The million dollar space pen hoax
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Herbert Paus Popular Science cover, March 1930
This cover illustration by American commercial artist Herbert Paus shows Germany’s giant flying boat, the Dornier Do-X, cruising over New York City. It was entirely conjectural: the plane left its home port of Altenrhein, Switzerland for America in November 1930, but didn’t reach New York until almost 10 months later, on August 27, 1931.
From industrialartifactsreview.com
Soviet Camera
Robert Heinlein And The 100 Year Starship Study
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“Neon, writing its brazen enticements across the darkness and contributing its simmering hum to the uproar of the street, for me sums up the nocturnal romance of American cities…The technology has something magical and dangerous to it, because gas is another name for chaos. The etymology is the same: gas hints at the turbulence and instability of nature, with contending forces engaged in perpetual combat.”
Peter Conrad, Neon: 100 years of the greatest light show on earth.
Image: Neon signs in Times Square, New York in 1955. Slideshow.
(via theageofthecity-deactivated2012)
Newspaper delivery plane, Berlin 1930 “The caption for this photo from a 1930 German book about aviation reads: Airplane as newspaper carrier. The “Berliner Zeitung am Mittag” is carried in its own airplanes to every corner of the country. The newspaper bails are stowed in the cargo area in a particular order. The pilot, flying over the launch sites, needs only to push a number key on the control panel; the appropriate trap door of the cargo hold opens, and the stowed newspaper bundles fall out.”
A tram passing Westminster, London, 1950s
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