Portable Darkroom Hood — 1924

What looks like a ghostly apparition was, in fact, a handy-dandy rubberized portable darkroom with which one could drape oneself whilst processing photographic plates. Read more….
What looks like a ghostly apparition was, in fact, a handy-dandy rubberized portable darkroom with which one could drape oneself whilst processing photographic plates. Read more….
Interested in a step-by-step illustrated tutorial on how a telephone call was completed in 1911, when operators were needed to place all calls? Look no further! Click to read more…
Take a look at what the fashionable radiation detector was wearing in 1956 — it’s like something you’d see in a low-budget sci-fi movie: an ant-man in a jumpsuit, with antennae and a throat microphone. I’m not sure *I’d* feel confident wearing this in a “hot zone,” but it was apparently deemed safe by the Hanford plutonium plant (aka “the Hanford Site”) in Richland, Washington. Check it out.
One of the many creations of priest-inventor Father John Milo was this coin-operated pig which would squeal like a pig when you twisted its tail, measure your strength, dispense chewing gum, and play a ragtime ditty. Read more about Father Milo inside.
A beautiful machine, a beautiful ad. “Easy to carry — speedy to operate.” See the full ad in the post.
Using living trees as antennas was an important element of inventor Maj.-Gen George O. Squier’s system of telephony, which was developed for use during WWI as a way to intercept enemy messages which had been electrically transmitted, as well as to receive and transmit messages from just anywhere with a living tree nearby. More about Squier’s odd-sounding “tree wireless” inside.
It’s lassoes vs. electric dynamite guns in this thrilling story of a crazy armored vehicle and a battle with masked desperadoes in Texas!
In 1922, when radios were introduced to the general public, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a staunch believer in Spiritualism — donned headphones and experienced radio for the first time, in Atlantic City. He speculated that the new technology might be quite efficacious in communing with the dearly departed. More inside.