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The World’s First Earbud Headphones
Earbud headphones of yesteryear (May 1926 Science and Invention) Yesterday Apple announced its latest and greatest in electronic toys and tools. While most tech writers thought the updates were...
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Time Machine: Build Your Own ‘Iron Man’
Robots had a mixed reputation in the early 1930s. They represented the promise of streamlined, modern living that was supposed to be just around the corner. But the robot also symbolized the rise in...
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The TVs Are Coming! Station ID Cards From 1951
1951 station identification card for WBZ-TV in Boston, channel 4 Think TVs are expensive today? In early 1947 a high-end 24-inch television set would set you back $2,500 (about $24,000 adjusted for...
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‘Speeches Must Be Short’: Radio and the Birth of the Modern Presidential...
Tomorrow night, millions of Americans will tune in to the first presidential debate of the 2012 campaign. The 21st century voter has a multitude of media to see and hear the debates in real time: TV,...
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The Great Depression and the Rise of the Refrigerator
Refrigerator ads from the April 16, 1933 edition of the San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX) When I moved to Los Angeles and began my search for an apartment I was a little surprised by the fact that a...
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Bobbing Machine for Amusement Parks
Amusement park ride as imagined in the April 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics If you’ve ever seen film of amusement parks from the first half of the 20th century, you’re likely to lose your...
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Build Your Own Electric Ghost
An “electric ghost” from the cover of the April 1923 issue of Practical Electrics magazine Have you ever seen a ghost? Are you sure it wasn’t just a balloon with a face drawn on it? With the slow and...
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A New Source of Oil (for the 1920s)
The Bowie-Gavin process of extracting oil (June 1927 issue of Science and Invention magazine) As a non-renewable resource, we’re pretty certain that at some point we’ll run out of oil. But today—just...
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The Dawn of Home Audio Recording
Illustration from the cover of the December 1930 issue of Radio Craft magazine When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 the world was introduced for the first time to a machine that could...
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The Sound Effects of Silence: SFX Before There Were Talkies
Illustration from the September 1919 issue of Popular Science magazine The term “silent movie era” is rather misleading. From the invention of the cinema in the late 1890s until the adoption of the...
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Dazzle Shoppe: Animated Window Advertising In The Pre-TV Age
Frederick W. Schmidt’s invention of an animated retail window diorama (1922) While walking through the Westfield mall in Culver City, Calif. last week my eyes were inundated with a seemingly endless...
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The Olfactory Organ
The “smell organ” as illustrated by Frank R. Paul in the June 1922 issue of Science and Invention The June 1922 issue of Science and Invention magazine featured a rather peculiar invention which...
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Life Hacks from 1946
The 21st century has seen the rise of the term “life hack“—any strategy or action (sometimes digital, sometimes mechanical) used to make someone’s life just a little bit easier. Even though “lifehack”...
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When Santa Traded His Sleigh for an Automobile
Santa’s automobile filled with presents (December 8, 1898, Altoona Mirror) The history of Santa Claus in the United States is a messy one, complete with disagreements between historians over something...
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What Uber, Lyft and Sidecar Can Learn From the Jitney Cars of the 1910s
A “jitney” in New York, circa 1915 (Library of Congress) There’s nothing hotter in Silicon Valley right now than “disrupting” the taxi industry. Of course, people in the tech world can’t get enough of...
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Pretty Much the Scariest Way to Give Kids Their Medicine
Illustration of a bunny syringe from Robert L. Smeton’s 1963 patent application (Google Patents) Going to the doctor can be a pretty scary experience—especially for kids. So back in 1963, inventor...
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Who Owns the Books You Read?
Screenshot from the 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone, “Time Enough At Last” While visiting my parents in Minnesota a couple of weeks ago my dad excitedly showed me his new iPad mini and all the media...
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Corn of Ill Repute: How Butterkist Helped Make Movie Popcorn Respectable
Butter-Kist popcorn machine advertisement in the May 1919 issue of Popular Science [Source: Novak Archive] Today, concession sales often account for as much as 40 percent of a movie theater’s profits....
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Push-Button Promises
Partial cartoon about push-buttons (October 18, 1903 Times Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia) Authors, advertisers and inventors of the 1950s and ’60s all promised us that the push-button was the key to a...
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The Nap Zapper
As American workers began migrating from fields and factories to offices in the 1920s, forward-thinking inventors got busy devising ways to squeeze more productivity out of deskbound drudges. In this...
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