Here’s a snapshot of the cost of groceries just before World War II, from the Pittsburgh Press, March 28, 1941.
These prices look low, but there’s been a lot of inflation in the last 80 years. According to this inflation calculator, one dollar in 1941 was the equivalent of $17.89 in 2021 dollars. When you multiply all of these prices by 17.89, most of them stop looking like bargains.
The young man shown here has been drawing Social Security for a few years now, but in 1960, he was pulling in a broadcast station thanks to the two transistor receiver described in the Spring 1961 issue of Radio TV Experimenter.
The set was dubbed by the magazine as the “Little Cub,” and was described as an ideal project for boys, individually or in groups. The circuitry was mounted on the front panel, which was a printed circuit board. Half the fun of building the set was etching the circuit board using etchant liquid. According to the magazine, contact with clothing would cause it to be soiled with a brownish color, “but this solution is not dangerous in any form.”
The circuit board traces actually went on the front of the board, and additional decorations and dial markings were added, meaning that the lettering was all in copper.
After the circuit board was etched and rinsed, the glass baking pan in which it did its work was washed with soap and water and put away, and Mom was presumably none the wiser. Then, the two transistors and one diode and other components were soldered in place. The first stage, a 2N414A transistor, served as RF amplifier and used feedback to boost the signal. A 2N107 transistor was used as audio amplifier. The set also featured a phono input which could be hooked to a record player.
Shown here 110 years ago this month in the March 1911 issue of Popular Electricity is an aerial searchlight system. According to the magazine, one of the most serious problems of naval warfare was lighting the enemy’s vessels sufficiently to make them good targets. A spotlight directly from the ship would be counter-productive, since it would provide a target for the enemy. One possibility was to mount the lights on smaller boats which were “harder to hit and not so costly if sunk,” but the problem was communicating with them, which would require either signal lights or wireless which could be detected by the enemy.
The solution was to mount the searchlight in a balloon powered by cables from the ship. The balloon would be carried by the wind and not switched on until it was sufficiently far away to avoid revealing the ship’s location. It could be controlled by magnets run from the ground.
The invention was actually the subject of a German patent by one L.J. Mayer. The magazine notes that the inventor was from “Metz, the warlike frontier town which Germany wrested from France in 1871.”
Fifty years ago, this Italian gentleman is expressing his approval at the loudspeaker volume coming from this one-tube medium wave set, described in the March 1961 issue of Radiopratica magazine.
The set used a single dual tube, an ECL86, known in America as a 6GW8. The tube was reflexed to get double duty out of the tube, allowing the use of a speaker with a relatively simple circuit. The set ran off line current, thanks to solid state rectifiers, and the detector is also a solid state diode.
If Junior is looking for a science fair project involving acoustics, then this one from a hundred years ago will fit the bill. It’s simple to create but has a spectacular result. And as an added bonus, it promotes communication despite social distancing, since it is possible to whisper to someone about 20 feet away.
The diagram and explanation appeared a hundred years ago this month in the March 1921 issue of Science and Invention. The idea had been sent to the magazine by S. Leonard Bastin.
Some links are affiliate links, meaning that this site earns a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on the link.
Seventy years ago this month, the cover of the March 1951 issue of Popular Science featured this artwork by artist Denver Gillen (who made the first drawings of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and later, numerous covers for Outdoor Life) showing “what an A-Bomb blast may do to your home,” but with an inset of a family safely hunkered down in their family foxhole.
The cover entreats the buyer to save the issue, since it contains a special section on emergency preparedness written by Michael Amrine, formerly of the Atomic Energy Commission.
The magazine’s editors noted that much of the literature regarding civil defense was “tragic nonsense–aspirin for cancer. Even the official booklets say mainly, ‘Keep calm, keep covered, and follow directions.” But it goes on to say that official directions might not be forthcoming, since there did not exist civil defense organizations comparable with the problem. Instead, the magazine advocated “planning and plain hard work” by individual homeowners, and the magazine contained advice on how to do that. “The hard truth is that the most you can expect from civil defense will be control and rescue work after a bombing. The most effective preparation for atomic attack will be family by family, house by house.”
The article first noted what not to do, and pointed out that steps such as blacking out the house, taping windows, or even buying a Geiger counter were of very minimal utility. It noted that, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, radiation was not going to be the big killer. Instead, it would be the familiar forces of heat and blast, and the article gave pointers on preparing a refuge room to protect against them. The author asked readers to “imagine that your house is in a cyclone or hurricane belt, and next door to a gas tank” and plan accordingly. The most important principles in planning a refuge room were making sure there were at least two exits, keeping out from under heavy furniture or appliances, and preferably being in a corner of the cellar with the least windows or exposure. The importance of using a corner is illustrated by the drawing at left.
After a spot was located, ideas such as shuttering windows and making use of a heavy table or workbench were outlined.
