Retro Photo (Anything Retro)

[waistingmytime]

Were these two above married too just like Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima?

I don't think so but they did end up doing a commercial together

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[waistingmytime]

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In an age before Google, many parents pinned hopes for their children’s future onto promises made on their doorsteps by encyclopedia salesmen.

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[Stonecold]

 

[Stonecold]

 

[Stonecold]

 

[Stonecold]

 

[trencherman]

This is a great reminder that a lot of what doctors recommend should be taken with a shitload of salt. Not the least, their reduced salt recommendation. Btw, they are still recommending the low fat diet which might have caused the obesity epidemic. So beware, that's all I'm saying.

 

[trencherman]

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In an age before Google, many parents pinned hopes for their children’s future onto promises made on their doorsteps by encyclopedia salesmen.

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Beside Dwight MacDonald’s take down published by The New Yorker, here is a snippet of one Canadian’s (Robert Fulford) take of it:

The popularity of the Encyclopedia Britannica depended on two quite different traditions, one grand and one squalid. Last week, when the Britannica announced that it was closing down its printed-book version and computerizing its operations, what flashed into my mind was the squalor of the old days, the moral squalor delivered to millions of households by an army of creepy door-to-door salesmen.

They arrived with a well-honed don’t-let-your-kid-grow-up-stupid pitch. Their job was to intimidate parents into believing that children badly needed an encyclopedia in the house, whether the parents could afford it or not.

One time I sat beside my father while a salesman made his case. Praise for the Britannica’s scholarship didn’t much impress Dad, so our visitor switched to snobbery. He admitted that some parents declined this opportunity to better the chances of their boys and girls. He mentioned a rundown district nearby. “People there,” he said, edging his voice with scorn, “don’t much care what their kids learn. They don’t buy. We don’t even visit those streets.”

Meeting that salesman was educational for me, the first time I witnessed greed so blatantly allied with uplift and class pride. Even I could see the barefaced con. Yet that was a way of life in the encyclopedia business.

 

[trencherman]

I may be a tad early but I think pomade is going to make a comeback. I shall refrain from naming names since it might be deemed "political" but I think it is his next best option before just shaving it all off.

 

[W!nston]

Beside Dwight MacDonald’s take down published by The New Yorker, here is a snippet of one Canadian’s (Robert Fulford) take of it:

The popularity of the Encyclopedia Britannica depended on two quite different traditions, one grand and one squalid. Last week, when the Britannica announced that it was closing down its printed-book version and computerizing its operations, what flashed into my mind was the squalor of the old days, the moral squalor delivered to millions of households by an army of creepy door-to-door salesmen.

They arrived with a well-honed don’t-let-your-kid-grow-up-stupid pitch. Their job was to intimidate parents into believing that children badly needed an encyclopedia in the house, whether the parents could afford it or not.

One time I sat beside my father while a salesman made his case. Praise for the Britannica’s scholarship didn’t much impress Dad, so our visitor switched to snobbery. He admitted that some parents declined this opportunity to better the chances of their boys and girls. He mentioned a rundown district nearby. “People there,” he said, edging his voice with scorn, “don’t much care what their kids learn. They don’t buy. We don’t even visit those streets.”

Meeting that salesman was educational for me, the first time I witnessed greed so blatantly allied with uplift and class pride. Even I could see the barefaced con. Yet that was a way of life in the encyclopedia business.

My parents had many children and helped raise many others who didn't have a good home life.

Neither of my parents had higher education. They wanted a better life for their children. They did what they could to provide that.

We had an Oxford Dictionary from the 50s and another in the 60s. We had World Book Encyclopedias from the 50s and 60s. We had Britannica in the 70s & 80s. They were out of the child rearing business after that.

In my grade school and high school years I used encyclopedias a lot for reports and references. The encyclopedia was as close as you could get to Google. The school library was at school not at my fingertips in my home.

They were not a wasted investment. I and all my siblings learned a lot from them. I spent time reading about history and the world and we played word games with the dictionary. My parents made it fun. They learned along with us.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with that salesman. I had a good one. The man was a sharp dressed good looking man who lived in our own neighborhood. Just like the pharmacist, the photographer, the mechanic, the doctor and so on. It was a community. The salesman was earning a living to support his family. That's nothing to be ashamed of.

It was a different world back then.

 

[Stonecold]

Back in the 60's encyclopedias were a necessity. I sold my 1964 set with 7-yearbooks on Ebay a couple of years ago for $150.00

 

[trencherman]

...I'm sorry you had a bad experience with that salesman. I had a good one. ...

