Appropriate safety gear – then and now

Here’s a photo from Mythbusters, as Adam and Jaime test the “Escaping from a submerged car” myth:

And here’s a comparison from 1960 (Popular Science magazine) of a chappie called Philip Amero who had a regular stunt where he demonstrated getting out of a car that was dropped into a pool:

Escaping from a car that sinks under water

When a car plunges into water, one of the biggest dangers to its occupants is panic, according to Philip Amero, a Miami skin diver. Frenzied efforts to escape are a major cause of drownings.

Amero, who stages escapes at an aquarium, says that occupants should not exhaust themselves trying to force open a car door until inside and outside pressures are equalized. This occurs after a few seconds as the car fills with water.

• Ordinarily windows are shut, and he carries no special equipment to help in the stunt at Miami Seaquarium.

G.P.S. 1962 Style

A valiant attempt to solve a challenging problem but perhaps a little bit too far ahead of the curve. This is from February 1962 Popular Science:

Robot Tells You Where To Go

DRIVING North on the New Jersey Turnpike, you roll into a service station near Woodbridge and ask the way to a New York airport.
“A machine inside,” says the attendant, “will give you printed directions.”

On a wall is an alphabetical list of places and major highways, from Aqueduct Raceway to Zoo, Bronx. You press the button with the number of your destination. A sign lights up: “Machine in operation.” In seconds a slip of paper drops out. It tells you the route you’ll travel, and lists any exits, highway numbers, forks, and traffic circles that concern you. It may warn you of a lower speed limit on some stretches; or ask you to press another button for directions to an in termediate point or highway, and then tell you how to go on from there. You pay nothing. The trip slips are yours to take along.

Road queries at this Cities Service station are so heavy that the company employs uniformed girls to take the load off gas-pump attendants. Now the Directomat, first machine to give highway information, not only eases their job but stays on duty after the girls go off.

• Wheel-mounted memory bank turns, picks out needed information; mechanism prints it on the spot.

A modest, soft-spoken man who was a member of the French underground at one time, Dr. Tamir shrugs when credited with inventing the machine. “I had much expert help,” he says. But it was he who saw embossed addressing plates as the solution to printing information on the spot. They cost little, can be changed in a jiffy when information is obsolete. Hung on rods around a wheel are 120 such plates. Push a button and the wheel turns, the plates flipping over as they crest the downward-turning side. A network of relays and solenoids stops the wheel with the stencil bearing the desired information at the bottom.

• Embossed answer plates are hung around the wheel on horizontal rods. Studs on the wheel trip microswitches to select one of four quadrants, then one of five sectors in that quadrant, finally one of six plates on that sector, stopping wheel with the right plate at the bottom.

Permanent magnets hold it in line with an upright arm. The arm, moved by an electromagnet, in turn moves the plate out of the storage line into printing position before a platen. The sequence timer now energizes another magnet that shoves the platen and plate against an inked ribbon with the paper behind it. It works fast; average time after you punch a button is 10 seconds. It varies with the position of the desired stencil in relation to the last one used, which determines how far the wheel must turn.

Quick, Easy, Deadly

Another reminder that, in years gone by, consumers were expected to cope with dangerous appliances rather than having to be protected from them at all costs. This little – lethal – gem, with its exposed mains wires, is from October 1931:

Electricity Cooks “Hot Dogs” Laid on Metal Contacts

• Cooking of “Hot Dogs” is easy with this equipment which sends electricity through the meat.

Electrical current, flowing from one contact point to another, is being used to cook “hot dogs.” The dog is placed on two metal contact points, which are connected to the electric-light socket, the electricity is turned on, and the current thoroughly cooks the dog as it travels from one contact to the other.

