Giant Photos Made Electrically (Oct, 1939)
This is pretty cool. Someone realized that when you fax something you can print the output at any scale you want. They connect the output to a giant inkjet printer (using an airbrush as a print head) to create huge images.
Giant Photos Made Electrically
WITH a new apparatus recently developed in in England, small sized photographs, drawings, aerial photo maps, blueprints, sketches, painted portraits or scenes, printed or typed matter, and prints of almost any kind including reproductions of photographs or paintings, are directly reproduced and simultaneously enlarged to any size on almost any kind of paper, linen, canvas or other fabrics, or any other material such as even thin metal if it will wrap around a drum, by means of an airbrush jet controlled by a photo-electric scanner. One of these sharply detailed enlarged pictures, showing the head and shoulders of a child, measuring 30×34 feet and said to be the world’s largest photograph, is at present being displayed in London.
Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature (Aug, 1953)
Normally I don’t post articles without pictures, but this one just floored me. This little blurb from 53 years ago perfectly sums up the greenhouse effect and global warming.
Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature
Earth’s ground temperature is rising 1-1/2 degrees a century as a result of carbon dioxide discharged from the burning of about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal and oil yearly. According to Dr. Gilbert N. Plass of the Johns Hopkins University, this discharge augments a blanket of gas around the world which is raising the temperature in the same manner glass heats a greenhouse. By 2080, he predicts the air’s carbon-dioxide content will double, resulting in an average temperature rise of at least four percent. If most of man’s industrial growth were over a period of several thousand years, instead of being crowded within the last century, oceans would have absorbed most of the excess carbon dioxide. But because of the slow circulation of the seas, they have had little effect in reducing the amount of the gas as man’s smoke-making abilities have multiplied over the past hundred years.
Alarm Warns Of Fire In Cellar Of Home (Feb, 1939)
Not quite a smoke detector, it has to reach 145 degrees to go off.
Alarm Warns Of Fire In Cellar Of Home
ATTACHED on the ceiling or wall over a furnace, a new automatic fire-alarm device invented by T. E. Campbell, of Wilkinsburg, Pa., provides added protection for the home. If the furnace overheats or a fire breaks out, the alarm rings the doorbell when the temperature reaches 145 degrees, allowing time for investigation before the fire gains headway. The device is small enough to fit in the hand (insert), yet is rugged in construction, its adjustment being unaffected by hard knocks.
Electronic Machine Speeds Fliqht Information to Area Offices (May, 1955)
Given all the stories I’ve been reading at the Consumerist, it wouldn’t surprise me if the airlines still used these things.
Electronic Machine Speeds Fliqht Information to Area Offices
American Airlines has turned to an electronic machine to provide fast, accurate flight information to all its offices in the New York area. The machine, the Magne-tronic Reservisor, is already in use, handling reservations automatically. In its new utilization, information on all flights, incoming and outgoing, is fed into the whirling drum that is the machine’s “memory,”
and is then available at any airline office in the area. To obtain the information, an agent has only to push a simple combination of buttons on the branch-office keyboard. The answer is returned in flashing lights. Immediately available flight information allows the agent to answer queries at once instead of checking bulletin-board postings.
Electricity Grades Student Papers (Jan, 1936)
Ahh, the birth of the hanging chad.
Electricity Grades Student Papers
IMPERSONAL electricity, which never grows tired or irritated by wrong answers, will be used in several schools this winter to correct examination papers. By means of a small device invented by Joseph Sveda and Herbert Lehmann, two New Jersey high school teachers, the papers will be electrically corrected at the rate of 25 a minute.
On the examination paper, the student punches out disks corresponding to “yes” or “no,” and “true” or “false” in answer to the questions. The correct perforations set up an electrical contact when passing through the machine, and the number of contacts represents the student’s grade.
Build your own answering machine (Jun, 1958)
“Impossible, you say? The miracle of electronics has all but removed the word “impossible” from the dictionary.”
Make the POP’tronics Secretary
Tell your friends that their telephone messages to you will he recorded by electronics
By TRACY DIERS
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE to have a secretary who will answer your phone and take messages at any hour of the day or night but who will demand no pay and no coffee breaks? Impossible, you say? The miracle of electronics has all but removed the word “impossible” from the dictionary.
There are two types of systems you can build which will do this job for you. The deluxe system requires two tape machines or one tape machine and one disc machineâ€” when a call comes in, it plays a recording of instructions and then switches over to record the message. The simpler type, to be described here, requires only one recorder and anyone who can put together a small amplifier can build it.
Armored Tank Attains Speed Of 114 MPH. (Feb, 1939)
This is the tank driving around in fast-forward at the beginning of the movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream.
Armored Tank Attains Speed Of 114 MPH.
AN ALL-WELDED armor-plated army tank which, it is claimed, can attain a speed of 114 m.p.h. over a level road and 78 m.p.h. over rough ground was recently demonstrated at Rahway, N. J. Invented by Preston Tucker, an armament manufacturer, the tank weighs 10,000 pounds, which is 2,000 pounds less than the present conventional type. Besides machine guns, it features an anti-aircraft cannon, which is mounted in a turret atop the rear of the armored body.