CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
This is as good an example as any of why vintage Popular Mechanics horrifies us. The story isn't about how this glass-blowing maniac seals kittens into prison globes. Rather, it glorifies his so-called "expertise." Utterly disgusting, as per usual. From 1932.
"How I sought solitude and found it — a tragedy of the Cornish coast." From The Sketch, 1901. (We personally found the Cornish coast neither comic nor tragic but rather more like a Shakespearean romance.)
While it's true that "flowers [are] able to tell time," instead of saying, for example, "It's 4:45," they'll say, "It's a quarter till." And you'll be like, "Till what?" And they'll be like, "till the ground and muse along the odoriferous furrows of our lowlands." And you'll be like, "I don't know the allusion because I've never read J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer," and they'll have some comeback or other; they always do. The headline is from Popular Mechanics, 1930.
You knew that "Pastry is like a religion to the French" (Joanne Chang). But here's "A 'layer cake' temple found among Aztec ruins." From Popular Mechanics, 1931.
""Man-made star guides flyers. Civilization is constantly reaching back into the centuries for old ideas to meet modern needs." From Popular Mechanics, 1930.