Showing posts with label popular science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label popular science. Show all posts
2/17/20
4/22/19
4/23/18
Popular Science, 1966 - "Electric Autos - They're on the way!"
Great news, citizens! It's 1966, and electric cars are almost here! When is "almost"? Non-specific shrug! Hooray! Please enjoy this complete article from the December, 1966 issue of Popular Science. Let's all get super cranked about the electric cars we'll all have in our garage as soon as 1970 or something!
Of particular interest is the fact that, in '66, keeping the car's battery warm enough was an issue, instead of the concern we now have keeping the batteries from overheating.
Also, we'll all suffocate by the year 2000. Read on!
Let's pause the tape for a second there. Popular Science seems to be assuming that automotive technology would stagnate in 1966, and that cars would remain filthy and inefficient forever. In their defense, maybe they had little to no evidence to believe otherwise or something? Sure, but here in The Future, we have the benefit of Actual Data from the intervening decades to check their assumption. NOAA tracks this kind of stuff. It's kind of their thing. Los Angeles is a pretty polluted city with a huge traffic problem as bad as any city gets. So, what does the data on LA say?
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/news/2012/119_0809.html
Hey, pretty cool. We're not dead yet. This is very likely due to the introduction of catalytic converters, which the editors of Popular Science wouldn't have had a clue about, way back in '66. Will electric cars become the norm? Of course, and they'll be great. However, PopSci's predictions about doom and gloom are just as questionable as their exciting predictions that we'd all have a wall-sized OLED television by 2005, and that they'd be so cheap that even the smelliest of hobos would be able to afford one (something I recall reading in a PopSci issue circa 2003 or so). Anything Popular Science says "will happen soon" should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
Of particular interest is the fact that, in '66, keeping the car's battery warm enough was an issue, instead of the concern we now have keeping the batteries from overheating.
Also, we'll all suffocate by the year 2000. Read on!
Let's pause the tape for a second there. Popular Science seems to be assuming that automotive technology would stagnate in 1966, and that cars would remain filthy and inefficient forever. In their defense, maybe they had little to no evidence to believe otherwise or something? Sure, but here in The Future, we have the benefit of Actual Data from the intervening decades to check their assumption. NOAA tracks this kind of stuff. It's kind of their thing. Los Angeles is a pretty polluted city with a huge traffic problem as bad as any city gets. So, what does the data on LA say?
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/news/2012/119_0809.html
Hey, pretty cool. We're not dead yet. This is very likely due to the introduction of catalytic converters, which the editors of Popular Science wouldn't have had a clue about, way back in '66. Will electric cars become the norm? Of course, and they'll be great. However, PopSci's predictions about doom and gloom are just as questionable as their exciting predictions that we'd all have a wall-sized OLED television by 2005, and that they'd be so cheap that even the smelliest of hobos would be able to afford one (something I recall reading in a PopSci issue circa 2003 or so). Anything Popular Science says "will happen soon" should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
12/15/17
11/27/17
"You will drive 120 m.p.h. -legally"... BAH hah hahha! Oh man...
In 1966, Popular Science thought the legal highway speed limit would somehow climb to 120 m.p.h. Did you enjoy your hyperspeed commute this morning? Was your breakfast meal-in-a-pill delicious and filling? Lean back in your hoverchair and enjoy this complete article explaining how we did it.
10/26/17
"Electric Autos... They're on the Way!" ... in 1966.
Yep, in 1966, the electric car was an "any minute now" proposition. Well, five to ten years, if the Popular Science article is to be believed. So, your mom and dad must have had an electric car, then. How was it? Did you learn to drive on mom and dad's electromobile? Did they hand it down to you when they eventually replaced it with their hovercar in 1973? Please leave your nostalgic electric car memories down in the comments. I'm sure we'll all be able to relate to them.
Be sure not to miss the part about the best-at-the-time sodium-sulfur battery that had to be maintained at a temperature around 500 degrees at all times or it wouldn't work at all.
We now present the full article from the December 1966 issue of Popular Science in living color (all three of them- black, yellow, and sort of other yellow). Each page has been posted at the largest-size-Blogger-will-allow size of 1600 px. You know the drill. Click it to big it, baby. You're welcome!
Be sure not to miss the part about the best-at-the-time sodium-sulfur battery that had to be maintained at a temperature around 500 degrees at all times or it wouldn't work at all.
We now present the full article from the December 1966 issue of Popular Science in living color (all three of them- black, yellow, and sort of other yellow). Each page has been posted at the largest-size-Blogger-will-allow size of 1600 px. You know the drill. Click it to big it, baby. You're welcome!
10/23/17
9/19/17
Pay TV, 1955 - How will this work?
As early as 1955, Americans were trying to figure out how to get people to pay for television. You maybe didn't know that till just now, but can you really be surprised? As soon as there was a TV in every living room in the country, of course someone was trying to figure out how to put a coin box on it.
This article is from the October 1955 issue of Popular Science, and people were understandably pissed at the idea of paying for TV. Please enjoy this outline of the proposed janky and complicated methods to deliver programming to the consumer for money, using 1955 technology (wires, gears, magnets, and levers, pretty much).
These images are the Maximum-allowed-by-Blogger 1600 px tall. Click it to big it, baby.
8/17/17
Couple clip arts - The deadly art of persuasion.
These three little ads come from the dirt-cheap-to-buy-space-and-claims-are-never-verified section way at the back of the September 1957 issue of Popular Science. Can recycling their clip art make you richer, smarter, and more persuasive? Of course! But not really!! Let's get started!!!
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| You don't have to go back to icky boring school for losers to get English more good! Get yourself some learn, stupid! But at home! Do today! DOOOO! |
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| With this 1000x1000 px profile picture at the top left corner of your Popular Online Or Professional Communications Application, you'll have all the credibility of a person whose just whipped off their glasses to make a key point! What else are you gonna do? Go get some glasses and just remove them whenever you want? HAH! I'd like to see you try! Stop being a sucker and use this guy as your profile picture! ... IF you can handle all that credibility. |
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| This version is a PNG clip art. As you know, "PNG" is an acronym for Probably No Goddam opacity on the background. That means that, apart from the black pixels, the image is transparent. Trust me, I just took off my glasses. |
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| Do you know the secret to passing the civil service test? Ben Franklin knows. It's having big, chunky hands grafted onto your arms from a different drawing. The Franklin Institute is not government sponsored. There is a test for that, but they couldn't figure out how to pass it. |
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| And now Ben can point at two things for you, with some other drawing's hands. What happened to Ben's real hands? He broke them off in the ass of the last jerk who asked him where his hands were, that's what!!! Get with it, turkey! Right-click Ben Franklin and his borrowed maulers onto your hard drive for when you need to do some persuading with a transparent background in your image. He's a PNG, he's only made of black pixels, and he's gonna beat some truth into you with someone else's hands. He's Ben Franklin and he's comin' to your town! |
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| Yeah! Now we're talking! Casting! Just look at that babe, all eager to get cast in some kind of movie and she'll do just about anything to get the part. if only there were some way she could convince you she's the right one for the - Wait. What? Casting plastic? Like molds and stuff? Sonofabitch. Okay, fine. I guess we're to believe you can cast yourself a new plastic girlfriend. Just be sure to trim off the flash around her edges where the mold came together. Nothing ruins an intimate moment like scraping yourself on a poorly dressed mold seam. |
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| Ooooh, yeah, baby. You know I like it when your white pixels are transparent. I wanna see right through to your alpha channel. Come over here and make yourself comfortable on my hard drive. Just let me right click you a little bit. Don't pay attention to those car pictures or other clip arts you might see in there. They mean nothing to me. Yeah, Uh huh. Right. Got it. Right. Yeah. Sigh...Oh for the love of god, shut up. This relationship is suffocating me already. |
7/13/17
6/26/17
6/20/17
Photo-Shoppe! Photo-editing for 1934.
If you have a passing familiarity with Adobe Photoshop, you've probably noticed that some of the tools have icons and names that are not descriptive or otherwise indicative of the tool's function. You may be given to wonder "Why the fuck, in this time of Great Understanding and Intuitive User Experience, are some of Photoshop's tools so abstruse? What the precise fuck?"
Well, there is a reason. It's because some of the more basic tools in Photoshop are derived from darkroom techniques that date back to.... well, from a really long time ago, is all. When Adobe first created Photoshop (in like 1987, sheesh!), it was designed pretty much for scanning editing photographs. And so, its tools were named for the traditional darkroom techniques they emulated. As Photoshop evolved, the names were left a sthey were to keep from confusing long-time users, while completely baffling newbies.
This article (scroll down) from a 1934 copy of Popular Science gives us a clue as to the origins of the DODGE tool, which is used to lighten areas of an image.
But first, let's see where we are, so we can understand where we came from.
In the tool bar, the dodge tool looks like this. You may have mistaken it for a magnifying glass, but nope, it's just supposed to look like a "shielding card" on a stick. In the article, you'll see that, back in dinosaur times, you'd use pretty much whatever you could find to allow more or less light to fall on an area of the negative during the process of making a copy. This allowed the photographer to selectively brighten or darken areas of a photo during exposure of a print during duplication. See?
Anyway, the dodge tool is used to brighten pixels. It has an opposite partner, called the BURN tool, which will darken image pixels, and it looks like this (see left).
If you're using the most recent version of Photoshop - Photoshop CC, or "creative cloud" (ugh) - both of these tools have been tossed into a single catch-all icon in the tool bar that looks like a set of ellipses, as in "here's the rest of them". You'll have to click and hold on those dots to make Photoshop show you all the useful stuff they threw in there, as if they were ashamed of them.
