Historical ads..

[cynegils]

Cool Christmas gift of a bunch of 1920s National Geographic’s magazines. In this October 1925, there were several prominent adds for Wahl, Eberhardt, and Waterman fountains pens. $10 for solid gold version! Nice! (That’s about $180 today…)

[Bo Bo Olson]

I can remember in the late '50-early '60's when I was living inthe States, around Christmas was always lots of fountain pens in advertisements. The major mags also.

 

That was back when you if from a 'good' family got a main major brand pen for graduating HS (worker's families had trouble with getting up $12-15 for such a pen)..definatly Collage, and got the top of the line from the compay when you retired, after 40-50 years withthe same company.

[fountain_new]

I really like old ads like these. Thanks for posting this. 

 

The rhetoric in this ad is really out there!

 

I also like seeing the old record company copy used to advertise albums and singles from 50+ years ago. 

[sandy101]

Google books has the Life Magazine archive. You can access it here LIFE - Google Books

 

There's a cornocopia of pen adverts here - Hemingway endorsing the Parker 51 etc. 

 

Fill yer boots!

[inkstainedruth]

There are vendors at some of the pen shows I've been to that often have actual ads from magazines and I've picked up a number of the ads for the old Carter's inks with the mother cat and her ink-colored kittens.  I forget now who the artist was offhand (apparently his work is collectible in its own right since he did a lot of covers for IIRC The Saturday Evening Post with I think a cocker spaniel).  I also found a matted print at an antiques mall a few years ago of what turned out to be a print you could send away to Carter's for with a coupon from another of their ads of his work and then was able to find (in another antiques mall) the ad with the coupon.

The Carter's ads are ADORABLE (there's one of the kittens playing baseball while "Mom" is acting as umpire) and one of the kittens is sliding into home plate -- the theme of that particular ad is that the inks are "safe").

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[sajiskumar]

I love seeing old pen/ink advertisements.

Thanks for sharing.

[Bo Bo Olson]

My wife just found a April 1954 Post magizine, unfortunatly only one Parker 51 add and a Scripto MP&BP add. Pictures tommorow.

 

The couple late '70's Life and Posts, I ditched after I decided the spy book I had first drafted was too complicated...they had more fountain pen adds in them

 

Your wind up alarm clock with, or with out radium hands?

 

The 1954 Studabakers looked good, it was before the the streamlined wings made for ugly cars. The Hudson Hornet had you ...step down with it's low center of gravity...sit low, for the best handing car of the era...use to win at Nascar all the time....Not too bad looking either.

Olsmobile 98 looked good. So did the Plymouth.....

That was all the cars that month....

Pre batmobile.....

All Dead.

Ford had a truck, and a tractor in the mag.

 

Power steering was advertized as a safety item against blow outs, or soft shoulders.

SOS was what you used to clean your white wall tires....needed to prevent the tire from overheating.

 

Lots of quadrupal oven stoves, with a plug in grill, to go with the 4 top burners....pre-TV Dinners.

 

Post was a major mag....and I'm amazed by the double page ads. $$$

 

Top short stories....remember this was Pre-Playboy, so Post-Life etc paid top dollar.

 

The coil spring matress don't seem to have improved in 70 years.

 

Hammermill Bond was advertized for printer, businesmen and typewriting.

 

An Eagle Mirando wooden chemically sealed regular wooden lead Pencil..........I don't remember them, but I was six. Eagle seemed to have died, Ticonderoga was the brand I remembered. 

 

Flying adds, two with the DC4, and one with the Super Constellation...a plane I worked on.

IMO outside the supersonic Concord, the Super Connie was the prettiest plane that ever flew.

 

A robot lawmower....some sort of gamers consoul on a long cord. Sit and don't work.

 

You were supposed to get your car lubed every month. A full page add.

 

1954 Ted Williams was talking about retireing....he lasted to 1960...missed 4 1/2-5 years to two wars. Bob Feller missed winning 100 more games due to 3 1/2 years of draft and war. He was drafted a year before the war. Feller 'only' won 260 some odd games.

 

Two, two page electric razor adds. Sunbeam, Schick.

 

Zenith Televisons, a 'huge' 21 inch screen table model for only $239.95. Not color and a worker was making a dollar an hour......I don't remember what we had then, but Miami had only 2 channels...up north 4.

 

A steam iron, was 'only $28.95, for the wife to use at home because her husband had a job....

 

No iron, rayon cloths was big. Couldn't shrink or fade.....and good if you were on a diat, in it was a sauna.....that I can remember even as a kid.

 

Owning a home due to the GI Bill was new for most, and even new houses needed repairs.

 

Lots of tools in that months edition., and it is sort of odd to see, hand dills and bit braces....down the page is an electric drill with a cord.

A Cresent Wrench had another name...from another company.

Plastic handles on a screwdriver was the 'new' thing...or at least the more modern...no slip handle.

 

I've not lived in the States for 60 years so I don't know if McCulloch is still making chainsaws. But it was the name in my day.

 

Gasoline motors were put on a push mower for only $100 ($120) more. Regular looking power mowers were to be had too. They didn't have a price on that one.

