Category:
1950s

1950s Voice Recognition Device

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All that fancy circuitry ends up in typewriter output device.

Original article here.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 01, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: Technology, 1950s

Atomic Peanuts

In 1959, Walter C. Gregory of North Carolina State College introduced "atomic" peanuts to the world. Despite the name, they weren't radioactive peanuts.

He had exposed peanut seeds to huge amounts of radiation to create mutant strains. Then he had selected the mutant strains with the qualities (size) he liked. And in this way created jumbo-sized peanuts.

As this article at Atlas Obscura notes, what Gregory was doing was "mutation breeding," and it's the way many of the varieties of fruit and veggies we eat nowadays are created. We no longer call it "atomic" food, though it is.

Since the 1950s and 60s, mutation breeding has created around 3,000 commercially available varieties of plant—durum wheat, rice, soybeans, barley, chickpeas, white beans, peaches, bananas, papayas, tomatoes, sunflowers, and more. Almost any grapefruit you've bought was probably a mutant.

"Atomic" peanuts



Man and woman eating "atomic" peanuts



Kansas City Times - Jan 12, 1959

Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 30, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: Food, Science, Atomic Power and Other Nuclear Matters, 1950s

1956 Commercials:  7 minutes Total Per Hour Show



Now, that's weird! Especially when compared to double that amount today.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Aug 29, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Television, 1950s, 2010s

A Meal In A Matchbox, 1956

Matchbox-sized meals. The utopian food of the future, as envisioned by British scientists of the 1950s.

"the housewife of the future will never have to worry about dishpan hands if science puts pills and water on the table instead of steak and potatoes."
— Port Angeles Evening News - July 25, 1956

Synthetic food, as tasty and more nourishing than the real thing, yet so compact that a three-course meal goes in a matchbox, has been made in top secrecy by Government scientists....
Matchbox meals can be kept almost indefinitely without deterioration. An example of the matchbox food could be soup, a dish of synthetic stewed steak followed by a sweet in the form of, say, apple puree. There would not be as much as you might be accustomed to see on a well-filled plate, but it would be satisfying to eat, and the flavour would be indistinguishable from the real thing. The soup will probably be in a tablet form. The stewed steak will be a packet of course granules. There will be a teaspoonful or so of white powder which will be the mashed potatoes. Another little packet of powder will contain the apple puree. The only thing to be added to the chemicals will be water.
— Keystone Wire Service, July 17, 1956




Port Angeles Evening News - July 25, 1956

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 29, 2015 - Comments (5)
Category: Food, 1950s

The Animation of Joop Geesink





We marvel at films like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, or Wallace and Gromit, in which, during a given scene, one or two puppets might be in motion. I can't fathom the amount of work that Joop Geesink went through to create his films.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 27, 2015 - Comments (2)
Category: Stop-motion Animation, 1950s, 1960s, Europe

A Regular Shortcut

Perhaps no one had ever complained before.

Macon Chronicle-Herald - Feb 6, 1954



Suspect Tipsy Driver Took Wrong Short Cut
AUBURN, Ind. (AP)—Carl Wilder, 39, of Pleasant Lake, Ind., was charged with drunken driving Saturday after his truck went through a farmyard, ran over a farmer's automobile and destroyed 100 yards of fence.
Wilder told doubting police: "I always take this short cut."
Police suspected he was thinking about a gravel road a half mile away.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 23, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: Inebriation and Intoxicants, 1950s

The Tri-Car

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[Click to enlarge]

Original article here.

This odd little auto actually made it into limited production.

Full history here.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 20, 2015 - Comments (5)
Category: Eccentrics, 1930s, 1950s, Cars

Drunk-O-Meter Test Fizzles

A great moment in the history of science. Arkansas, 1956.

Corsicana Daily Sun - June 8, 1956



'Drunk-O-Meter' Test Is Fizzle: Man Passes Out
HOT SPRINGS, Ark., June 8 — An attempt to test the accuracy of the "Drunk-O-Meter," a device used to measure the degree of intoxication of a person, ended in failure at Hot Springs.
The reason—the man engaged to get drunk for science passed out before he could be measured.
The experiment was conducted by police at the request of the judges' council, an official unit of the Arkansas Bar Association.
The man drank over a 20-hour period. In that time he consumed four half pints of wine, two half pints of whiskey, four half pints of "moonshine" liquor, and a half pint of vodka.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 19, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: Inebriation and Intoxicants, Science, Experiments, 1950s

Johnson Smith Catalog Item #35

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From the 1950s catalog.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Aug 18, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: Johnson Smith Catalog, Body Fluids, 1950s, Face and Facial Expressions

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