Archive for August, 2006

The First All-Metal Airplanes 1927

This 1927 discussion on the use of metal in airplanes is extremely interesting in that it also predicts with uncanny accurracy how air travel would progress, and how modern aircraft would be constructed.
LONG-DISTANCE records will be held in future by high-flyers in all-metal airplanes. So at least predicts Albert Lapoule, in an article contributed to [...]

Timber plank road through desert paved 1926

THROUGH THE HEART of the great American desert, the sand-dune country between Arizona and Southern California which forms a barrier on one of the chief transcontinental highway routes, a paved road has just been completed.
This is characterized by N. M. Harkins, of Los Angeles, writing in Good Roads (Chicago), as “one of the most [...]

Supermarine sets seaplane Speed Record in 1927

HURTLING THROUGH THE AIR at the rate of almost five miles a minute, a twenty-seven-year-old British flight lieutenant won the coveted Schneider trophy for seaplanes at Venice on September 26. Only two planes of the six competing were able to finish the 217-mile triangular course, and both were English entries. All three Italian competitors, including [...]

Social Dancing in Boston in 1924

THE modern social dance is of distinctly recent growth. It is as yet in an embryonic state. Eventually it will yield to one or the other of the two forces that have molded and controlled all dancing from Adam’s time, first the effect on the dancer and second the effect on the audience.
As a general [...]

The state of World Prohibition in 1923

PROHIBITION of alcohol is as far advanced today for the entire world as it was a quarter of a century ago in the United States. Stating the matter in terms of millions of square miles and millions of human beings, there is a dramatic exactness in the comparison between the conditions then and now. It [...]

World Car Market 1927

THOSE who are worrying about the automobile business ought to keep in mind the fact that this American industry occupies the commanding position in the world market and that, even so, our export trade in motor-cars is at the very beginning of its development.
Â In a recent bulletin the Stock Exchange house of Dominick and Dominick [...]

Jazz - A Scourge, 1921

Unspeakable Jazz Must Go! It is worse than Saloon and Scarlet Vice, Testify Professional Dance Experts - Only a Few Cities are Curbing Evil.
EXPERTS tell in this article the nation-wide aspects of our jazz scourge. They say legal prohibition of all dancing may come.
Â A reform movement has been started by cities and volunteer groups. [...]

Coles Phillips - Illustrator

The originator of the Fadeaway Girl is not of the long-haired, flowing bow-tie variety of artists, but prides himself on his practicality and enjoys having his friends call him “sane and business-like,” which he is. He lives in New Rochelle, the New York suburb which now has another claim to fame than the fact that [...]

American Premiere of Ravel’s Bolero in 1929

HISSES HAVE FOLLOWED THE RENDITION of much modern music, but joy would have warmed the heart of the Frenchman, Ravel, to hear the shouts and plaudits following Toscanini’s conducting of his “Bolero.” The composition is a year old, and was presented, two weeks ago, for the first time in New York. Carnegie Hall rocked; and [...]

Thomas Mann - Nobel Prize Winner for Literature 1929

Thomas Mann’s achievements stretch over a quarter of a century. The Macon Telegraph prints a succinct account of Mann’s life, with a few words of comment:
“Mann was born in Lubeck, June 6, 1875, and during his school days in a North German gymnasium he did not distinguish himself particularly in scholarship. He was interested, however, [...]