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  1. Fletch

    See NBC's first TV show: 1936

    Something I never thought I would see has turned up on YouTube. On July 7, 1936, NBC aired their first TV program to a top-secret meeting of radio manufacturers. They set up a newsreel camera behind the on-air one to make a film - which, supposedly, was shown once to guests unable to attend...
  2. Fletch

    Beeps. In 1927. What made them?

    Victor Record no. 20606 usually contained 2 sides of the William Tell Overture by the Victor Symphony. However, this gent picked up a copy with what he calls a "test frequency test pressing" on side B. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_84oQWgyvcQ It got me wondering what sort of apparatus...
  3. Fletch

    Makin' Macon, or How I Built A 20 Foot Airship With No Help From My Cat

    The great zeppelins of the 1920s and 30s were fragile giants, vulnerable to weather, explosions, and in the case of Jack Clemens' model of USS Macon, house pets. Its nearly complete balsawood frame was smashed when his cat jumped off a high shelf in the garage and landed on it. 2 attempts...
  4. Fletch

    Photo Caption Contest!

    I just discovered this exciting WW2 action photo and thought it would be ideal for a caption contest. The winner, chosen by yrs truly, decision final and binding, receives an official Fedora Lounge No-Prize. (No-Prize is a TM of Marvel Comics, used with persimmons.)
    • Fletch
    • Thread
    • Replies: 4
    • Forum: WWII
  5. Fletch

    Human Encyclopedias in 1954: a strangely normal couple.

    Now and then in the media we encounter human encyclopedias - people with prodigious memories. Traditionally, they are solitary, obsessive, often from exotic cultures or religions, with a deep focus on one topic. You know: math, chess, baseball. They are such a stereotype that you might think...
  7. Fletch

    Bob's Air Mail Service Station: A Man, a Plan, and a Really Big Fokker

    Western Air Express was awfully proud of its two new four-engine, 32-passenger Fokker F-32s, as the above pictures from their 1930 roll-out will indicate. But the big planes had been born under a dark star. The prototype had crashed during a demo flight. In sleeper berth service on the...
  8. Fletch

    1935 Aviation Goods: Karl Ort Catalog

    Thanks to VLJ member bjoy, you can view a 1935 catalog from Karl Ort of York, Penna., one of the premier mail-order suppliers of aircraft parts and aviation supplies. Karl handled everything from altimeters to zip jackets and his copy is written in a confidence-inspiring first-person tone...
  9. Fletch

    Wall Street's Great Cat Roundup of 1925

    New York's financial district evidently didn't have a lot to worry about in 1925 except for hundreds of cats, which were thought to be disease vectors. As was traditional at the time, any potentially dangerous animals not actually foaming at the mouth were considered fair game for neighborhood...
  10. Fletch

    Hitler Cat is star of 1939 World's Fair

    New York's World of Tomorrow featured many unusualities. One was an early example of what the Internet decades later knows as Kitlers - cats that looked vaguely like Adolf Hitler. Kitler being held by a lady who looks like she didn't do this kind of thing as a rule. That being the era of...
  11. Fletch

    Too Fat to Fly?

    Not a wartime pic, but half military. Here is petite, winsome aviatrix Bettie Lund - presumably at the National Air Races in the early 1930s, where she was a steady competitor - with an unidentified Air Corps officer who is just about the out-of-shapest flyboy I have seen from that rawboned...
    • Fletch
    • Thread
    • Replies: 14
    • Forum: WWII
  13. Fletch

    Type A-1 Trousers...Yep, Trousers...from 1931

    Apologies for posting below-the-waist outerwear - but here is a rarity among rarities. A pair of Switlik Parachute A-1 trousers in sheep-lined horsehide, the companion to the pure-unobtanium B-1 jacket. I think these were made only by the one contractor, and only in 1931 and 1932, until the...
  14. Fletch

    Guy who built his own Irvin(?) - Anyone remember?

    About 2 years ago, on VLJ but maybe here too, I read some postings by a guy who had taught himself to do leather work by building his own Irvin repro. (Or was it a B-3?) Anyway, does anyone know what happened to him?
  15. Fletch

    LVC resale scene...

    I have 2 pair of well loved LVC jeans - the 1886 single back pocket and the 1917 501 without belt loops - that I'm thinking of moving along. Alternately, I might have some of the (considerable) extra length taken off the 1917s and loops made out of it. Am I f'ing up the resale potential? Is...
  16. Fletch

    Black dinner jacket / white trou?

    Was this ever a summer formal style? When? Where? I'm considering it for a Gatsby Night where I'll be in the band. We'll mostly be in black tuxes. I'd be behind a music stand, so I'd look like I fit in. I know I've seen this look in pictures. (Maybe movies?) I just can't find them now.
  17. Fletch

    Golden era mug shots - New Castle.

    New Castle, Pennsylvania, that is. (Sorry Baron, I just couldn't resist following up on your find. Especially since I found this set today by complete coincidence. On the level!) Historian Angus McDiarmid - not a local; he lives in Scotland! - has gone thru newspapers to reassemble, where...
  19. Fletch

    Dr. Seuss, Ad Man: the hidden past comes out

    As the 1930s fade from living memory, among the most overlooked figures of that more and more overlooked era are the "sellouts." The stories from that decade that live today are those of silent suffering and bold activism. It might seem trivial, even tasteless, to consider the talent and...
  20. Fletch

    Considering shirt collar rebuilding...experiences?

    Many of us into our difficult middle years find ourselves with a closet of perfectly good shirts whose collars we can't button. Tie-wearing, once done with a confident flair, becomes Hobson's choice: either look drunk with your collar open, or look and feel noticeably uncomfortable with it...
  21. Fletch

    Let's go for a drive...Billboards of 1932

    W.A. (Andy) Rigsby of St. Louis, Mo., was an accomplished artist of a kind mostly gone today - the commercial sign and scene painter. Family members have preserved quite a few examples of his work for the General Outdoor Advertising Company, in the form of these beautiful photographs - all taken...
  22. Fletch

    How did one make Prohibition homebrew?

    OK. Let's say it's 1930 and I have acquired a can of this stuff: I also have a couple big old glass carboys, purchased under the pretext that I want to make my own root beer; a cool cellar with a hidey hole or two; and a reliable supply of water (probably hard, if it matters). How far away am...
  23. Fletch

    meditations on doing yesterday's music today

    An early classic of swing music is Duke Ellington's It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing), first recorded by his Famous Orchestra in 1932. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FvsgGp8rSE Especially interesting to us musicians - and perhaps to musically oriented Loungers - is the...

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