New Ideas

GOODS & SERVICES

Private Radio. A two-way radio that costs only $119.50 per pair of units has been put on the market by Vocaline Corp. of America, Old Saybrook, Conn. Designed for both personal and business use, e.g., to talk back and forth on a big construction project, the Vocaline transceiver works over a distance of ten miles if the units are in line of sight, half a mile if there are obstacles between them. It operates over the citizens frequency band reserved by the Federal Communications Commission for short-range personal communications.

Waterproof Plywood. A cheap, plastic-surfaced, waterproof plywood called Duraply, designed for the fast-growing small-boat industry, has been developed by Crown Zellerbach Corp. and U.S. Plywood Corp. Made with a new machine that permits the use of lower-grade logs, a 3/8-in.-thick plywood panel sells at the mill for $157 per 1,000 sq. ft., which Crown Zellerbach says is 16% less than comparable plastic-coated plywoods.

Earglasses. A hearing aid, mounted in the frame of a pair of eyeglasses, was announced by Chicago's Beltone Hearing Aid Co. The main advantage of the Hear-N-See is a complete hearing set in each side of the frame, enabling the wearer to adjust volume for each ear and to catch sounds equally well from all directions. Price: $285.

Home Ice-Crusher. The Waring Ice Jet, an attachment for the Waring Blendor that can crush a gallon of ice in a minute, will be put on the market soon by Dynamics Corp. of America. Price: $16.95.

CinemaScope 55. A much improved CinemaScope was demonstrated by soth Century-Fox Film Corp. The film is first shot on a 55-mm. negative, then reduced to the standard 35-mm. size used by conventional projectors. The scale-down reduces the grainy effect of the pictures, puts the background almost as clearly in focus as the foreground. Fox's Production Chief Darryl F. Zanuck claims that "we have eliminated the bothersome fall-off in focus on the sides of the screen, and totally eliminated distortion."

Dreams. General Motors' 1956 Motorama opened a four-month, coast-to-coast run in Manhattan with five new "dream cars," plus the gas-turbined Firebird II (TIME, Dec. 26) and the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, a 1955 experimental model scheduled to go into production in August. The aluminum-roofed Brougham (base price: $8,500) is G.M.'s answer to Ford's Continental Mark II, and features such gadgets as a driver's seat that pivots outward for easy access. Highlights of the dream cars: Chevrolet's Impala, a five-passenger hardtop version of the 225-h.p. Corvette sports car; Buick's transparent-topped Centurion, with a TV camera in the back instead of a rear view mirror. In its Kitchen of Tomorrow exhibit, G.M.'s Frigidaire Division showed an experimental dishwasher that cleans by sound waves and a marble-topped range that cooks with induction coils and never gets hot.

Riffling Ralph. A nimble-fingered machine that can count 60,000 pieces of paper an hour has been installed by New York's Guaranty Trust Co. to speed up counting of stock certificates. "Riffling Ralph" is made by England's Vacuumatic, Ltd. Price: about $5,600.

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