When I was kid my Grampa alway drove Packards. His last one was a '55 Clipper sedan - man what boat. It had all that wild ****, including self leveling suspension which I loved to "trick" by jumping on and off the bumpers. He stopped driving and parked it in the barn in '72 where it sat untouched for almost twenty years. After he p***ed we decided to get it running and sell it. After just a little fiddling the thing fired right up and damn, if that suspension didn't rise up and level out perfectly! We sold it to a guy who drove it to work every day for the next few years with no troubles. My own brand new '90 Mark VII had to have the air bags replaced at least twice in the first four years. Finally sold it sittin' on the ground. Great thread!
I was meeting with a client at their house and they had an old house that was originally from the 50's. They had a really cool talk-a-phone intercom system. It looked like a **** tracy watch, I snapped a pic with my cell...
I think you're right with the magic part.... I had the same kit when I was a kid. I thought " How many parts can I remove and it still works?" I removed each piece one at a time, I swear it still worked with just a diode across the earpiece leads! That was those old earpieces with you-can't-solder-them wiring!
Several years ago I was given a worn out late 70's or early 80's Chrysler to drive while I had the engine in my truck rebuilt. Every time I turned the ignition on a simulated voice would come on that said "A door is ajar!" ("ajar" was pronounced as if it was two words "a jar" to which I would reply "No - a door is a portal!"
Here are some pix of some early 20's auto technology. The taillight has an arm inside with the light bulb attached. When activated, the arm swings back and forth lighting in sequence the five marble shaped lens. It still works like a champ, and is destined for a '28 Ford I am building.
A little OT - but related. I bet everyone has done this.... lost the remote and searched for minutes or longer to find it, when you could have just walked up the the TV and changed the channel manually. Boy, we are lazy!!
In the 50s my dad was impressed when his parents bought a Buick ('56 in think) that had heat vents that came out under the back seats so the kids actually got some heat in the winter.
Cool stuff. Those little crystal sets you built yourself and attached to the bed springs (remember bedsprings). Plugged in your ear and couldn't be heard from 2 feet away. Fell asleep many nights listening to Rock n Roll and the folks never knew. Car coollers that were just an ice tray with a 12 volt fan blowing through it. Can't remember which kiddie show, Howdy Doody I think, had a character "froggie" that was a lead in to some feature, that was introduced with the words "plunk you magic twanger froggie" He hit a ****on, puff of smoke, and the feature started. We got our first remote and it became our "twanger". still is today. Kids don't know what the hell I want when I'm looking for my Twanger. Emergency fan belts - felt like a piece of rope, came with a squeeze on clamp. Throwing a belt was common back then. You just looped it around, cut it to length with a pocket knife (everyone carried a pocket knife) squeezed the clamp shut and away you went. Tow bars - greatest invention, ever. clamped to your rear bumper brackets and the front bumper brackets of the towed vehicle. Most of us had em. Nobody called a tow truck, just your buddy. Towed hundreds of miles with em. worked great. Really liked the roll down rear window on one of the big cruisers. Was that Lincoln or Merc? Turnpike cruiser? Never owned one. We did have the rear facing seat in the family wagon. Made travel a lot more interesting looking in on the family behind you. More recently - just 30 years ago, I had one of the first car phones. Huge power unit in the trunk, had to drill the body for the antenna and hard wire the phone. You picked up the phone and got an operator, she would look up numbers, dial them for you, take messages if you didn't answer your phone, call you with reminders you could leave with her. Way better than cell phones. Also, it was a party line, you could pick up and just listen to other conversations, (you learned to not speak ill of others and to talk your business deals in a cryptic fashion.) Life was just more fun.
"Can't remember which kiddie show, Howdy Doody I think, had a character "froggie" that was a lead in to some feature, that was introduced with the words "plunk you magic twanger froggie" He hit a ****on, puff of smoke, and the feature started." OldGuy - That would have been the "Buster Brown Show" - sponsored, of course, by Buster Brown shoes. In addition to "Froggy the Gremlin", there was "Midnight the Cat". Froggy was a favorite of mine, 'cause his sole purpose in life was to mess with everybody else's minds.
I had the magic eye in my '56 cadillac and after all those years it still worked perfectly. Made a huge clang when it switched, but never failed during the time I owned the car.
That hearing aid reminds me of a guy who used to run a parts counter around here. He kept the little box in his shirt pocket (I guess that's where they went anyhow) & when he'd talk on the phone he'd hold the reciever kind of upside down. The mouth piece was where it should be but the ear piece he'd have planted firmliy on his shirt pocket. Stuff like the clicker and especially the optic eye amaze me. the guy who came up with it is/was a genius! One thing I always get a kick out of is the old Ecoplex reverb set up. Imagine! Springs! Springs make your music sound better!
I still have my $1200 Panasonic VHS video recorder (bought in 1978) in one bedroom at home. It has a single ****on remote (pause/play) with a 25 foor cord on it. It doesn't pick up the copy proof protection on tapes so a buddy of mine would come use it to copy movies for years. It still works better than the new one we have in the living room but who can live without a full function remote these days... not my wife. On a car related topic; if you look at the '49-'51 Ford Green Book they show a tool to adjust the doors for fit to the body. It basically has a arm at each end that catches on the outside of the door and a center piece that has a screw jack that presses on the inside of the door to bend the door to align it to the frame. I have the pieces of one in my junk pile. I didn't know what it was years ago and cut the main frame of it up to make fender braces on a trailer. The main frame was made of 1x2 inch tubing and I plan on building a new one and putting the tool back together one of these days. Larry
One of my buddies dads was a local lawyer & they had all the cool stuff - I can still remember his corded remote with two ****ons one was volume, the other channels - when you pushed the ****on, the knob on the TV actually turned & the channel ****on had the loud, familiar "ker-chunk" as it switched. My grandmother was a receptionist at one of the local appliance dealers & we got a very early microwave - Amana Radarange - it just had two big dials for time - minutes & seconds. I swear it would boil a cup of water in about 15 seconds flat! It died after my sister kept putting s****s in it (she was about 5 or so) - made a heck of a lightning storm though!
