February 1963: Polacolor

From The Associated Press (February 3; link below): 

   The scientific miracle of instant color photography has finally arrived.
   It is called Polacolor ... a film used in a Polaroid camera which produces a finished, fine quality color print just 50 seconds after the tab is pulled. 
   This long-awaited, much-talked-about triumph of American photographic know-how is the result of a 15-year research program headed by Dr. Edwin Land (above), inventor of the picture-in-a-minute process.
   Polacolor film represents entirely new photographic concepts, dozens of new inventions, the creation of new molecules and hundreds of new laboratory and manufacturing techniques.
   Whenever a picture is taken with the film, it compresses into one step and only 50 seconds of time the conventional color process. The latter normally requires a darkroom, over 20 separate steps with much equipment, careful temperature control and a minimum of about 90 minutes.

* "New Film Cuts Color Processing Time" (Eugene Register-Guard, February 3): @

* "Now It's 60-Second Photos in Color" (Life magazine, January 25, page 74): @

* "50 second color: what will it mean?" (Life magazine advertisement, March 22): @
* "Instant Color Photos!" (Popular Mechanics, February, page 100): @ 

* Exerpt from "The Manual of Photography: Photographic and Digital Imaging" (R.E. Jacobson, 2000): @
* "Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land" (Victor K. McElheny, 1998): @
* "The Land List: An Ongoing Project in Cataloging Polaroid Cameras": @ 

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February 1963: Burma-Shave signs

Burma-Vita Company, the shaving-products company behind the Burma-Shave rhyming signs that dotted U.S. roadways, is bought by Philip Morris Inc. The signs would gradually be removed in the coming months, as Philip Morris goes with a different advertising strategy. (Philip Morris noted in its 1963 annual report: "Burma Shave represents a bit of Americana coincident with our country's automobile age. A Sunday drive in the family car has, since 1926, been pleasantly 'interrupted' by the catchy signs that rhyme along the highway. ... But progress has passed them by; super highways, turnpikes and a nation in a hurry have doomed their bright doggerel.")

Note as to date of sale: A newspaper story dated January 30 stated, "Philip Morris Inc. announced today it had agreed in principle to acquire Burma-Vita Company of Minneapolis, for cash." The book "The Verse by the Side of the Road" (linked below) said the sale "was announced publicly" on February 7, while a New York Times story published February 23 indicated that it had taken place the previous week.
* Burma-Shave.org: @

* "The Verse by the Side of the Road" (Frank Rowsome Jr., 1963): @
* Story by Rowsome for American Heritage magazine (1965): @

* "How Burma-Shave Saved the Family Farm" (from www.grit.com, 2007): @

* Entry from Legends of America website: @

* Entry from Advertising Age: @

* Entry from Edina (Minnesota) Historical Society: @

* Print advertisements (from Duke University Libraries): @

* "Everyday Reading: Poetry and Popular Culture in Modern America" (Mike Chasar, 2012): @ (Chasar's blog, Poetry & Popular Culture: @) 

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Undated: Vidal Sassoon's bob haircut

British hairdresser Vidal Sassoon updates and popularizes the bob haircut, most notably in his work with fashion designer Mary Quant and with actress Nancy Kwan (for the movie "A Wild Affair"). 

Photo of Sassoon and Quant, 1964.
* BBC documentary (2011): @

* Sasson explains the Five-Point Cut: @

* "Remembering Vidal Sassoon" (from Vogue.com): @

* Photo gallery (from Vogue.com UK): @

* Photo gallery (from Telegraph newspaper): @

* "After Vidal Sassoon Britain never looked the same again" (Telegraph, 2012): @

* "Vidal Sassoon remembered by Mary Quant" (The Guardian, 2012): @
* Mary Quant website: @ 
* "Vidal" (Pan Macmillan, 2010): @

* "The Bob: the history of a hairstyle" (from V is for Vintage): @
* "Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History" (Victoria Sherrow, 2006): @ 

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January 1963: Electric knife

General Electric Co. introduces the electric carving knife (also marketed as a "slicing knife") at the biannual exhibition of the National Housewares Manufacturers Association in Chicago.

From patent filing (July 1963):
   Over the past ten or fifteen years, there has been a tremendous increase in the use of household appliances to assist the housewife in her everyday chores. This is particularly true with respect to electrically powered hand-held appliances for the kitchen where increased time and effort for food preparation has resulted from the increase in average family size and in home entertainment. ... Accordingly, it is one object of this invention to produce an electrically operated slicing knife of low cost, lightweight construction having its components designed for convenience of mass production.

