The Magnet 090: The bizarre advertisements in old issues of Popular Mechanics
The good old days of jumping discs, porpoise jaw oil, and replica grenades
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When I was around 12, our neighbor loaned me stacks of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines from the 1960s and 1970s. I spent countless afternoons and weekends sitting on the carpet in our cool basement, flipping through each issue. While I didn't often read the feature articles, I loved the detailed illustrations of go-karts and birdhouses, as well as the photo captions and strange inventions (like this car braking system attached to the driver’s eyebrows):
My favorite parts of the magazine were cartoonist Roy Doty’s “Wordless Workshop” comics and the hundreds of advertisements from small businesses. Here’s a sampling of some notable ads:
Bimetallic Jumping Discs
The first Edmund Scientific Catalog was published in 1943. Although the catalog was known for its amateur astronomy telescope kits, I found the bizarre scientific gadgets, toys, and kits it offered even more intriguing. These covered topics like biofeedback, extrasensory perception, Kirlian photography (a supposed method for capturing the "aura" of living things), and alternative energy sources.
Unfortunately, the only item I could afford from the catalog was Edmund's famous bimetallic "jumping discs." These discs were made by bonding two different metals together, each with its own rate of thermal expansion. Holding one in your hand would cause the heat from your palm to alter the disc's shape, changing it from concave to convex due to the unequal expansion of the metals. After heating, you would place the disc on a table and wait for it to cool slightly. As it cooled, the disc would suddenly snap back to its original concave shape, causing it to leap several feet into the air. Watch this video demonstration of a jumping disc.
Moneymaking Opportunities
Businesses that couldn't afford a display ad in Popular Mechanics could opt for a less costly classified ad. In 1968, Popular Mechanics charged $1.85 per word plus $0.75 extra per capitalized word. By my reckoning, the average classified ad was about 25 words long and had one capitalized word. That’s about $47, or $432 in today's dollars adjusted for inflation. Pretty expensive! The December 1968 issue had roughly 750 classified ads. That means in today's dollars, Popular Mechanics was raking in $324,000 from its classified ads section alone! Just imagine how much more it was making from the hundreds of other display ads. No wonder the magazine was able to afford incredibly talented, in-house artists, photographers, and writers to put together every issue.
Of the dozens of categories in the classified ad section, the “Moneymaking Opportunities” section seemed to be full of scams. Take a look at these blatant rip-offs:
EARN $240 a month at home, spare time, doing only two $5.00 invisible mending jobs a day. Big money paid for service that makes cuts, tears disappear from fabrics. Steady demand, Details free. Fabricon, 1532 Howard, Chicago, 60626.
HOW To make money writing short paragraphs. Information free. Barrett. Dept. C-27-L1. 6216 N. Clark, Chicago, 60626.
WANT To win a contest? Write Prize-winner, Box 11569, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33733.”
CLIP Newspaper items. $1.00-$5.00 each. Details free. Walter, Box 1360 – P, Erie, Pa. 16512.
LEARN The secrets of repairing junk batteries. "Fabulous Profits" at home. Batteryman, Palm Desert, California 92260.
At least they are more entertaining than modern email and text message spam.
And my favorite:
FANTASTIC New Money Making system developed. Rush $3.00, for details. D. W. Churchill, 3212 Ronald St., Lansing, Mich. 48910.
I suspect anyone who rushed three dollars to D.W. Churchill received a single sheet of paper instructing them to place a similar ad in a magazine.
(By the way, it’s fun to look up all these addresses on Google Maps. Here’s D.W. Churchill’s place in Lansing.)
Largest Land Animal That Ever Lived
Once in a while you could find a scientific fact hiding in the ads. I don’t know whether these nuggets of information were inserted due to last-minute advertiser withdrawals, extra space in the layout, or as a way to encourage readers to meticulously scan the ads searching for these Easter eggs.
One fact, sandwiched between an advertisement for a woodworking catalog and another for accordions, read, "Largest land animal that ever lived, Baluchitherium, looked like a grounded blimp. It stood 17 feet high at the shoulder and was 24 feet long. It flourished some 30 million years ago."
Unfortunately, readers in 1965 lacked access to the internet and probably formed a wildly inaccurate mental image of this ancient beast. In reality, the Baluchitherium bore no resemblance to a blimp. I would describe it as a long-necked, graceful, and hornless mega-rhinoceros.
Just for fun, I decided to input Popular Mechanics' description into Midjourney, an AI-powered image generation tool. The image it spit out is close to how I imagined the animal looked based on the magazine’s description:
