Category:
1960s
At the 1964 New York World’s Fair, American Express displayed a “money tree.” Its foliage consisted of a million dollars in currency and travelers' cheques from countries around the world.
source of images: worldsfaircommunity.org
You can buy a money tree bag on eBay for $95:
An album released in 1964.
The Phoenix New Times offers some info about it:
Hot on the heels of surgeon general Luther Terry's 1964 finding on the dangers of smoking came this, the most absurd of the Living Strings' "music to do something by" series. Of course, what instrumental songs like "Clair de lune" and "Yellow Bird" have to do with staving off lung cancer is inconsequential -- it's the liner notes that make the persuasive pitch: "Only will power will make you stop smoking. But this music may help your will power." The fact that this music is supposed to "relax you, make you feel good and keep your hand from groping a pack of cigarettes" may lead some more mischievous or bored listeners to grope for something else. Oops! Sorry. Wrong surgeon general.
Wikipedia has some info about
The Living Strings:
The Living Strings were a studio orchestra founded in 1959 by RCA Victor for a series of easy listening recordings issued on the RCA Camden budget label... RCA Victor record producer Ethel Gabriel created the "Living Strings" series of albums, which were easy-listening instrumental string versions of popular tunes, the type of music that came to be known pejoratively as elevator music.
There was no actual orchestra known as the Living Strings. The orchestra for most of the recordings was made up of musicians from various British orchestras assembled for the purpose of making the records.
I couldn't find any tracks from "Music to help you stop smoking" on YouTube, but apparently you can
listen to the entire album on Spotify, if you have access to that (which I don't).
Why the dog?
Source.
Sometimes vendors would like to sell relatively high-value items in vending machines. That is, merchandise worth more than a candy bar. Nowadays that's not a problem because there's technology that can scan paper currency or read credit cards, making larger transactions possible.
But back in the 1960s, vending machines relied on coins for payment, so selling high-value merchandise wasn't practical. Especially since the machines could only measure weight, shape, and size to determine if the coins were real — and these characteristics are easy to fake with low-value blanks.
The British printing company Thomas de la Rue devised a solution: radioactive vending machine tokens.
Its researchers realized it would be possible to create tokens made out of layers of radioactive materials such as uranium and carbon
14. These tokens would emit unique radioactive signatures that could be measured by Geiger counters inside a vending machine. Such tokens wouldn't be easy to forge.
The company patented this idea in 1967.
I'm not aware that any vending machines accepting radioactive tokens were ever put into to use.
I imagine they would have suffered from the same problem that plagued other efforts to put radiation to practical, everyday use — such as the
radioactive golf balls we posted about a few months ago (the radiation made it possible to find the balls if lost). The radiation from one token (or golf ball) wasn't a health hazard, but if a bunch of them were stored together, then the radiation did become a problem.
Nashua Telegraph - Jan 11, 1967
In an effort to sell more wheat, the Kansas Wheat Commission invented canned wheat. It began selling it in 1961 under the brand name Redi-Wheat.
By 1963, the product was acknowledged to have been a flop.
Perhaps the problem was that it wasn’t clear what canned wheat was. A kind of oatmeal in a can? I'm not sure. The only description I could find was in an article in the
Muscatine Journal (Jan 12, 1962), and it really didn't shed much light on the matter:
This ready-prepared wheat food takes its place in many different dishes from soup to dessert, reports Jewel Graham, Iowa State University extension nutritionist. To use “as is” in place of rice or potatoes, simply heat it in a little water for a few minutes before serving.
Emporia Gazette - Feb 23, 1961
Council Grove Republican - Feb 22, 1961
(Note the caption names all the men in the photo, but purposefully excludes the two female employees)
A Utopian project in Miami that never materialized.
Wikipedia article here.
A gag gift from the early 1960s, created by inventor Jack Hurlbut: "When a button is pressed the lights flash, the dials spin, the switches turn—and nothing happens."
It briefly made headlines in 1965 when a man took one with him on a flight, and was promptly detained on the suspicion that he was carrying a bomb.
The Nothing Box is another one of those vintage curiosities that seem to have completely disappeared. I can't find any evidence that one of them still exists.
Wisconsin State Journal - May 18, 1964
Detroit Free Press - Dec 28, 1965
Detroit Free Press - Dec 28, 1965
Back in the sixties, researchers weren't afraid to tackle the really important questions...
Knoxville News Sentinel - Dec 2, 1962