How can this ad NOT sell radios? Lightly disembodied, completely stereotyped arabs bemoaning the fact the nerd with the Echophone is getting an eyeball bath from all the ladies. Ladies with hot, questionable taste in bikini tops. He's also inexplicably stolen their hookah. (1944)

The ad is from "Modern Mechanix", which collects unusual advertisements from old science magazines. Check such inventions as the Beerador, people like the genius girl from Kansas, and startling exposes like There Are Robots Among Us.

It's also got more serious articles like this one about a prototype for a nuclear fission-powered airplane:

It’s when the A-plane lands that the difference between this aerial giant and non-atomic planes will become most apparent. Seconds after landing, the big plane will wheel to a radiation vault. There, either by remote manipulators or shielded vehicles, its reactor will be lifted out and remotely disassembled. Radioactive components will then be immersed in a water-filled “reactor well” to both cool the reactor and block the escape of deadly gamma and beta rays.

Inside the plane, crewmen will wear radiation dosimeters. When a man’s dosimeter indicates a total 30-roentgen radiation dosage, he will be scratched from flying A-planes. Thus, unless every precaution is taken, a crew is no more trained than they are up to their radiation limit and must be pulled from the flight roster and grounded.

Yipes.

Posted by eric at June 22, 2006 09:29 PM

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