needed normal, healthy flies on which to test the sprays. From this small beginning, the fly farm has grown to the mass-production activity of today.

Bike Keeps Family in Stitches

Bike Keeps Family in Stitches CARRYING four persons and a sewing machine, the world’s weirdest bicycle recently had a tryout in Chicago, Ill. The two-story vehicle, known as the “Goofybike,” is the creation of Charles Steinlauf. It carries the whole Steinlauf family. The inventor rides at the top and guides the contraption by means of […]

Novel Rowing Car Provides Good Sport

What this country needs is an exercising' machine that will provide good sport as well as build up muscles and tear down excess avoirdupois. At least that is the belief of the New York manufacturer of the novel whirligig car shown above.

Blind Get Fair Map Printed in Braille

Blind Get Fair Map Printed in Braille For the benefit of the numerous blind persons visiting the New-York World’s Fair, the New York Association for the Blind has made available a map of the exposition printed in raised Braille characters. Complete in every detail, the map is designed for use with a special Braille guidebook […]

Here's what a ROBOT "thinks" with!

Here’s what a ROBOT “thinks” with! WHEN you see a Robot obey its inventor’s commands to rise, walk, talk, sing, and smoke, you wonder what kind of imitation brain it has. The New Merriam-Webster tells you that the Robot’s “gray matter” is made of Selenium, and its chemical relatives, which also make possible all the […]

Shrubbery Camouflages Helmet

What helmet? All I see is shrubs. With binoculars. Shrubbery Camouflages Helmet Shrub branches sprouting from soldiers’ helmets are a form of camouflage now being generally used in wartime to help hide officers and troops from enemy snipers. To facilitate the attachment of this camouflage shrubbery, the steel helmets of British troops are being covered […]

Goofy Inventions Are His Hobby

By ROBERT E. MARTIN RUSSELL H. OAKES, a Waukesha, Wis., advertising man, is the Thomas A. Edison of goofy gadgets. Out of his basement workshop have come more than fifty screwball innovations. They have no practical value on earth. They will never see the inside of the Patent Office "Gazette." They have no standing as labor-saving devices. Yet, they are making their inventor famous!

Map on Rain Cape Is Walking Atlas

Map on Rain Cape Is Walking Atlas A colorful map of the United States, complete with rivers, mountains, boundary lines, and other geographical features, adorns a novel rain cape recently introduced. Made in either red or blue, the cape is fitted with a hood, and has extra large armholes to permit it to be worn […]

Gas-Raid Shelter Protects Pet Dogs

Gas-Raid Shelter Protects Pet Dogs Air-raid protection, a peacetime program familiarly known as A.R.P. to every English citizen and designed to prepare for the safety of men, women, and children in case of wartime bombing or gas attacks, is now being extended to include animal pets. Recently, Marcus Le Touche, a dog owner of Charlton, […]

Hurricane House Turns with Wind

WEATHER-VANE DWELLING DESIGNED FOR BOTH SAFETY AND COMFORT By CARL WARDEN WHEN raging storms whip across the land, accompanied by violent gales that uproot trees, tear the roofs from houses, and turn a trim countryside into a scene of desolation, there could probably be no safer refuge than the interior of a novel hurricane house designed by Edwin A. Koch, New York City architect. Streamline in the form of a mammoth teardrop, this amazing dwelling would revolve automatically to face into the oncoming storm, meeting it like the wing of an airplane and passing it smoothly around its curving sides toward its pointed tip.

License Tag in Miniature Identifies Auto Keys

I think this is a great idea. Though I’m sure that Bruce Schneier could explain to me why this is a bad idea, I’d still love to have one. I can never remember my license plate number! Here is an awesome gallery of similar key chains. This guy sells them, but they don’t look nearly […]

Hitch-Hikers Get a Waiting Room of Their Own

Um… This doesn’t seem like the greatest idea. Hitch-Hikers Get a Waiting Room of Their Own Performing the role of the good Samaritan to the nation-wide fraternity of automobile hitch-hikers, the owner of a service station in Albion, Mich., recently established a hitchhikers’ depot hard by his row of gasoline pumps. Nailed to a tree, […]

A Tame Woodchuck

A WOODCHUCK that eats pretzels, climbs trees, and opens a screen door when it wants to come into the house, is the odd pet owned by L. G. Lessig, of Newark, N. J. Two summers ago, the baby groundhog was found near the Lessig summer cottage in northern New Jersey. Fed milk from a baby bottle, it grew rapidly and quickly expanded its diet to carrots, wheat, tomatoes, crackers, and clover. When the family returned to Newark in the fall, the pet woodchuck returned with them.

Midget Hot-Water Bottle Soothes Toothaches

Midget Hot-Water Bottle Soothes Toothaches A doll-size hot-water bottle now on the market is said to be a handy medicine-cabinet accessory for use in the treatment of toothaches and similar ailments. Fitted with a leakproof rubber stopper, the bottle has a neck large enough to admit crushed ice, so that it may also be used […]

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