Category Archives: Education

Prime Number Pencils!

We are pleased to announce the opening of our sister website, PrimeNumberPencil.com!  There, you can buy the perfect gift for the mathematician in your life, the Prime Number Pencil.

The pencil is imprinted with the 24-digit number 357686312646216567629137, which is a prime number. After you sharpen the pencil, it will have the 23-digit number 57686312646216567629137, which is also a prime number. Eventually, it will have the number 37, and then the number 7. No matter how many times you sharpen the pencil, it will be a prime number.

They come in packages of 3, 5, 7, 11, and 23, and shipping is free!

1955 Sleep Learning

Screenshot 2025-05-23 12.19.34 PMShown here, in the June 1955 issue of Popular Electronics, is French actress Jeanne Demery hard at work learning Swedish for an upcoming play, all while she sleeps. We’ve reported previously (here, here, and here) about the concept of sleep learning. According to Wikipedia, it doesn’t work, but as a kid, it sounded reasonable to me, and sounded like a good way of bypassing the drudgery of studying.  I had to sleep anyway, so it seemed reasonable to take advantage of that time to learn.

The problem I ran into was the lack of suitable equipment.  The tape had to play while I was deep asleep, and ideally keep repeating.  I had a tape recorder, but once the tape ran out after a few minutes, I would be left without anything to learn.

With one of the devices shown in this article, I would have been all set up.  It looked like a phonograph with a timer, but it could also be used as a magnetic recorder.  The normal cartridge was replaced with a magnetic head, and speech could be recorded onto a magnetic disc.  The device was the Dormiphone, and was manufactured by Modernophone, Inc., 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York.  It retailed for $229.50, which works out to $2747 in 2025 dollars.  That would have been out of my price range as a kid, so I guess that was another reason why I had to do my learning the traditional way.

(We searched in vain for more information about actress Jeanne Demery, but about the only thing we were able to find was this newspaper article also detailing her sleep learning achievements.)



First Radio Innaguration: 1925

Inauguration day 2025 marks a hundred years of the broadcast of presidential inaugurations. In 1925, the inauguration still took place on March 4 (the change to January 20 came in 1947), but on that day, an estimated 22 million Americans tuned in to hear Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge be sworn in and address the nation.

Among the listeners were millions of schoolchildren, whose classrooms had recently been equipped with radio receivers.

1925Mar5WashStarThe broadcast also marked the first time that an address by the President was broadcast in a foreign country. WBZ Boston carried the broadcast with a telephone connection to Washington. Its signal was in turn picked up by CKAC in Montreal, which broadcast the entire proceeding. The fact is noted in this clipping from the Washington Evening Star, March 5, 1925.

Of course, loyal readers will remember that Charles Dawes, the first Native American to hold the office of Vice President, and the first Vice President to write a Top 40 song, was also sworn in that day.



1944 WLS School Time

1944Nov20BCWe’ve previously written about the School Time program on WLS Chicago, which started in 1937. Every day at 1:00 PM, the station carried a program especially for school children, which was played in many schools in the region.

Eighty years ago, the station boasts in this ad on the cover of Broadcasting magazine, November 20, 1944, about how successful it was. The station reports that a single announcement offering a color map of the Brookfield Zoo. 5,629 letters flooded the station asking for a copy of the map. While the ad noted that the School Time program wasn’t for sale, they had plenty of programs that were, and an ad on the station promised to deliver results.



Radio Swimming Lessons, 1924

RadioWorldAug161924Radio has been used over the years to provide instruction in many different disciplines. But for some reason, this one never caught on. A hundred years ago today, the August 16, 1924, issue of Radio World carried this photo showing radio being used to give swimming lessons.

The photo shows one Mary Gustin, and the swimming instructor is one E.C. Dalton, who is behind the microphone of New York station WEAF.  She is about to plunge into the water, where she will listen in to her instructions.



1924 Phonograph for Language Learning

Screenshot 2024-05-06 10.22.46 AMA hundred years ago this month, the May 1924 issue of Science and Invention shows the latest development in language education, namely, the photograph.

The main breakthrough here is that instead of listening through a horn, the phonograph reproducer contains a microphone, which is hooked to an amplifier feeding headphones for the individual students. The teacher is also supplied with a microphone, through which she can address the students without any need for them to remove the headphones.

The phonograph is also equipped to cut disks.



1939 Typing Class

1939JanRadioRetailingAs shown here in the January 1939 issue of Radio Retailing, it looks like a few boys 85 years ago got the memo that the place to meet girls (and learn a useful skill) was to take typing class.

And this school was doing it right. Above the blackboard, you can see a loudspeaker, which is playing an amplified recording. The magazine notes that this delivers a rhythm, which is desirable for the student typists to develop a uniform touch.



1938 Desktop Calculator

1938OctPracMechIf you needed a desktop calculator 85 years ago, you couldn’t go wrong with the one described in the October 1938 issue of the British magazine Practical Mechanics.

It was a literal desktop calculator, since you affixed it to your desk. It consisted of three logarithmic scales, and could perform multiplication and division, and even square roots. To multiply, you placed your straightedge on the numbers on the outer scales. At the point where it crossed the middle scale, that was the product.

You could use any ruler, but the magazine recommended as the best option a strip of celluloid. You would carefully score a line down the middle, fill it with ink, and then polish away the excess ink.

With practice, the calculator was accurate out to three figures.



Radio in the Schools: 1938

1938SepRadioCraftThe New York city high school students shown above are presenting Macbeth over the airwaves of WNYC. They are featured in an article in the September 1938 issue of Radio Craft, which notes that a new “R” has found its way into education. In addition to Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic, the schools now included Radio.

1938SepRadioCraft2The station presented two educational programs per day–one for elementary students, and one for the high schools. The fifth graders at P.S.92, Bronx, shown here are listening to one such program, which was picked up by an ordinary receiver in the room. Not all schools were yet equipped with radio, but the plan was for every classroom in the school system to have its very own radio in the near future.

The students appearing in the programs were selected by audition, and the magazine noted that there was no shortage of volunteers.

The same issue of the magazine also carried an editorial by Hugo Gernsback, who opined that schoolroom broadcasting would afford deserving young boys and girls and opportunity for self-expression never before available. He also reminded his readers that there was a very decent profit to be made by the enterprising radio man who goes after the business in education.



1923 Distance Learning

1923JulPSDistance learning is nothing new, as shown by these New York high school students 100 years ago, pictured in the July 1923 issue of Popular Science. While the magazine identifies the school as “Haarken High School” in New York, this is almost certainly a typo, and it should read Haaren High School, as confirmed by this site and others reporting the same accomplishment.

This is the accountancy class at Haaren, and the students are listening to a series of accountancy problems broadcast by WJZ in Newark, NJ (now WABC New York). A receiver and loudspeaker had been installed, and the students are seated at their adding machines. Problems were read slowly and distinctly, and the correct answers were read a few minutes later. “The general correctness of the classroom work was testimony of the clearness with which radio waves carried.”

Witnessing the successful demonstration are officials of the city Board of Education, as well as more than 25 principals of city high schools.