Life, 1923-08-30 · page 15 of 36
Life — August 30, 1923 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct satirical pieces from *Life* magazine: **"In Tune with the Infinite"** (top): A humorous letter mocking Professor Blotter's impractical scientific proposal to send wireless messages via kangaroos in Australia. The satire targets overly theoretical scientists disconnected from practical reality—the joke being that the professor's elaborate scheme is ridiculous, yet he presents it with academic seriousness. **"His Specification"** (middle): A brief comic dialogue between an architect and client about building a house, with the client wanting to incorporate a "doodlebender" to transport his wife home from Boston—an absurdist non-solution to a domestic problem. **"The Husband's Pocket-Book Protector"** (bottom): Two-panel comic showing a "roller curtain" device protecting a husband's wallet during a car trip past an antique store, suggesting wives' uncontrollable shopping impulses. All three pieces use exaggeration and domestic/technological absurdity as humor vehicles.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
In Tune with the Infinite ROFESSOR BLOTTER of Co- lumbia University has raised a knotty little problem in a letter he has sent me from Australia, where he is one of a missionary expedition to teach boxing to kangaroos so that they can get jobs in vaudeville. “Dear Corey” (his letter reads), “[ note by New York Times that Science has devised way to send wire- less messages around world in | than one second. Obvious result is that people, on picking up receiver a second after giving number, will dis- cover their message has circled globe and they are talking to themselves. Irreparable loss threatened in’ wi less trade. Kindly advise. Blotter.’ It seems the good Professor has no ideas at all on the subject; and 1 rather hesitate to offer any of mine. But I think I can best lay it all at the door of Science. It seems to me their fault; they have gone just about halfway in their inven- tion. They have got things to the nicely balanced point where a mes- sage goes the exact number of thou- sand miles that corresponds to the circumference of the earth, only to arrive on the verge of collapse at the approximate spot from which it set forth so valiantly less than one full second before. Science cannot go backwards, the Professor has told me any number of times; and if they have got the wireless to go this exact number of thousand miles, so that it ends where it started, there is only one remedy. They must make it go a little farther. \dd ten miles, for example, to its present distance, so that it circles the globe and ten miles more in per- haps one second and an eighth; and you can talk to your friend ten miles THE BAILEY’S BEACH OF DELANCEY STREET away, and save easily four and seven-eighths minutes on the average telephone at that. The solution to the crisis is at our very gates. “Go on with your kangaroos,” I wrote Professor Blotter; “the problem is one for Science alone to grapple.” Corey H. Ford. His Specification RCHITECT: Now if you'll give me a general idea of the kind of house you need.... Cur : I want you to fix me up something to go with a doorknocker my wife brought home from Boston. I got her that one o.K. THE HUSBAND'S POCKET-BOOK PROTECTOR ROLLER CURTAIN THAT OFTEN PAYS FOR ITSELF IN ONE TRIP. comicbooks.com