Pathfinder Magazine – Page 13 – Old Magazine Articles

The 1938 Spies
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

Suddenly last June, a Federal grand jury in New York City hoisted the curtain on ‘America’s most significant spy prosecution since the [First] World War’ by indicting 18 persons for participating in a conspiracy to steal U.S. defense secrets for Germany. Subsequently, only four of the 18 could be found for trial. The others, including two high officials of the German War Ministry, were safe in – or had escaped to – the Fatherland.

Modular Housing
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

After eight years of research, the National Retail Lumber Dealers Association and the Producers’ Council, an organization of building materials manufacturers, have polished up all the known short-cut, dollar-saving methods in building, packaged them into an industry-wide program, and labeled them the ‘four-inch module plan.’… The house is built on of three sections, each 16 x 24 feet, and bolted at floor, walls and roof. Wall joints are hidden by cabinets; by simply removing top and side cabinets, bolts can be loosened and the house readied for moving on trailers.

The Solar Motor
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)

Pictured herein is Dr. C.W. Hewlett – early proponent of solar energy.
He was employed by the research department at General Electric and can be seen demonstrating his brainchild, the Solar Electric Motor:

Four small, round iron plates constitute the cell which converts the light into power. The plates are coated with selenium over which is an extremely thin layer of platinum. Both of the metals are ‘light sensitive’ and convert certain of the the rays into electricity, but as to just how this is done science is pretty vague.

FCA: Not Going Anywhere
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Unlike the CCC, WPA, CWA, or DRA, you can type FCA.gov into a search engine and actually make contact with one of FDR’s multiple alphabet agencies. This 1937 article will tell you why it came into being – but it won’t tell you why the agency wasn’t done away with during any of the decades of plenty that followed.

A Very Hitler Christmas
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Whether it was the nog, the tannenbaum or just the good ol’ spirit of the season – no one knows – but in late of December of 1938, the nice Hitler came out for some airing:

Partly as a Yuletide truce and partly because most of them were suffering from severe frostbite, 18 ‘reformed Communists’ and 7,000 Jews were released from concentration camps.

Settling Hitler’s Refugees
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

In Washington, D.C. at least 1,500 delegates from 800 American communities in 44 states swarmed into the Mayflower Hotel for the annual conference of the National Council for Palestine. As one of the nation’s most important and inclusive Jewish organizations, it was natural that the Council should devote its meetings exclusively to the refugee problem.

Abraham Lincoln: Inventor
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

There, to a coterie of Lincoln addicts on Abe’s 131st birthday, U.S. Patent Commissioner Conway P. Coe displayed a model of a device Lincoln patented in 1849, when he was still an unknown congressman from Illinois. Commissioner Coe read the patent application, in Lincoln’s own handwriting, for a gadget to float flatboats in shallow water.

The First Congresswomen
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

This column recalls the earliest women to serve in the House and Senate (although the tenure of Senator Rebecca Latimer Felton was oddly excluded):

In 1916, the first Congresswoman was elected. She was Miss Jeannette Rankin (1880 – 1973), a Republican from Montana. On her first day in the House, war was declared; she voted against it. The next Congress had no women.

Negotiations
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

More articles about the Winter War can be read here… – from Amazon: KEY WORDS: stalin demanded port of hango,port

America’s Oldest Soft Drink
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)

Home Front Concerns
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)

Here are two home front articles regarding the rationing of labor, food and steel; 1944 orders on clothing production are also touched upon.

The 1948 Tucker
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

[The] First models of the Tucker ’48, [the] only really revolutionary postwar car so far, should be ready for public showing in New York, Chicago, and on the West Coast within 60 days…

Soviet Slave Labor Camps
(Pathfinder & America Magazines, 1947)

Although the true horrors of Stalin’s Russia would not be known until his death in 1953 (and then again with the opening of the Soviet Archives in 1990), bits and pieces were coming to the light as thousands of refugees and defectors swarmed the government offices of the Western Powers in search of asylum following the end of the Second World War. These small report from 1949 and 1947 let it be known how long the Soviet labor camps (Gulags) had been operational (since 1918), who was in them, how many different types of camps existed (there were three different varieties). As to the question concerning how many inmates were interred, there was no decisive count, somewhere between 14,000,000 to 20,000,000.

Since they came into being, the Soviet [forced labor] camps have swallowed more people, have exacted more victims, than all other camps – Hitler’s and others- together, and this lethal engine continues to operate full-blast…

Stepping-Up The Training
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

By the autumn of 1950 it became clear to the old hands at the Pentagon that the police action on the Korean peninsula was beginning to resemble a real war. With that in mind, thirteen military training camps that had been been barren for the past five years, were dusted off in order that they might once more begin training Americans for war. Two weeks later China threw her hat in the ring.

During this same period, the U.S. Navy took 62 ships that had been mothballed in order to launch the Inchon Landings…

Television: God’s Gift To Politicians
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

Placing a teleprompter or cue cards below a camera lens seems like old-hat to us – but our grandparents thought that it rendered an amazing affect for televised addresses:

The new technique for speeches on TV – reading from larlge cards with lettering two inches high placed just under the camera lens – makes it possible for the speaker to look directly into the camera lens, giving the appearance of talking directly to the viewer.

Red Saskatchewan
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

When the our neighbors to the North first dipped their toe into the tepid waters of socialism, they they chose to do so with car insurance:

A law compelling automobile operators and public schools to buy insurance from a state-owned company.

The State of Radio In 1937 America
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Girding the United States today are two major national radio chains and one smaller chain. They are the National Broadcasting Company, the Columbia Broadcasting Company and the Mutual Broadcasting System, NBC, with its combined Red and Blue networks, has about 110 stations. CBS on a single network has 101. Mutual has 45 and will add a new section of 10 more next month.