From Changing Times: The Kiplinger Service for Families (April 1963): "Latest kitchen tool is the electric-powered knife. Plug it in, press the control switch and its twin 9-inch blades vibrate at a speed of 2,000 times per minute. Big advantage of the knife: You can slice without sawing."

* "Carve Turkey 'Life a Professional': From Engine Blades to Knife Blades GE Leaves Nothing to Chance" (from GEreports.com): @

* "Gracious Entertaining with General Electric" (1963 video): @

* "Now ... Carve with Power" (Popular Science, December 1964): @
* "Electric Knives Multiply" (Milwaukee Journal, September 1966): @
* "Power Tool for the Dining Room: The Electric Carving Knife" (from "Stud: Architectures of Masculinity," edited by Joel Sanders, 1996): @
* International Housewares Association website: @ 

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Undated: Corvette Sting Ray

The fast, futuristic sports car -- from the Chevrolet division of General Motors -- is a road-hugging, attention-grabbing hit. First introduced in 1962 (for the 1963 model year), it was described this way in press releases:

Corvette has been redesigned and re-engineered for the first time in its 10 years on the market. Added to the convertible is a new "fast-back" sport couple. Optional power steering, power brakes and air conditioning are available for the first time. A completely new chassis, four-wheel independent suspension, self-adjusting brakes and improved steering are features of 1963's Corvette. Retractable headlights are standard on both models. Corvette models are known as "Sting Ray." This year's Corvette is two inches lower and four inches shorter than last year.

* Entry from web-cars.com: @

* Entry from www.ultimatecarpage.com: @

* www.corvetteforum.com: @

* From Car and Driver magazine (April 1963): @

* "Biography of a Sports Car" (GM video): @
* TV ads: @ and @
* "Luxury Prestige Personal Car is Sign of the Affluent American" (Associated Press, March 1963): @

* "The Complete Corvette: A Model-By-Model History of the American Sports Car" (Tom Falconer, 2003): @ 

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Saturday, December 15, 1962: Vail

The ski resort opens in Colorado, despite a mild winter and a relatively scarce amount of snow.  From www.vail.com: "The first year, ticket prices were set at five dollars for a skiing experience that consisted of one gondola, two chairs, eight ski instructors and nine ski runs."

* More from www.vail.com: @

* "Vail: The First 50 Years" (Shirley Welch, 2012): @

* From www.onthesnow.com: @

* From www.vailvalleymagazine.com: @

* From www.coloradoskihistory.com: @

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Wednesday, September 26, 1962: 'The Beverly Hillbillies'

The comedy about an Arkansas family that strikes it rich and moves to California debuts on CBS-TV. Within a month it is the most-watched show on U.S. television.
* Entry from Museum of Broadcast Communications: @
* Episodes from Public Domain Comedy Video: @ 
* "Hillbillies" entry from Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture: @
* Entry from TV.com: @

* Entry from TVLand.com: @

* Entry from Archive of American Television: @

* Excerpt from "The Enduring Legacy of Old Southwest Humor" (Edward J. Piacentino, editor, 2006): @

* Excerpt from "Blockbuster TV: Must-See Sitcoms in the Network Era" (Janet Staiger, 2000): @ 

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Saturday-Sunday, September 22-23, 1962: Esalen Institute

From the organization's website:

The Esalen Institute was founded in 1962 as an alternative educational center devoted to the exploration of what Aldous Huxley called the "human potential" -- the world of unrealized human capacities that lies beyond the imagination. Esalen soon became known for its blend of East/West philosophies, its experiential/didactic workshops, the steady influx of philosophers, psychologists, artists, and religious thinkers, and its breathtaking grounds and natural hot springs. Once home to a Native American tribe known as the Essalen, Esalen is situated on 27 acres of spectacular Big Sur (California) coastline with the Santa Lucia Mountains rising sharply behind.

(The first seminar, "Expanding Vision," was held September 22-23.)

* www.esalen.org: @

* Esalen Center for Theory & Research: @

* "An Evolutionary Vision" (essay from www.esalen.org): @

* "Esalen Institute turns 50 this year" (San Francisco Chronicle, 2012): @

* "Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion" (Jeffrey J. Kripal, 2007): @

* "On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture" (edited by Kripal and Glenn W. Shuck, 2005): @

* "A Cultural History of the Humanistic Psychology Movement in America" (Jessica Lynn Grogan, 2008): @ 

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Thursday, July 26, 1962: 'The French Chef'

Julia Child's cooking show is first broadcast for a local audience on public television station WGBH in Boston. The show would begin airing nationally on February 11, 1963.