It was a different world back then.

I am certain you would hold a less fonder memory if your grandpa had pointed out to you as mine did, in his Great Eleventh Edition of the EB, in its article in the inhabitants of your country, that tribes of them have prehensile toes. Or that the Malays from which you claim descent are indolent. Numerous details such as these that give away its racist/imperialistic agenda.

He had a set of the Great Espasa-Calpe too which dedicated three full volumes on tauromachy which animal rights advocates nowadays would probably find totally revolting and I would not blame them.

 

[waistingmytime]

Dish Detergents and Laundry Detergents Often Came with little Bonuses








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[waistingmytime]

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Tab was the first Diet Soda I can remember
















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[W!nston]

The Slide Rule

A 1930s high school class making electrical calculations on their slide rules. Note the demonstration-sized rule hanging on the blackboard.

 

[waistingmytime]

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These postage stamp vending machines were once all over the place

 

[Stonecold]

 

[Stonecold]

 

[waistingmytime]

And Colored Toilet paper ?​

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[W!nston]

June 3, 1943 : Hurley Smith Patents the Pocket Protector

June 3, 1943 : Hurley Smith Patents the Pocket Protector
MichiganStateUniversity Library | By Jon Harrison | June 3, 2017

The pocket protector has long been associated with engineers. To the general public it conjures up images of a guy in a short sleeve white shirt, glasses taped together and "high-water" pants. Within the profession we know better. The pocket protector is simply a practical item, to preserve the integrity of those white shirts.

The original pocket protector was invented by Hurley Smith during the Second World War. He was born in Bellaire, Michigan in 1908 and spent his first few years there. Unable to formally attend school, he completed high school by mail. In his mid-twenties he had earned enough to return east and attend college. He enrolled at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1933. His first job upon graduation was marketing newly invented Popsicles to retailers in Ontario. He said that his diet consisted mostly of Popsicles that first summer. 1933 was not a good time to be graduating from college.

Later he moved to Buffalo, New York where he worked for a company that designed electrical transformers. When Smith learned that his employer was selling used (rewound) transformers and putting new plates on them claiming they were new. When the company was investigated, he refused to perjure himself as the heads of the company demanded, so found himself with a wife, five children and no job.

While working in Buffalo, Smith was concerned not only about the ink and pencil stains that would get on the white shirts that were the required costume for any engineer in those days, but with the fraying around the edges of the pocket that the pressure from items in the pocket produced. Back then, the traditional housewife purchased shirts with the expectation that would last for a long time even with constant washing, bleaching, and ironing.

Plastics used in manufacturing had become quite an exciting development during WWII, and Smith experimented with various materials for solving the fraying/ink-stained shirt problem. He first used a stiff clear colorless plastic. He had tall, thin rectangles of this material made, then used a Pitney-Bowes letter folder to fold it twice, once approximately in half and once on one end to produce a flap that would extend over the top edge of the shirt pocket.

From the side, it looked like a check mark, unsealed at the sides. But it was just wide enough to fit into a shirt pocket with the back extending high enough to protect the back of the pocket and shirt above the pocket, and the flap fitting over the front of the pocket. He was awarded patent # 2417786. (Filed 3 June 1943, Issued: 18 March 1947) for the "Pocket Shield or Protector."

He constructed his first prototype in the attic of his house Buffalo, having modified his wife's ironer to heat the plastic enough to bend it properly. He modified the equipment over the years and by the time he moved to New Hampshire, the production of pocket protectors promised to provide enough income to allow him to quit engineering. He wanted to move the family to a location that was more economically promising. In 1949 he packed up the family and moved to Lansing, Michigan. During this time he maintained his membership in AIEE.

Smith set up his plastics business in Lansing and at times had several employees working with him. His primary product was the pocket protector, which he sold mostly to businesses for distribution to their employees or for advertising. By then he was producing the second generation of his invention, made of vinyl and heat sealed around the edges to make more of a pouch. The primary color was white although Smith also made them in colorless vinyl. With the white ones, he developed a way to imprint a logo or message on the flap and seal it with clear vinyl.

In his early years of production, he realized other companies were making and marketing the product he had patented. He decided, for whatever reason, not to pursue any legal action. Some of the first "infringers" he found out about were on the West Coast of the U.S. and he realized a legal battle would be difficult. He was satisfied at that point making as many as he could fill orders for.

The earliest type, the stiff plastic ones, were marketed by being inserted in a piece of lightweight cardboard designed like a man's pocket. So the pocket protector was slipped into the card as if it were being put into a pocket. This was called "carding".