Space Flight - Ten Cents

In 1960, you could drop a dime in the mail and get yourself some genuine space-flight experience! The Science Program was a subscription service, delivering a booklet devoted to a single subject each month. Ten cents was the introductory offer, but future booklets cost a dollar (plus shipping). Subscribers also got posters, star-charts, and other helpful activities to help teach about the varied topics, from nuclear power to cartography.

Take a close look at the date, though: this advertisement was printed on the back of the 27 March 1960 edition of This Week magazine...a full year before the USSR and USA launched their respective manned spaceflights. The potential for wild speculation and amateurish writing was ripe, but the Science Service was above such things. Established in the 1920s, the Science Service was a newswire for scientific thought, sponsored and edited by scientists for accuracy and clarity to the layperson. These booklets were carefully written for accuracy, as much information as they had in the 1960s, and certainly inspired the minds of today's scientists and engineers. That is, if their parents could come up with a buck a month to keep the sticker books coming.

Arrangement in Gray and Black: Melby's Mother

Whistler's Mother (otherwise known as Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1) is an iconic image in our culture, recalling a Victorian silence and respectability. Mrs. Melby's Mother, above, spent Halloween 1960 at a bowling alley. My, how times change is a little less than a century! Not quite as much as you may think, though -- the style of dress is similarly modest, although Mrs. Melby has gone stocking-free and is showing a little ankle. Her chair is similarly spartan, although anyone who attended a high school built earlier than 1960 is probably intimately familiar with such folding seats; many a small finger has been bit by those steel hinges while screwing around during an oh-so-important school assembly in the auditorium.

Pfister Hotel Barber Shop Staff, 1960

The couple in the front, members of the "Pfister Hotel Social Club" spent more time at the Pfister than just as customers: they appear to be the proprietors of the hotel barber shop. Several photos were taken, in hopes of getting a good shot where nobody's blinking, everybody's looking at the camera, and you can see everyone's faces...they didn't succeed.

Nixon at the Tournament of Roses Parade

Who's that cheery guy waving from the back of a convertible Cadillac? Why, it's the nation's most beloved politician, Richard Nixon! Presiding over the 1960 Tournament of Roses parade, Nixon's car was overcome by beautiful women wishing to lavish kisses upon the vice-president...oh, um, sorry, this IS Nixon we're talking about, and from what I've read he was always a bit creepy. Notice the number of people in the crowd looking away as he drove by. I actually uploaded these to Collector's Quest, in conjunction with an article I wrote.