June 1963…
Trailer doubles as boathouse.
With this amphibious carrier, you could trailer a winched-up boat to the water, let down the pontooned side panels (which serve as walkways), and lower the boat directly into the water.
The trailer would serve as a floating dock in boating season and when covered would act as a boathouse during the winter months.
November 2022
June 1963…
Traffic-light viewer is a reflector too.
This overhead-traffic-light viewer has another job too: Its front face, of colored glass, would reflect back the headlights of oncoming cars to indicate to their drivers your car’s width – useful if one of your headlights burns out.
A lens at the top would pick up overhead traffic lights.
The Joy of Stacking and Knocking Down
Tower building is one of the simplest yet most entertaining activities for toddlers. Building towers out of blocks, cups, or any stackable objects. Toddlers simply love building towers out of building blocks or stacking cups and if they’re not able to build the tower themselves then they also love it if you build one for them! Then comes the best part – knocking it all down with one swipe of the hand or gentle push! The look of glee on a toddler’s face as the tower dramatically collapses is priceless.
There’s just something incredibly satisfying about carefully placing each piece on top of the other to create a tall, and possibly teetering tower.
Even if your little one hasn’t quite mastered the art of building towers themselves, they’ll get just as much enjoyment out of you constructing it for them to demolish. It’s a simple activity that allows toddlers to explore cause and effect, develop hand-eye coordination, and burn off some energy through repetitive knocking down.
Color Sorting Fun
To add an extra educational element, use colored building blocks and challenge your toddler to collect all the blocks of a particular color to build their tower. Ask a question such as – “Can you find all the red blocks for me?” – and watch as they sort through the pile. This helps reinforce color identification and also improves their sorting skills.
If you have a couple of toddlers then make it competitive by seeing who can build the tallest single-color tower the fastest. Or build two towers of different colors and compare their heights using words like “taller” and “shorter.”
Counting On
Tower building is also a great way to introduce early math concepts like counting and number recognition. Ask your toddler to make a “blue tower with three blocks” or a “green tower with five blocks.” Maybe make two towers and ask your toddler to count how many blocks there are in the tallest tower and then the shortest tower.
For older toddlers or if your toddler is finding your tasks too easy then you can make it harder by asking for specific color and number combinations – “Can you build a tower with two red blocks, one yellow block, and three blue blocks?”
Balancing Act
For a fun group activity, take turns adding pieces to build one massively tall tower together. The anticipation of whether the next block will cause the whole thing to fall over adds an exciting element of suspense! See who can carefully place the final piece before gravity takes over.
You can even use this as an opportunity to teach patience, turn-taking, and good sportsmanship. When the tower inevitably falls, celebrate with cheers and get ready to start stacking again.
Building towers is one of those deceptively simple activities that provides so many learning and developmental benefits for toddlers. And most importantly, it’s an easy way to encourage creative free play, bonding through shared laughter, and making lasting memories. So grab those blocks or cups and get stacking!
When your target is out of the house or sleeping, get their toothbrush and put a generous quantity of soap on it.
by Isabel
(Georgia)
December 1963…
You have to see this transistorized pygmy portable TV to believe it. It’s only four inches wide, five inches high, nine inches long, and weighs 7½ pounds. The batteries to operate it are inside the package. There are no dangling cords or separate battery packs.
Astonishingly bright, crisp pictures, measuring 4½ inches on the diagonal, are presented on the diminutive screen. There is a full complement of controls plus an expander switch that will enlarge the image you see. With the set, you get a combination battery charger-AC adapter for re-charging the batteries or operating the set directly from the power line. There is also an optional adapter you can plug into your car cigarette lighter socket to operate the set from your 12-volt car battery.
During city use, I got an excellent picture using the built-in, 13-section telescoping antenna. The sound was clear and distinct with either the built-in speaker or the plug-in earphone. The weak signal sensitivity, of course, is no match for a good full-size set. As I moved away from the transmitter, I found that about 25 miles were the maximum distance at which I could get an acceptable picture on the set’s own antenna. By plugging in an external antenna, however, I got a good reception at that distance. The batteries lasted roughly about eight hours on one charge.
The Delmonico 4T-EOZ is sold by Delmonico International, Maspeth, N. Y. Price is about $150.
December 1963…
New screws an eighth of an inch long can be set in pistons, connecting rods, and other moving engine parts to check operating temperature without the expense of thermocouples.