An Unusual (Proposed) Aircraft

Back between the wars, Junkers proposed the huge J-1000 aircraft. Not only would it have been the largest (heavier than air) aircraft of its time, it was a radical design with a forward canard wing (which makes it look like it’s going backwards – the propellors are at the front) and passengers seated in the wing. This note is from December 1931:

Passengers to Be Carried in Wing of Giant “Duck” Being Built for Flight Over Atlantic

THE giant “J-1000,” called the “SuperDuck” because of its appearance, is to be built shortly in Germany. The big ship really is a “flying wing,” inside which the passengers will be housed. As can be seen, the stabilizer of the air giant is to be placed forward of the wing instead of behind it. The undercarriage is expected to be constructed so it can be drawn inside the ship while in flight.

Over at Wikipedia, there’s a comment in the article on Junkers:

Junkers’ produced a design study in 1924 for a visit to the United States. The study outlined a four-engined 80-passenger plane, incorporating a forward canard wing, as well as a main wing, both of which were fitted above twin pylons. Called the Junkers J.1000 Super Duck passenger seating was to be provided both in the main wing and the hull sections of the craft. This Junkers design, including a scale model, was intended to illustrate an aircraft capable of trans-Atlantic operations of 8 to 10 hours and was completely revolutionary for its day.

Various links about the plane have been collected by “Jackehammond“.

Testing Torpedoes

When you see torpedoes running along just below the surface, you don’t tend to think of the work that must have gone into making them do that, rather than diving down or up. This article was from November 1950 Popular Mechanics:

The Navy’s Chamber of Horrors

• Sometimes torpedoes leap out of water like dolphins. Water-entry studies show how to correct this fault.

All this delicately instrumented equipment was fine when the Navy could lower it gently over the side of a ship in the night. But today, it must withstand firing into the ocean from speeding jet planes. It must take thousands of miles of punishing travel in jolting trucks and shuddering transport planes, stock-piling in humid, corrosive jungle atmosphere or sub-zero Arctic. How it reacted to all this used to be a matter of expensive testing under actual conditions.

Now, in a huge three-story building taking up an entire wing of the new Naval Ordnance Laboratory at White Oak, a collection of fantastic machines fling weapon models into water at varying speeds, jolt and jar equipment to simulate the rough handling it may get. There are machines to bake it like the desert, freeze it like the Arctic, humidify it like the jungle, drop it, thump it, pummel it and squeeze it under the fantastic pressures of deep ocean. In this labyrinth of environmental wonders, marine can be subjected to any conceivable condition they may encounter anywhere in the world-from assembly line to explosion against target.

• Model of torpedo dives toward bottom of test tank instead of running along the surface. Experiments enable designers to change model to correct faults.

By studying water-entry movies, Navy designers can see what makes their weapons tumble, why torpedoes “broach” or leap from the water like lively porpoises, why mines dive or act strangely when dropped from speeding aircraft. “The optimum mine case today is smooth and clean,” says Doctor May. “We know that at low speeds, even fingerprints on a steel ball were enough to make a big splash and big cavity, whereas a perfectly clean ball went in smoothly and the cavity closed up quickly.” Designers of droppable ordnance now make vanes that will guide the weapon properly by catching in the cavity’s watery walls. Queer-shaped noses, proved out in the model tank, help steer the falling missile.

• Torpedo crackling with frost is suddenly dunked in warm water, simulating delivery by high-altitude plane.

Homemade Explosive

Something tells me I might have more trouble requesting potassium chlorate from my chemist than was the case back in September 1931:

Homemade Explosive Splits Logs

Heavy logs can easily be split with a cheap explosive consisting of equal parts of granulated sugar and chlorate of potash, a household remedy often used for sore throat. A log, 24 in.  in diameter and 10 ft. long, was split with three tablespoonfuls of this mixture, which was poured into a 1-in. hole drilled in the center of the log about 1 ft. from the end. The explosive was set off with a length of fuse inserted in the hole, which was then tamped full of dirt. The chlorate of potash can he purchased at most drug stores for a few cents a pound, and the explosive is less dangerous to handle than other kinds. – S. E. Grower, Peru, Nebraska.

