4/29/14

Science news, 1931 - Science, in the time of Spanky.

Science news now, from the time when Little Rascals roamed the Earth! Yes! There was some!


As if the greatest danger in a car accident were fire, and not getting squished or stabbed by broken car pieces, or simply being "decelerated to death" a consortium of English companies were apparently working on asbestos body panels for motor-cars. I wonder why this idea never caught on. Hmmm. Anyway, this picture makes my lungs itch. Moving on....





Hey! Another proto-internet concept! In '31, you'd have been the first on your block to hear about the zany antics of the Third Reich if you had this home radio news receiver.

You'd wake up every morning. Shuffle over to the radio news cabinet and read... "*tick*tick*tick*tick* Everything still grayscale. Color not invented. *tick*tick*tick*tick* Depression still sucking. Hitler still being really weird and scary. *tick*tick*tick*tick*  Alfalfa's hair still sticking up. *tick*tick*tick*tick*   Instead of paying for this news wire, you could have had breakfast this morning. Good job.  *tick*tick*tick*tick*"

Their terms are confusing. They describe the means of transmission as "radio", but the information was planned to be sent through "electric light wires", presumably with some kind of subscription service. Maybe they were just using "radio" to give people a familiar way to understand their new idea, even the data connection was more like a telephone line?




Depression-era ASCII art! The article says he uses a stock model typewriter with "several fonts". I didn't know this, but apparently they did make multi-font typewriters. Let mind = blown. This is one o fthose hobbies where boring people say you've got "too much time on your hands" because nothing could tear them away from staring at the TV to do something clever or weird like this. Power to you, Charles H. Young, you clever nerd!


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