cool inventions

Model Gladys McDaniel endows this exhibit of molded plexiglas with a bit of glamor during the third annual meeting of the Society of Plastics Engineers in Chicago, Ill., Feb 2, 1947. The transparent product was made into this dome shaped object by the Fabri Form Co. of Byesville, Ohio and is used in the manufacturing of airplanes.

Colleen Townsend, selectedMiss Safety First by the Southern California Timing Association, poses in a streamlined car, made from an airplane belly tank mounted on a Ford frame in Los Angeles, Calif., Jan. 21, 1948. The car, built by Bill Burke, is powered by an inverted Mercury Motor, mounted in the tail, and has been clocked at better than 139 miles per hour. It will be featured in the First Annual Hot Rod Show here Jan. 23 25.

Art Arfons of Akron, Ohio, wears a monstrous outfit as he checks on new equipment on his dragster namedGreen Monster, in Los Angeles Calif., July 27, 1959. Arfons was in Los Angeles for pre meet warm ups for the 1959 National Championship Drag Races in Detroit on Sept. 3 7. His dragster, known as one of the most powerful, is one of 750 hybrid cars entered in the races sponsored by the National Hot Rod Association.

Pictured is a swooping roof design at a national service station in Retford, England, Sept. 22, 1961. Technically known as a hyperbolic derabold structure, the reinforced concrete roof weighs about 90 tons. There will be a motel, a restaurant and a repair section on the site when the station is completed.

Model Joan Lockwood selects items from the glass case at a completely automated section of a supermarket at the 30th Annual IGA Food Store Convention at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, July 19, 1956. She puts a large roundkey in a matching slot while she presses buttons to make her selection. The selected items are recorded on a tape inside the key. The amount due on the purchases is tabulated at the same time. This is jut one of the systems to be used in supermarkets to be opened in fall 1956 in key U.S. cities. The three types of automation will be 1) push button selection in the store, 2) checking of items on special cards at home or in the store, for electronic delivery by conveyor belt to the counter 3) after hours and Sunday automatic shopping of limited last minute supplies at coin machine units outside stores.

This is the new two wheeled Ford, called theGyron , which is on display at the New York Coliseum, with model Patricia Marand standing alongside, April 1, 1961.

Model Fay Shott spins one of the new plastic Hula Hoops around her waist in Denver Colo., on Aug. 24, 1958. The hoops are currently popular with the younger crowd.

A young Japanese woman in a kimono takes part in the Hula Hoop craze that has swept America and Japan in this Oct. 30, 1958 picture.