• Large Log Split by Homemade Explosive of Sugar and Chlorate of Potash

Dangers of civilian vs military life

This is article is from July 1940 (Popular Mechanics magazine), when America was still watching the war develop.

Violating Safety Rules Is as Perilous as War

Your chances of sudden death when violating simplest safety rules are about the same as your chances in the war zone.

• A study of hazards by the Northwestern National Life Insurance company points out, for example, that drinking while driving slows reactions fifty per cent and puts motorist and passengers under the same death risk as riding a contraband-carrying freighter in the North Sea for the same length of time.

• Drivers who ignore stop signs have only twenty per cent better chances of escaping death than a sailor on a British destroyer in an equal period of exposure, accident statistics show.

• You might as well be in a bombing raid as “jaywalk” across a busy American street in the middle of the block. You chance of surviving the fifteen to thirty seconds between curbs is about the same as in an air raid.

• And it’s twice as risky to clean with benzine, naphtha or gasoline as to learn combat flying at one of the U. S. army and navy air schools.

Elephants in Silence

Jumbo Earmuffs

Foam-rubber earmuffs have been fitted to elephants at Windsor Safari Park to keep them from being upset by noisy jet traffic at London’s Heathrow Airport nearby.  From Popular Mechanics, April 1970.

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Elephants with Ear Muffs

From British Pathe – video clips for sale, sample stills.

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Elephant Wearing Earmuffs

From FlickR, Deja Vu (in Canada)

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Elephant Jokes

Q: What do you call an elephant wearing pink earmuffs and a dress?

A: Anything you want, it can’t hear you.

From DannySadinoff.com

In Hot Water

From the “They’re selling what?” pile, this item from November 1950:

Hot Water for Sale Via Special Delivery

Want to buy some hot water? In Brookings, S. D., two war veterans have started a new business enterprise – selling and delivering hot, soft water to the harried housewife. The two young men first went into the trucking business, then started selling hot water to keep their trucks busy. A 10-gallon milk can filled with steaming water costs the housewife 25 cents, delivered to any part of the house. The veterans buy the soft water from the city light and power plant, where it is used in the boilers to prevent scale. Biggest business day, of course, is Monday – washday. Customers also use the water regularly for scalding chickens and pigs.

A Mid-Air Rescue

An interesting rescue, and not one that I’d be keen to try. This comes from Aug 1931:

Human Pendulum Yanked From Plane in Air

While the entire personnel at Chanute field watched spell-bound and horrified, the oldest of human dramas, risking of lives to save another’s, was re-enacted in a new setting – the clouds. Private Harold E. Osborne, a student in the parachute riggers’ school at Chanute, was scheduled to make a test leap. He climbed out of the cockpit, thousands of feet in the air, and by accident released his  parachute rip cord before he could jump. The chute caught in the tail assembly of the plane, yanked Osborne into the air and left him there, stranded and swaying like a pendulum in the slip stream of the plane. Although the strain of the soldier’s weight was terrific, the pilot, Lieut. C. H. Deerwester, managed to maintain his altitude and control, while another plane, piloted by Lieut. H. E. Engler and carrying Lieut. A. A. Straubel as a passenger, took off to attempt a rescue.

The second plane, with “Follow Me” chalked on its side, headed out over a near-by lake, followed by Deerwester and his dangling human pendulum. When over the lake, Lieutenant Straubel lowered a knife on the end of a weighted rope, to the unfortunate soldier, the planes meanwhile being held in as near the same relative positions as possible. Osborne finally caught the knife, cut the shroud lines of his entangled chute, dropped like a plummet, and then pulled the cord of his reserve equipment and floated safely down from the “longest parachute ride in history.”

• Private H. E. Osborne who took the “Longest Parachute Ride” when his shroud lines became entangled with the plane’s tail