If you have an older version of Photoshop, the dodge and burn tools probably have their own spaces on the tool bar and are visible all the time.
So, if you're a dinosaur, here's how you edited your photos back in 1934. Complete article follows. But first, the cover of the magazine.
Well, there is a reason. It's because some of the more basic tools in Photoshop are derived from darkroom techniques that date back to.... well, from a really long time ago, is all. When Adobe first created Photoshop (in like 1987, sheesh!), it was designed pretty much for scanning editing photographs. And so, its tools were named for the traditional darkroom techniques they emulated. As Photoshop evolved, the names were left a sthey were to keep from confusing long-time users, while completely baffling newbies.
This article (scroll down) from a 1934 copy of Popular Science gives us a clue as to the origins of the DODGE tool, which is used to lighten areas of an image.
But first, let's see where we are, so we can understand where we came from.
In the tool bar, the dodge tool looks like this. You may have mistaken it for a magnifying glass, but nope, it's just supposed to look like a "shielding card" on a stick. In the article, you'll see that, back in dinosaur times, you'd use pretty much whatever you could find to allow more or less light to fall on an area of the negative during the process of making a copy. This allowed the photographer to selectively brighten or darken areas of a photo during exposure of a print during duplication. See?
Anyway, the dodge tool is used to brighten pixels. It has an opposite partner, called the BURN tool, which will darken image pixels, and it looks like this (see left).
If you're using the most recent version of Photoshop - Photoshop CC, or "creative cloud" (ugh) - both of these tools have been tossed into a single catch-all icon in the tool bar that looks like a set of ellipses, as in "here's the rest of them". You'll have to click and hold on those dots to make Photoshop show you all the useful stuff they threw in there, as if they were ashamed of them.
If you have an older version of Photoshop, the dodge and burn tools probably have their own spaces on the tool bar and are visible all the time.
So, if you're a dinosaur, here's how you edited your photos back in 1934. Complete article follows. But first, the cover of the magazine.
Cool worn paper, huh? This magazine looks like it spent all eighty-three years at the bottom of an ocean in that weird tractor thing. You could probably use a transparent image of all that scrubbed paper and worn edges for all your future image-ruining adventures, couldn't you? Coming right up.
Here's the article. You know the drill: Click it to big it, baby. Hey, at the end of the article, be sure not to miss the stunning science news about suction cups. Hoo boy.
3/9/17
Bike Battery
Joke #2 - "You're right. The new riding position is really... Hey! You're not my coach! He's an AC Delco!"
Joke #3 - Using virtual reality, athletes can pretend they're charging a battery on an exercycle in their own home, from the safety of their own home.
Joke #4 - "Coach, I ran into the wall. Now what do I do? Coach?"
Joke #5 - Saaaayyy, you don't qualify as 'mechanical doping', do you?"
Joke #6 comes to us from Mr. FancyInfoPants_2. Thanks, MFIP2! - Photo of a young Vorbia Goatstain demonstrating how the "Super-Battery-Charged Assulator-A-Go-Go" forced her head into a low hanging light fixture, causing irreparable brain and ass damage(c.1967). Goatstain then won the lawsuit she filed against the company, & started the now popular "UP YOUR DECOR" home furnishing page seen here on P.A.G.!!! Way to go Vorbia!
[Commenter jokes will be added to the post. -Mgmt.]
2/6/17
The College of Swedish Massage
Joke #2 - "Thank you so much, Doctor... errr... what was it again? Oh yes! Doctor Charles Goingdownonme, expert in Swedish Massage."
Joke #3 - "We'll see you again next Tuesday, Mrs. Weston. In the meantime, try to favor your other mons pubis for a while."
Joke #4 - This was terrific! Charles should have changed his title years ago. Business was much better than when he was "Dr. Charles Festerbrook, Expert in East German Massage".
Joke #5 - "Very well, then, Mrs. Weston, I'll be sure to get in touch with you if I experience that swelling again."
Joke #6 - "Thank you so much, Doctor! My Swedish feels so much better now!"
Joke #7 - This was terrific! Charles should have changed his title years ago. Business was much better than when he was "Dr. Charles Festerbrook, Clumsy Oaf in Swedish Massage".
Joke #8 comes to us from long-time smirker Mr. FancyInnuendoPants_2. Thanks, MFIP! - "Please do try my other bi-lingual services, Miss Mona. I also have expertise in 'French Kissing', the 'Dutch Oven' and I handle my 'German Sausage' quite well indeed..." Dr. Charles stated with much confidence....."I'm sure you do, Dr. Charles..", quipped Miss Mona, "...and please remove your hand from my ass"
[Commenter jokes will be added to the post. -Mgmt.]
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