Ha! My first TV was a used Zenith with a sonic remote that I bought for $75 in college. We called it "The Antichrist" because it would change channels, volume or just turn itself on for no apparent reason. I never found out what noise did it. I also remember the "a door is a jar" Chrysler 600s. I chick I knew had one that was broken so you drove around with the car telling you that they whole time it was on. Very annoying except when you had been doing "stuff" to make normal events alot funnier. I love goofy **** like this and they still make it today, just look at new cars and see all the useless things there are in them (like 4 TVs, aren't the kids stupid enough from watching it all day in the house? What's wrong with the window?)
I get a kick out of my 241 red ram stock engine mounts...stamped on these elongated rabbit ears reads "Full Floating Power"....... what the hell is that?!?!....ha ha ha ha.
I would put the Lexus - "car that parallel parks itself" as a new entry to this category of goofy luxury technology that will one day break - and be unfixable. The wonder bar radio in my 61 caddy still works great - its one of those ****ons that goes "Ka-chunk" rather than click - I like a ****on that really gives you something when you press it. The electric eye - not so much.
I REALLY dig the "SPEED ALERT" on FTB's buick bubbletop.....set it at any speed you want and when that certain speed is attained....a loud buzzer is set off!! that is still kool.... Or the mirrored upside down speedo in his dash.......neat....
I had a 65 Riviera with speed alert... Only I ****ed something up when I wired my accessory gauges - everytime you would p*** the set speed, my gauges would spin like clocks... Crazy.
I had an under dash reverb unit with a spring, OK when you were parked, but wierd as **** when you were on a bumpy road I love the names that describe the tech. Space helmet vision Wonder bar Golden tone Whirlaway Flashmatic Go devil Highway HiFi Auto butler Bars-o-rama
Those crystal radio kits are still available at radio shack i think.They where popular when my I was a kid , people used them during WWII in occupied country to get the news on how the war was going. jimV
It was "andys gang" hosted by Andy Devine, sponsored by buster brown shoes!! Midnight was a mean ****er!! Here a oldie, when i was a kid( i'm 58) My mom took me to a BB shoe store & they had a machine that you actually put the front of your feet under with your new shows on & it showed you a actually X RAY picture of your toes in the new shoes!!! Thats the truth!! i couldn't make that up, no safety **** on it or nothin!!I'm suprised we're all not Unicks(?) from it!!lol JimV
also the voice of Midnight was done by june Foray who also doid alot of cartoon voices including Rocky Jimv
Me too on the crystal set. Dad brought a kit home and we put it together at the kitchen table that evening. Somewhere along the line I'd acquired a pair of Navy headphones. Next day, I learned about ground rods and running wire. Along with stringing an antenna up on the roof. The antenna wire was thin gage - 28-30 gage? - single strand coated copper. I strung the damn wire all over the roof, went from one TV antenna guy wire to another. Seemed like the more wire I strung the better the reception. I didn't know what the hell a Rhomboid (SP?) antenna was, but I'd come close to duplicating one. Used to fall asleep listening to the radio station located down at the beach. Bout the only one I could get, it was so close it blasted out the nearest compe***or a couple of miles away. Woke up now and then with the headphone leads darned near choking me to death. I went from there to bigger and better things. It wasn't long until I was tapping into sisters phone calls with the headphones. Right up until I got into some induced AC on the phone line, shocked myself silly and damned near blew my eardrums out. That was the end of my spy career. After that, it was mechanical technology that fascinated me. Screw that electric stuff. Life has a sense of humor though, about ten years down the line I was working for the electric company. And still fascinated by the mechanical stuff. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here's one I read about, it was either a prototype for Rolls Royce or somewhere along the line it was actually in one of their cars. Tinted windows were available in the early 50's, my dad's first new car, a 50 Ford Custom sedan had factory installed tinted windows. Rolls got the idea to have a windshield that changed tints much like the transition lenses in todays gl***es do. Since the chemistry for a transitioning lense wasn't available at that time they accomplished the changing tint by having two flat panes of gl*** in the windshield and there was a colored liquid in between the two. Open the panes up a few thousandths and a small pump pulled tinted liquid from a reservoir which filled the space between the panes of gl***. Close the panes to almost touching, the tinted liquid was squished out to the reservoir and the window was back to neutral clarity. I don't know if it ever saw production, but a slick and interesting idea. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And if you're interested, we used to have a device at the electric company that took an electrical picture of a short circuit before it happened. All mechanical fwiw....
My fave is this heat operated fan. Names withheld to protect the bashful, but the owner is a cool guy with a ton of neat gizmos. Candle goes in the middle, which heats the front cylinder, or maybe an expansion chamber for it. I think the second cylinder is a slave to the first. You can see the fan's shaft is also a crankshaft. In person, just amazing craftsmanship for such a simple item, truly mechanical art.
I got an Admiral T.V from 53 or 54 that works great,its got the 4 wheels on it and the flat gl*** over the screen and the hole thing is metal,no remote but pretty cool indeed,its cool to watch casablanca or some or the old flicks on it.
The Jalopy Journal