The article included a number of frequently asked questions, including “what should I tell the children?” The answer was simple: the truth. They should be instructed where to go in a raid and how to hit the deck. You shouldn’t scare them, but don’t make it a game, either.
For homes without a basement, the author suggested placing earth or logs against an outside wall, with a sturdy table inside.
The list of recommended supplies included the usual suspects such as canned food and battery operated lights. Under the category of “valuables,” the recommendation included an extra pair of glasses and a lockbox for valuable papers. Rounding out that category was money (in small bills), on the assumption that, as in the last war, the economy would be in full operation.
The list included a wind-up clock and maps of the city and county. The battery operated radio made its usual appearance on the list. The article noted that utilities would probably be out, although some, especially the gas lines, might continue to function for a time. Since battery operated radios were still quite rare (but not unheard of) in 1951, the article noted that a car radio would also work.
The article did note that it was dealing with just the Hiroshima-style A-bomb, and not the H-bomb. It notes that the H-bomb was then still just a theoretical possibility, but that if perfected, it would wreak the same level of damage over a still larger area.
This early proto-recreational vehicle was shown a hundred years ago in the March 1921 issue of Popular Mechanics. The magazine notes that this vehicle, called an “auto-bungalow” was “the culmination of a movement which had been growing ever since the motor car became a reliable means of transportation. It ancestor was the two-wheeled homemade camp trailer, designed to carry the tents, bedding, and other simple requisites of a two-weeks period of “roughing it” in the woods or at the shore.”
The early RV shown above was not cheap. According to the magazine, the total cost was $16,000. According to this inflation calculator, that would work out to almost a quarter million in today’s money, a figure that’s not surprising, since many top-end RV’s are available today in that price range. The vehicle, including the rear porch, had an overall length of 30 feet. As is apparent, it required an abnormally long overhang at the rear, but the magazine pointed out that this was an advantage, since it put most of the weight on the rear axle, providing better traction and making steering easier. The interior living quarters measured a respectable 8 by 20 feet, which included a kitchenette with ice box, stove, hot water tank, and fireless cooker. It included toilet facilities and 22 incandescent lights powered by battery and generator.
As is the case today, not everyone could afford such a top-of-the-line luxury RV, and the magazine pointed out a number of options for the more budget conscious. For example, the “20th century prairie schooner” shown at left was constructed at reasonable cost by a Kansas City resident. It was built on the chassis of a popular make of light car, with the wheelbase extended several inches. The even simpler equipment shown to the right 
was designed by a Maine resident at a total cost of $312, including two new tires. This family of six cooked most of their meals on campfires.
Modern tent trailer for motorcycle or small car. Amazon photo.
The tent trailer shown below is similar in concept to some modern motorcycle camping trailers. According to the magazine, a number of such trailers, with either two or four wheels, were readily available for purchase, for the benefit of those with “neither the leisure nor the ingenuity to originate and build outfits.”
You might not give much thought to the humble bicycle tire. But as shown in this cartoon, having good bicycle tires could mean the difference between life and death. A most unfortunate friendly fire incident was averted thanks to the hero’s bike being equipped with U.S. Royal tires, manufactured by the United States Rubber Co. This ad appeared 70 years ago this month in the March 1951 issue of Boys’ Life.
For many years, the March issue of Popular Mechanics featured a radio receiver dubbed the “Little Giant,” and the couples here are enjoying the last months of the prewar era by dancing to the sounds of the magazine’s 1941 rendition.
The set is a familiar “All American Five” AC-DC superheterodyne circuit, featuring a tube lineup of 12A8GT, 12K7GT, 12Q7GT, 50L6GT and 35Z4 rectifier.
The magazine noted that the set was easy to build, had unusually good tone, with full volume and distance-getting ability. The cabinet could be homemade, or purchased from a parts house.
A hundred years ago, this scientist is predicting the tides with the help of this tide predicting machine, described in the March 1921 issue of Popular Science.
The machine is an analog computer, one version of which was fittingly dubbed Old Brass Brains. The first such machine was designed by Lord Kelvin, who noted that the tide at any particular location was the sum of a number of sinusoidal functions in the form:
Prior to the advent of the digital computer, such a computation would be laborious, especially if one needed to repeat it to calculate the tide minute by minute. But with the analog computer, once the various constants were set, it was simply a matter of turning a crank and seeing what the tide was at any given time.
Each term of this equation is represented in the machine by a wheel similar to the one shown at the left. As the wheel turns, the piece in the middle moves up and down, and the distance moved up or down is proportional to the cosine of the angle at which the wheel is turned. By changing the position of the pin and the size of the wheel, the various constants in the equation are taken into account. The output of this wheel is then linked by a pulley to the next wheel.
Replicating such a machine in its entirety would, of course, cost millions of dollars in precision machining. However, the advanced student could create a very impressive science fair project by constructing a part of such a machine, namely one of these wheels, or perhaps even link two wheels together. With information from the WIkipedia articles and Popular Science article linked here, a very impressive exhibit could be created.
