Page 168 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

collection of relics bearing on California’s frontier days. One, for example,
has for its setting Sutter’s Mill, where gold was first discovered, and shows in
five scenes the evolution of mining implements from crude pan and shovel to
effective hydraulic methods. The superbly painted scene, correct in every
detail, is enlivened by quaint figures of Indians, miners, Spanish caballeros,
and others, each true to type and costume.

A clipper ship assignment was a hard nut to crack because these ships, which
used to carry mail round the Horn, are out of existence. Dinsdale spent days
talking to old waterfront characters and nothing has been omitted either from
his clipper ship education or from the finished model.

But his greatest interest lies in synchronizing sound with movement in
mechanical displays. He built the first Christmas window of this type in San
Francisco: “Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf” acted out while a
phonograph played the song. Delighted crowds almost blocked traffic.

But this is only a crude beginning to Dinsdale who is working with a radio
engineer on sound controlled mechanics. Future animated displays will not be
timed to phonograph records, he predicts; they will be moved by actual sound
vibrations.

A Shoe Pain-Killer Builds a New Business

A

LBERT SACHS , who had been a retail shoe merchant in Salisbury,
Maryland, for many years, long had an idea for another kind of business. He
selected the tail-end of the depression as a favorable time to launch this other
enterprise. His idea was for a device that would take the “pain” out of shoes.

Mr. Sachs had been experimenting for ten years with various methods of
breaking in new shoes mechanically. He had always been interested in
finding out how he could give his customers more foot comfort. It seemed a
pity to him that many people had so much trouble with new shoes.