* Video of Child preparing boeuf bourguignon (first national show in 1963): @

* "Julia Child's 'The French Chef' " (book by Dana Polan, 2011): @

* From www.pbs.org: @

* Timeline from The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts: @

* Excerpt from "Icons of American Cooking" (Victor Gerachi and Elizabeth S. Demers, 2011): @

* "Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian" website: @

* "Our Lady of the Kitchen" (Vanity Fair, August 2009): @

* "TV: Pummeling and Shaking Turkey, It's Ebullient 'French Chef' " (New York Times, November 1970): @

* Earlier post on "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (October 16, 1961): @

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Undated: 'Little Boxes'

Written by Malvina Reynolds, the song mocks suburban development and residents; Reynolds wrote the song after driving through Daly City, California, just south of San Francisco. A version by Pete Seeger would reach No. 70 on Billboard's Hot 100 music charts in February 1964. The term "ticky-tacky" -- in the context of the song, meaning low-quality building materials used for standardized housing -- also entered the language (and dictionaries).

Photo by Rondal Partridge ("Housing, Daly City, California, late 1960s"). More of Partridge's work: @ and @

* Entry from "Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems": @

* Lyrics as published in Broadside magazine (February 1963, PDF): @

* Remembrance of Reynolds by her daughter: @

* History of Daly City: @

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Tuesday, July 10, 1962: Telstar

July 10, from United Press International:

CAPE CANAVERAL -- The United States successfully rocketed the world's first international communications satellite, Telstar, into orbit today in an effort to open a new era of global radio and "live" television.

The 170-pound moonlet began a wide-swinging journey around earth within 10 minutes after its launching at 4:35 a.m. EDT aboard a three-stage Delta rocket.

Circling earth every two hours and 20 minutes as a "switchboard in the sky," Telstar ... is considered one of the most significant advances in communications since the invention of the telephone 86 years ago.

July 11, from United Press International:

ANDOVER, Maine -- The dream of global television came closer to reality Tuesday night when an orbiting Telstar communications satellite unexpectedly beamed images from space into receivers in France and England.

The reception Tuesday night of pictures relayed by the Telstar to stations in Goonhilly, England, and Pleumeur-Boudou, France ... came as a surprise and a delight to scientists at "Space Hill" in Andover, Maine ...

Possibly millions of Americans listened to "The Star Spangled Banner" and saw the American flag -- framed against the 18-story communications dome at Andover -- on their television sets in the first TV transmission relayed from space.

The impluses, sent from Andover and amplified 10 billion times inside the instrument-packed ball circling the earth, appeared clear and vivid when they came back to earth.

Reception in France and England was an unexpected bonus. The French tracking station reported that the image was as clear as though it had been sent from 20 or 25 miles away. The sound also was clearly received.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story, which you are reading, was also transmitted 3,000 miles into space and back via the Telstar satellite.

The United Press International and Associated Press both sent dispatches aloft from Andover, Maine and bounced them off Telstar at the rate of more than 1,000 words per minute. This story was one of them.

As an indication of the speed of transmission, the above paragraph was sent on its journey more than 3,000 miles into space and 3,000 miles back in less time than it took you to read it.

* Entry from Britannica.com: @

* telstar50.org: @

* "1962: Satellite Transmission" (from AT&T): @

* Bell Labs Telstar 50th Anniversary Celebration (includes link to PDF of "Original 1962 Overview of the Telstar I Project"): @

* "Telstar Signals New Era" (St. Petersburg Times, July 11): @

* "Telstar Spins, Chatters" (Spokane Daily Chronicle, July 11): @

* "Telstar and the future" (New Scientist, July 19; scroll down for a second article, "Telstar sets some diplomatic problems"): @

* "Telephone a Star" (National Geographic, May 1962, PDF): @

* "Maine and the Space Age" (from Maine Memory Network): @

* Telstar covers (from National Postal Museum): @

Videos:

* A Day in History: Telstar Brings World Closer" (newsreel): @

* "TV from Space" (newsreel): @

* "Telstar!" (from Bell System): @

* "Kennedy on Telstar: Europe Sees News Conference" (newsreel): @

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Monday, July 9, 1962: Andy Warhol's soup cans

The first one-man exhibition for artist Andy Warhol opens at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, consisting of 32 silk-screened portraits of Campbell's soup cans.

