50 Years Ago

From the May 14, 1932, issue

DOVE ORCHID MAKES FITTING FLOWER FOR WHITSUNDAY Sunday, May 15, is the Feast of Pentecost, or Whitsunday, when many of the churches commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit. In the lands of tropical America, where delicate orchids can be had by anybody, many an imaginative Latin will mingle poetry with his piety as he […]

From the May 7, 1932, issue

MONKEYS GET BALD LIKE MEN It is no longer fair to blame your barber or beautician for that bald spot; nor can you lay your gray hairs onto worry over your childrens naughtiness or your brokers shortsightedness. Getting bald or going gray are just primate traits, like walking on two legs instead of four, according […]

From the April 30, 1932, issue

SPIRAL NEBULA IN ANDROMEDA BORDERED WITH STAR CLUSTERS Tiny flecks of hazy light around the borders of one of the most famous of the spiral nebulae, the one in the constellation Andromeda, are now believed to be great globular clusters of stars–literally swarms of suns crowded like clouds of gnats that hang over the marshes […]

From the April 23, 1932, issue

WELDING OFFERS CAMERA STRIKING FIELD OF BEAUTY By no means a trivial by-product of electric welding is the field of beauty the new art is opening up for photographers. While electricity eliminates the irritating staccato of noisy riveting, the photographer focuses his camera on a glowing scene of shadow and light, man and steel. Such […]

From the April 16, 1932, issue

NEW INDIAN TOMB YIELDS STRIKING ARTIFACT The first picture to reach the United States of one of the most striking art objects recovered from Indian tombs recently opened at Guerrero, Mexico, is shown on the cover of this weeks Science News Letter. The vessel was photographed just as it was taken from the tomb, with […]

From the April 9, 1932 issue

SPIDERS’ EGGS FORM PATTERN LIKE MOSAIC OF PEBBLES Like a rough mosaic of pebbles is the array of spider’s eggs photographed by Cornelia Clarke and reproduced on the cover of this week’s Science News Letter. Although smaller than small pinheads, the enlarging lens brought the eggs up to such apparent size that they were guessed […]

From the April 2, 1932 issue

TELETYPEWRITERS CAN NOW BE USED IN HOME On the cover of this issue of the Science News Letter is shown a portion of the mechanism of the teletypewriter, a hybrid medium of communication. The new teletypewriter service is a telegraph system with telephone methods and typewriting thrown in for luck. It is now possible to […]

From the March 26, 1932, issue

EASTER LILY UNFOLDS TALE TO X-RAY’S PIERCING EYE Ordinarily it is necessary to pull a flower to pieces to find what it is doing at any given moment in its development–and that, naturally, precludes one from following its development any further. One must turn to other flowers, at other stages of their unfolding, and ruin […]

From the March 19, 1932, issue

EXPLOSIONS USED TO LOCATE OIL FIELDS IN SOUTHWEST A beautiful explosion, so large that the camera could only catch a part of it with sufficient clarity to detail its streaked and billowing effects, is reproduced on the front cover of this week’s Science News Letter. It is one of hundreds of such blasts that have […]

From the March 12, 1932, issue

UNEARTH NEW PORTRAIT OF KING TUT’S GIRL-WIFE A new portrait of the girl-wife of that well-known Egyptian pharaoh, Tutankhamon, has been unearthed from the ruins of Tel-el-Amarna, where the Egypt Exploration Society has been excavating. The portrait is a beautiful little head, with exquisitely modeled features. It is less than 2 inches long. Identity of […]

From the March 5, 1932, issue

WEIRD LEATHER COSTUMES PROTECT ELECTRIC WORKERS Dressed in the clothes of imagined creatures from a distant planet, these power plant operators open and close the switches of transmission lines that bring power for electric lamp and industrial motor. The costume, a new invention of safety engineers, is designed to protect the wearer from flashes of […]

From the February 27, 1932, issue

PUSSY WILLOW Florists shops have long been offering big, beautiful, and expensive wands of pussy willows. But now the willow trees and bushes out of doors are putting forth their own offerings: smaller catkins, perhaps, but with the authentic tang of the wild about them. Harmless, charming, furry wild kittens, beloved of children everywhere! Pussy […]