 

For a woman's birthday, you bought her a $27.50 Toasmaster super de luxe toaster.

 

Leak proof size D batterys was being advertied by a few companies...I knew.

 

They were in the middle of building the New York Throughway, a marvel of the age...the first superhighway...........out side of Germany.

 

Plastic dining sets were in...they didn't break, and could be used in a .... mecianical diswasher... Back then porcelain dining sets couldn't be used in a diswasher....the good stuff not even today.

 

Normal folks went off to exotic places like Nova Scoti for vacation.

 

[inkstainedruth]

In 1954, when my parents got married, my dad was a TV repairman for RCA (before getting a job at IBM in their research division).  

Not familiar with DC-4 planes, but on a trip to Guatemala when I was in high school (early 1970s) I did fly in a DC-3 from Guatemala City to Flores (we flew back to Guatemala City on something snootier, and which didn't have all the luggage in rope nets in the front of the plane outside the cockpit).  We were one of the FEW tour groups to actually get to Tikal, because they'd had their 4th crash on the airstrip there in a couple of months; the plane was still on the runway, with the nose smashed in -- the pilot apparently got a broken leg in the crash, and the plane's passengers were sitting in the restaurant bar freaking out because it was something like an 18 HOUR drive by bus back to Guatemala City (our group was staying in Flores and went to Tikal in small buses, after going by bus to Ceibal the day before).  

The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Wa, has a DC-3 in their collection, amongst other planes, including a P-51 Mustang (in the WWII gallery) and a Concorde on the tarmac that you can walk through.  We got to tour it when we were in the Seattle area for my husband's niece's wedding a number of years ago, and did it as a group "family outing" (her dad, my brother-in-law, was able to get discount tickets because he was an engineer at Boeing at the time).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Bo Bo Olson]

In 1964 I flew from New Orleans to Charlston, South Carolina in a DC-3...and later worked on the col's C-47/same plane.

Went across the pond on a 707...where one still had more seat space (18") than the modern Sardine Class if lucky one has 16".

 

I realized that electric razors were brand new for the middle class man, because of the big double page adds. It was still Gillette start to rust after a few days Blue Blades then...Stainless or Chrome blades came in @ '64-65. Wilknson lead the way. Cost a lot more too.

[inkstainedruth]

My parents took a trip to Dubrovnik years ago (this was back before Yugoslavia broke up into the independent republics), and my dad discovered that even though he had one of those converters for different electric systems for his electric razor, he couldn't plug it into the outlet because there was a big ceramic ring around the outlet and the power converter wouldn't fit.  So he had to go to the hotel shop and buy a "safety razor" (which he hadn't used in probably several decades at that point).  And had so many bandaids on his face from cutting himself by accident that my mom said he looked like a prizefighter.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Bo Bo Olson]

I tried electric razors; three or so times, they never seemed to do the job well.

 

I used the cheap double bladed, than later tried the 4 blade razors.

At the cost of them...was not worth the 'advertized' smoothness....

 

When I retired, instead of spending a fortune on a good straight razor and strop (almost did), I grew a beard. When I shaved most of it off, I used a safety razor and Wilkonson chrome blades. That seems to work as well as cheap doubles....does the job; with no cuts and nicks.

 

It helps to have foam, or at least soap one's face very well to razor with a blade.

 

[inkstainedruth]

My husband told me that he started growing a beard when he was in high school, because he didn't trust how steady a hand he'd have early in the morning before going to school (I did see a photo his mom had in her bedroom of him with *just* a mustache, and the funny part was that he looked a LOT like one of his friends from college...).

My mom once asked me what he looked like without the facial hair, and I said, "I don't know -- but now he just looks like a cute fuzzy guy with a beard!" 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[Runnin_Ute]

6 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

In 1964 I flew from New Orleans to Charlston, South Carolina in a DC-3...and later worked on the col's C-47/same plane.

Went across the pond on a 707...where one still had more seat space (18") than the modern Sardine Class if lucky one has 16".

 

I realized that electric razors were brand new for the middle class man, because of the big double page adds. It was still Gillette start to rust after a few days Blue Blades then...Stainless or Chrome blades came in @ '64-65. Wilknson lead the way. Cost a lot more too.

Yet double edge blades today are downright cheap. $2.99 for 5 blades of Gillette Silver Blues. $49.99 for 100 of the same blade.  Although there are companies that make DE razors today, I use vintage Gillette razors. Have a first quarter 1958 Flare Tip Super Speed, a 1962 (q2) Slim adjustable and a q1 1967 Black Handle Super Speed. I rotate them  each week and can get 28-30 shaves out of one 50 cent blade....

[Bo Bo Olson]

 

I had one of those adjustable to 10 places Gillette's...that didn't work, so back to the flea market.

I have an old Wilkerson and a German 'no name'. Both work well....Beard is back.There was also a Pontiac car add....and it was a Chevy truck, not a Ford one.

There was only one fountain pen add; Christmas, was past and HS and College graduation to come.

Back when ball points were brand new...look at the price of the deluxe one...and a worker made before tax, $1.00 an hour if lucky. Could still have been $0.75 an hour.