Developed in England by Shell Research, the alloy Templugs screw into tapped holes, and record heat by a permanent change in their hardness.
Measurement on removal indicates heat up to 1,800 degrees with one-percent accuracy.
I’m not sure I agree with this one, it’s a little bit harsh on the baby or toddler in my personal opinion. What do you think? Feel free to comment below.
By Pritch…
If the person you want to make suffer is the parent or guardian of a baby or toddler, go and buy them a pack of baby diapers that you have laced with itching powder or alternatively sneak into their baby’s room at their house and sprinkle some itching powder in a few of their baby’s diapers.
The person you are wanting revenge on will be driven crazy from the constant distress of their upset itchy baby.
Alternatively, you could also use it as revenge directly on a very naughty toddler who has been doing things like punching you in the balls if you are a man or spreading their own poop everywhere. A bit of itching powder in their diaper will teach them.
What you will need: itching powder, diaper, and plastic gloves
The way to do this revenge idea is that it is best done with disposable taped baby diapers. What you do is put on the plastic gloves, lay the diaper out open nice and flat on a hard flat surface like a table with the diaper inside facing up, and pour the itching powder along in the middle area, the puffy part, the absorb area as this is where it will cause the most itching, then with your gloved hands you rub the itching powder in so it is barely visible.
You then close the baby’s diaper and put it back in the same place you got it from. If you intend to do this with multiple diapers you will either want to get more itching powder or use and divide the itching powder sparingly, making sure to get roughly the same amount of itching powder in each diaper.
With pull-on baby diapers, this is more difficult as you essentially have to pull open the top of the diaper and try to haphazardly sprinkle the itching powder around inside.
Cloth baby diapers are by far the most difficult as you can’t put the itching powder inside the diapers themselves since they will little if any contact with the baby’s skin, you have to instead rub the itching powder into the cloth diaper insert.
As one last idea, you can always just sneak up behind the baby, pull open the back of their diaper and pour the itching powder in.
July 1963…
Tiniest car seats a grown man. At barely four feet long, this three-wheel midget weighs only 130 pounds and can be tilted up by the front bumper for parking in those tight places.
Designed in England for short-range commuting and shopping, the Peel P-50 houses its three-speed, four-horsepower engine on the right side of its plastic body.
The driver enters on the left-hand side through a single door. The one-man Peel can get 100 miles on a gallon of gasoline when traveling at a speed of forty miles per hour.
To improve your thinking power it helps to know a little about cognitive science. With recent discoveries in this field scientists are now re-naming what was always referred to as “short-term-memory” to “working memory”?
The working memory is a kind of blackboard where computations and results are calculated for later use, anything deemed not relevant to the task at hand is swept away.
Working memory capacity is quite limited with people usually being able to hold (memorize) no more than five number or words.
To improve thinking power there are a number of cognitive structures and tools that can assist. One is a simple hierarchy where each entity can contain no more than five points – working memory deals with each level one at a time. So you would start with your abstract thought or idea and break it down into successive components in the form of a hierarchy.
Another method is mnemonics which are sometimes used by magicians or memory performers. This is where you assign meaning to the data that you are trying to remember. A similar method to mnemonics is sometimes used to remember foreign words. For example, French for the poster is l’affiche (which sounds like la fish) so you could picture in your mind’s eye a large poster with a fish on it.
A further method to assist with thinking power is the mind mapping concept developed by Tony Buzan. This is where you start with one concept or field and place it in the center of a page. You then branch out with related thoughts and images from that central concept. This structure is supposedly meant to mimic how our mind organizes data.
Hope this gives you some ideas for further study/research.
A good free, open-source software product is available to assist with mind mapping called freemind.
Using logic can be great for evaluating ideas but when it comes to creating ideas try to break your pre-conditioned stereotypes by trying to think illogically.
Rather than thinking of just the first logical answer that springs to mind, a creative person will look for further and often more imaginative solutions. Try to remove the deep-rooted assumption/block that many of us enforce that logical thinking is better than illogical thinking.
In fact it’s often illogical thinking that creates great ideas!
In the end, the only real limitation is your imagination and creative ability to find novel solutions to problems.
I like this quote: “A creative person is one who can find a way to make an impossible situation possible.”
Many non-creative people tend to try to copy what they see rather than question and think in a different direction.
Ask yourself, “How would someone have made this before?”
Ask yourself, “How would someone have made this differently?”