Seventy-five years ago, Santa Claus decided to visit Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but apparently decided to leave his reindeer at the North Pole. Instead, he decided to parachute into the area, but hit these power lines. While awaiting rescue, he waved at waiting children. This picture appeared in Life Magazine, December 19, 1949, which reported that he should stick to old-fashioned reindeer.
No family picnic is complete without getting on the air and making some 2 meter QSOs, as shown 70 years ago this month on the cover of Radio News, May 1944. While mom gets lunch ready and junior looks on, dad is making some contacts with his Gonset Communicator, which can operate on either 117 volts AC or 6 volts DC.
The magazine contained an article describing the then-new offering. It noted that it was considerably more sophisticated than prewar rigs. While the target market for the rig was hams, the magazine noted that it was also suitable for CAP use, or even as the UNICOM frequency of a small airport.
A hundred years ago, these naval aviators look like they’re sleeping on duty, but sleeping was their duty. They are busy learning Morse code, and the Navy discovered that they could do so by sleep learning. While they were asleep, messages were sent to them at increasingly higher speeds. It was found that when they woke up, they were able to copy that speed. In fact, some of the trainees were able to recite the messages that had been sent to them while they slumbered.
The photo appeared in the December, 1923, issue of Popular Mechanics.
I recall checking out the book shown here, UFOs and IFOs: A Factual Report on Flying Saucers, by Gardner Soule, from the library in my elementary school. Looking at the reviews on Amazon, it looks like this particular tome made its way into a lot of elementary school libraries. In any event, it was a scholarly look at the UFO phenomenon, and since it was presumably vetted by the school librarian, it must have been real science.
The author was a fairly prolific writer about topics that we might today call the paranormal. He specialized in cryptozoology, and according to Wikipedia, his most famous work was Maybe Monsters. (But in my opinion, UFOs and IFOs was the most popular.) He specialized in books for young readers, and his works appeared in Boys’ Life and Popular Science.
I forget whether I took to carrying a compass with me, but I never did figure out how to get my hands on a diffraction grating for my everyday carry. Thankfully, they’re easy to find these days.
If you see a UFO, and don’t have a diffraction grating in your pocket, you’re going to feel embarrassed, especially since we gave you this reminder. The scientists won’t be happy. Therefore, we recommend that you order one immediately. Fortunately, they are now available at our sister site, MyEclipseGlasses.com, for only $3.99, which includes free shipping anywhere in the world.
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If you tried this today, the National Park Service and the FAA would probably seize your airplane and haul you off to jail. But a hundred years ago this month, the cover of the December 1922 issue of Popular Mechanics showed the first ever landing of an airplane in the Grand Canyon.
Aviator Royal D. Thomas, accompanied by photographer Anthony Ugren, successfully landed the plane at Plateau Point, despite the treacherous air currents that were known to exist there. “To the Indians who had assembled in their best paint and feathers, it must have been an awe-inspiring sight, similar to that of earlier generations of red men who saw the centaurlike cavaliers of the Spaniards and the steam train for the first time.”
The landing of the 180 horsepower plane took place on the morning of August 18. The next morning, the upward flight out of the canyon took 4-1/2 minutes, although Thomas estimated that it would have taken a minute longer if he hadn’t caught an upward air current that lifted him nearly 1500 feet.
Amazon might be starting drone delivery any day now, but as we can see here, it’s not a new idea. A hundred years ago this month, the cover of the November 1922 issue of Popular Wireless showed Major Raymond Phillips’ “famous” method for wireless controlled aerial mail. The issue included part of a series written by Major Phillips with some of the technical details of his system.
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This artist’s conception of skywriting appeared a hundred years ago this month, in the October 1922 issue of Science and Invention.
While this advertisement never appeared in the skies of New York, the magazine did report that London residents, startled by the sound of an airplane, found the words “Daily Mail” written in the sky.
The magazine reported that the plane’s exhaust was routed through a tank containing oils and chemicals to produce the writing, described as dense black smoke.
The term “skywriting” had apparently not yet been coined, and the magazine’s title for the article was simply “Airplane Writes Words in Smoke.”
Seventy years ago this month, the October 1952 issue of the British Wireless World carried this illustration showing possible methods of linking American and European television. The diagram had actually first appeared two months earlier in the August 1952 issue of Tele-Tech as part of an open letter to the President of the United States (which would have been Harry S Truman) imploring action on TV networking with Europe and South America. According to the magazine, American homes would be able to view the great events of Europe, live, but “the underprivileged of Europe can be shown the wonderful richness of life in America.”
The diagram showed the potential methods, the first of which being an “airplane-relay between a dozen or more express planes continuously flying a regular route across the ocean,” presumably carrying 16-mm film.
The next idea was Stratovision, the use of a string of aircraft aloft, each relaying the signal to the next plane. As we previously showed, this system was tested, and even used to a certain extent, in the United States. But doing it over the Atlantic would require a set of aircraft carriers on which the planes could land, which would likely make the idea much less feasible.
The next idea was a string of VHF relay stations through Labrador, Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, and the Shetland Islands. The longest link would be 290 miles, meaning that the idea might be feasible. If this idea sounds familiar, it’s because it’s similar to one we talked about earlier, one proposed by David Sarnoff in 1951, although his plan envisioned the link going the other way, over the Bering Strait. Other ideas included a submarine coaxial cable, or scatter transmission, essentially the use of brute force to propagate VHF signals over the horizon. It also mentioned “miscellaneous marginal proposals,” such as use of moon reflections, which of course depended on the moon being visible over both continents, which would happen for about five hours per day.
One of the first transatlantic broadcasts was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the following year. It was first seen on American television courtesy of 16-mm film flown by the RAF to Gander, Newfoundland, to the CBC, which was then picked up by American networks. The first live transatlantic broadcast didn’t take place until 1962, and it relied upon a method not anticipated by the 1952 article, namely, the use of the Telstar 1 satellite. While Telstar was the first transatlantic use of satellite, it should be pointed out that it wasn’t the first television transmission by satellite. Those honors go to Echo 1, which successfully relayed signals via a passive reflector between the east and west coasts of the U.S.
USS Langley. Wikipedia photo.
A hundred years ago today, October 17, 1922, marked the first time that an aircraft took off from a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Langley (CV-1). While aircraft had previously taken off from ships, this was the first time that a ship specifically designed for that purpose had been used. The ship had previously been a collier in World War 1, and had been newly converted. That first plane was piloted by Lt. Virgil C. Griffin.
The ship had served as a collier in World War I, and was converted to a seaplane tender prior to World War II, in which she also served. The ship was damaged in 1942 and scuttled.
We’re not told exactly what these scouts were doing, but it was obviously important. While the plane flies over, one is watching with the binoculars, and the other is listening to some important message on the radio.
The illustration, by Douglas Duer, appeared a hundred years ago this month in the June 1922 issue of Boys’ Life.
The issue contained a number of features about wireless, including one fiction story, as well as detailed instructions for constructing a crystal set. It also included this sad tale of the sinking of the SS Grøntoft.