From the September 1962 issue of Artforum magazine -- what's said to be the first published review of the exhibition (by Henry T. Hopkins):

Andy Warhol, Ferus Gallery: To those of us who grew up during the cream-colored thirties with "Big-Little Books," "Comic Books," and a "Johnson and Smith Catalogue" as constant companions, when "good, hot soup" sustained us between digging caves in the vacant lot and having "clod" fights without fear of being tabbed as juvenile delinquents; when the Campbell Soup Kids romped gaily in four colors on the overleaf from the Post Script page in The Saturday Evening Post, this show has particular significance. Though, as many have said, it may make a neat, negative point about standardization it also has a positive point to make. To a tenderloin oriented society it is a nostalgic call for a return to nature. Warhol obviously doesn't want to give us much to cling to in the way of sweet handling, preferring instead the hard commercial surface of his philosophical cronies. But then house fetishes rarely compete with Rembrandt in esthetic significance. However, based on formal arrangements, intellectual and emotional response, one finds favorites. Mine is Onion.

Photos: The top photo, taken by Seymour Rosen, shows how the works were arranged at the 1962 show: like cans on a supermarket shelf. The bottom photo shows how they have been more typically displayed over the years, most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where the set is part of the permanent collection.

* "Campbell's Soup Cans" (from Museum of Modern Art): @

* Warhol's 32 Soup Flavors" (from Smithsonian Libraries, Washington): @

* "The Origin of Andy Warhol's Soup Cans or the Synthesis of Nothingness" (from www.warholstars.org): @

* Abstract Expressionism, 1962 timeline (from www.warholstars.org): @

* www.warhol.org (Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh): @

* www.warhola.com (The Andy Warhol Family Album): @

* "Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol" (book by Tony Scherman and David Dalton, 2010): @

* "Andy Warhol and the Can That Sold the World" (book by Gary Indiana, 2010): @

* Announcement for exhibition opening: @

* Essays for 2002 show at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles: @

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Tuesday, June 12, 1962: Underground school / fallout shelter

Abo Elementary School in Artesia, New Mexico, is dedicated. The school, built entirely underground, also functions as a fallout shelter. Classes would begin on August 28.

From the 2011 book "Artesia," by Nancy Dunn and Naomi Florez of the Artesia Historical Museum & Art Center:

Conceived at the height of the Cold War and the era of bomb-shelter construction, the school was built 18 feet underground and covered by a 21-inch thick, steel-reinforced concrete slab. Heavy steel doors said to be designed to hold up under a nuclear explosion were placed inside the aboveground entrances. The school's campus covered 10 acres, and the roof doubled as a playground. Besides having traditional school features, such as classrooms for 540 students, a cafeteria/multipurpose room, and modern restrooms, Abo School boasted an emergency entrance equipped with a shower to remove fallout particles, an air-conditioning system designed to filter out radioactivity, a generator to supply emergency power, and a morgue. Emergency rations were stored in the teachers' room. By 1989, the rations, outdated medical supplies, and body bags were discarded, and the morgue was used to store cafeteria supplies. Abo School was replaced by Yeso Elementary School in 1995. ... Because the school was underground, it was felt that students would be able to concentrate better on their lessons, as there were no windows to look out of, and the air-conditioning system was thought to help children with allergies and asthma.

* Excerpt from "Underground Buildings: More Than Meets the Eye" (book by Loretta Hall, 2004): @

* Excerpt from "Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America" (book by Tom Vanderbilt, 2010): @

* Excerpt from "Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War" (book by David Monteyne, 2011): @

* "Incorporation of Shelter Into Schools" (Office of Civil Defense, November 1962): @

* "Civil Defense Shelter Options for Fallout and Blast Protection (Dual-Purpose)" (IIT Research Institute, May 1967): @

* "460 Atomic-Age Kids in Underground School" (Sarasota Journal, August 1962): @

* "Underground School is Fallout Shelter" (Popular Science, October 1962): @
* Earlier post on fallout shelters (September 1961): @

* Earlier post on fallout shelter sign (December 1, 1961): @

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Wednesday, May 23, 1962: 'Sex and the Single Girl'

The book by Helen Gurley Brown is published by Bernard Geis Associates and quickly becomes a best-seller. From the hardcover book flap:

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL torpedoes one of the most absurd (if universal) myths of our time: that every girl must be married. (How ... when there are four million too few single adult men to go around? Why ... when it can be so exciting to be single?)

