Life, 1927-05-26 · page 10 of 39
Life — May 26, 1927 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main cartoon "The Substitute" satirizes radio static elimination technology circa 1926. Radio manufacturers developed sponges to absorb static interference, but these were expensive and consumed profits. A clever engineer proposed using "lazy sponges"—essentially rebranding the same technology as waste absorption—to the Radio Manufacturers' Association. The joke: they could sell the identical product to railroads as static eliminators, extracting the static from train announcers' broadcasts. The secondary cartoon "The Cubist Man" shows two fashionably-dressed figures in a geometric art style, with the caption suggesting they should leave for "a square meal"—a pun on cubist angular aesthetics versus hunger. Both target early 20th-century commercial absurdity and artistic pretension.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Y 1976 static had been eli nated. Huge eliminating de mounted on towers and known static sponges simply absorbed the stuff out of the air, From a me- chanical andpoint these sponges left nothing to be desired. But they were prodigiously expensive and the Radio Manufa Associa an to worry. ‘The spo ‘ 1, were eating up most of their ally it occurred to a certain in- : genius that some practical, profitable use might be found for the gobs and gobs of static absorbed by the sponges. “Look at those lazy sponges,” he told the Radio Manufacturers’ As- sociation, “all bloated with static. Look at all that static going to waste. It’s a shame.” The Radio Manufacturers’ Asso- ciation laughed at h Later they laughed on the other side of their faces when appeared before them with a device for extracting the The Substitute static from the sponges and for bottling it in convenient quantities. “There’s a market for static,” he told the Radio Manufacturers’ Asso- The Cubist Man:. come, DRAR, LET’S GO AND GRT A SQUARE MEAL, We Moderns “WHAT'S THIS AWFUL THEY'RE PLAYING Now?” “ou, ‘TILE END OF A PERFECT DAY,’ OR ‘JUST BREAK THE WS TO MOTHER,’ OR ‘BEETHOVEN'S NINTIL SYMPILONY,’ OR SOMETIING EQUALLY OUT OF DAT CLAPTRAP ciation. “You can sell it to the rail- roads.” He was right. The railroads bought the bottled static and dis- charged all their train announcers. Tupper Greenwald. Favorite Advance Numbers HE. sale of a novel on which the author's wife and daughters dress while he is writing it. The receipts from a play esti- mated on the back of an old en- velope by the author during re- hearsals. The circulation of a newspaper scribbled on the luncheon cloth by the advertising manager during a conference with a prospect. The returns from tropical real estate as sct forth in the prospectus. The alimony divided by a wife and her attorneys prior to the de- cision by the court. McC. I. comicbooks.com