All Books Contain Mistakes..

..but some mistakes are better than others.  We were talking about this last week, so I decided to scan the title page of the Library of America volume 24  that misspelled "Melville."

The publisher offered to replace the volume, but Jon Lanham decided to keep it.

The All-Seeing Mechanical Eye

Today’s  topic is Mechanical Remote Viewing, (as distinct from ordinary Remote Viewing).  MRV devices allow an operator to view scenes live at a great distance without the intermediary of a spy satellite, helicopter, or surveillance camera.  Some MRV devices can even see through fog, walls, and mountains, and some can also pick up audio.  MRV turns up in science fiction and action shows with a hi-tech component. 

I was thinking about this recently as I watched the wonderful 1950 classic Radar Secret Service.  The cops in this movie had “tele-meters” which allowed them to watch their colleagues clash with bad guys out on the roads just as if they were watching a movie.  The miracle of radar made this possible.  (Did you know that radar started out as an acronym for radio detection and ranging?)

Of course, Captain Video was the king of MRV with his Opticon Scillometer.  Check out some of the episodes here, here, and here.

The Martian Spaceship of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians had a MRV screen that a clear view of various Santa Clauses on the city streets of Earth.

The scientists in Riding With Death manage, in the 2^nd half of the movie, to come up with a remote-viewing TV that allows the female lead to watch the male lead’s activities in a bar and parking lot.  The movie’s writers felt obligated to explain scientifically the male lead’s ability to become invisible at will (radiation accident), but the remote-viewing TV is pretty much taken for granted.

My Dad was visiting in mid-October, and we watched the new Hawaii Five-O.  At one point McGarret needed to know if there were any people in a boat on the deserted wharf, so he calls up a Navy friend who pushes a button and retrieves a thermal image of said boat showing one person inside.  She didn’t have to wait for a spy satellite or surveillance chopper.  It had to be Remote Thermal Viewing
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Perhaps the audiences of the 50s were prepared to accept MRV because of precision bombing during WWII. Paul Fussell explains that "precision bombing" was something of a misnomer: "The fact was that bombing proved so grossly inaccurate that the planes had to fly well within anti-aircraft range to hit anywhere near the target, and even then they very often missed it entirely.  As the war went on, 'precision bombing' became a comical oxymoron relished by bomber crews with a sense of black humor.  It became obvious to everyone except the home folks reading Life and The Saturday Evening Post that although you could destroy lots of things with bombs, they weren't necessarily the things you had in mind."*   But civilians believed that each dropped bomb landed exactly where it was meant to. If you could drop a bomb precisely from 7 miles up without worrying about wind, then why not MRV?

I found a precision bombing propaganda pamphlet that Fussell mentioned and  scanned it.  Here's one image from it:

 Please check out the pilot I have pointed the green arrow at.  Tell me what you think: "Dude looks like a lady," "Dude, that is a lady," "Other."

*Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, New York: Oxford UP, 1989, p 14.

Mechanix Monday

In the tradition of Turtle Tchotchke Tuesdays I present Mechanix Mondays, devoted to the lighlights of the August 1933 issue of Modern Mechanix and Inventions (which is the only issue that Harvard owns).  This week I present the cover!

August is the season for lost gold treasure hunts!  Our hunter sports a tomato-red diving suit with golden fittings and chic claw-style artificial hands.  Happy hunting!

Italy in 1995

In July of 1995 I went to Italy with my old college buddy Barbara.  I took many tourist-style photos: a small person standing in front of an enormous building or statue.  I scanned and cropped a few of them for My Public.

The Real Thing

First, I have added a few new old sci-fi magazine covers to a Picasa album.  You may want to check it out.

 Second, you may have noticed my new profile picture with my new glasses.  I also got magnetic clip-on sunglasses in amber with little purple crystals on the magnets.  That's not clear in the accompanying shot,  But you can always look at a similar pair here.

Third, as an extra, added, free, bonus gift (at no extra charge) I got this lens cloth in a case that doubles as a certificate of authenticity. What a comfort to know that I can silence any  doubters that come my way!

Toilet Tissue Wars (Scott and Northern Duke It Out)

House of the Future (in 1931)

Pictures From Life are Hard to Reproduce

Life January 11, 1923

I'm trying to reproduce a series of ads in Life from 1923. I scanned this one then fooled with it on Photoshop. Then I decided to photograph the others. But I need to find a way to avoid glare and keep the page flat (these are bound library copies). I also wanted to put up some ads from the Proquest Historical Newspapers data base, but they fixed it so it can't be done.