In perhaps the first truly honest treatment of the subject, SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL tells the unmarried girl how to be irresistibly, irrepressibly, confidently, enviably single. There is not a coy, sanctimonious or condescending word in this entire book ... only hundreds of practical, workable, specific suggestions written with sometimes shocking candor by a woman who was herself single for thirty-seven years.

The reader is taken on a guided tour of the haunts of men and told how to flush them out "without doing anything brassy or show-offy." (Not for the purpose of getting married but of being contentedly single until she meets a man she wants to marry -- and who wants to marry her.)

One chapter draws a detailed, easy-to-follow blueprint of how to be sexy to every man in eyesight and earshot "except those who respond only to girls who wear hobnail boots and paperclip necklaces or union suits plastered with chicken feathers."

The single woman will discover to sneak up on a fabulous career ("even if you are a slow starter") that can afford her prestige, trips to glamorous places and enough money to drive a Ferrari.

A chapter with a simple title -- MONEY MONEY MONEY -- tells the unfortunate lass who manages her funds abysmally how to hang on to enough of them to buy gold lamé dresses and blue chip stocks at the end of every month.

THE APARTMENT gives specific instructions in locating and decorating the necessary "jewel-like setting in which you will lead your sapphire single-girl life."

THE SHAPE YOU'RE IN itemizes ways to be healthy, sexy and alluring inside as well as out. THE WARDROBE punctures holes in many tired notions about fashion, such as the silly one that smart girls don't follow it. ("They follow fashion like mad.")

In other chapters, a single woman will discover how to have hair that shimmers, how to keep one dousing of French perfume wafting from her bosom all day long, how to serve (without fidgets) breakfast to an overnight male guest, how to give a perfect cocktail party, how to bake a flawless chocolate soufflé. And for the first time anywhere the protocol of THE AFFAIR is discussed -- from Beginning to End.

Long before the reader reaches THE RICH, FULL LIFE, she will be convinced that today's smart single woman, far from being a pitiable creature, can be the most alluring of all females.

* Entry from "St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture" (Gale Group, 2000): @

* Art Buchwald column (November 1962): @

* "Singular Girl's Success" (Life magazine, March 1, 1963): @

* "A Helen Gurley Brown Quiz" (The New York Times, May 2009) @

* "Bad Girls Go Everywhere" (2010 biography of Brown, by Jennifer Scanlon): @

* New Yorker review of "Bad Girls Go Everywhere": @

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Friday, April 27, 1962: 'Where The Boys Went'

Nearly a year and a half after the movie "Where The Boys Are" helped made Florida beaches a spring break destination for thousands of college students, the NBC network broadcasts a half-hour report about Daytona Beach. Said NBC newsman Chet Huntley: "Our crew, after spending two weeks with them, found they drank prodigious amounts of beer and danced the Twist interminably day and night. Neither of these appeals to older eyes as a particularly aesthetic activity but neither is especially shocking."

* NBC report: @

* Earlier post on "Where The Boys Are" (December 28, 1960): @

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Saturday, April 21, 1962: World's Fair

The Seattle's World Fair opens, built around the futuristic theme "Century 21."

From "The Washington Journey," a 2009 textbook for 7th-graders:

The Space Needle, now an emblem for downtown Seattle, was built for the World's Fair in 1962. The Space Needle was a symbol of the nation's space program, which was pushing hard to get a man on the moon before the Soviets did. The World's Fair was a chance to show what the future might bring in science and technology. A huge science exhibit stressed more science eduation for American students. The monorail was an example of future transportation. It still operates in downtown Seattle.

* Essay from www.historylink.org (Washington state history site): @

* www.62worldsfair.com: @

* "Seattle World's Fair: Then and Now": @

* Anniversary coverage from The Seattle Times: @

* Newsreel on fair's opening: @

* "Let's Go to the Fair" (CBS report with Walter Cronkite): @

* "Century 21 Calling" (Bell System video): @

* Time-lapse video of Space Needle construction: @

* Life magazine, February 9: @

* Life magazine, May 4: @

* "Seattle's 1962 World's Fair" (2010 book by Bill Cotter): @

* "What'll It Be Like in 2000 A.D.?" (Popular Science, April 1962): @

* "Journey to the Stars" (American Cinematographer, 1963): @

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