Simple freckle prevention device isn't

"The device is simplicity itself. A small steam engine supplies the power which keeps a perforated iron screen revolving so that the sun does not strike any particular spot long enough to cause a freckle."

Or, you know, you could just use an umbrella.

Reader bunaen ran across this old newspaper clipping in a box of family memorabilia dating to around 1917. He thinks it's from the Redondo Beach Daily Breeze. I love the way it pairs a ludicrous gadget concept with breathless reporting that wouldn't be remotely out of place in modern times. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again, eh?

I'm afraid my nose surpasses the freckle limit for cuteness. If only I had listened to the Smile's staff of scientists.

Want a bit more blasting from the past? Bunaen has a whole Flickr set full of photos and clippings culled from the same boxes he found this in. It includes some shots from old Hollywood, where Bunaen's dad was a musician for the movie studios. Oh, the swell things that turn up in the BoingBoing Flickr Pool!

• [strandedlad]

  When I read old copy from the teens and twenties with all its peppy alliteration, I always think of Babbit. Damn you, high school English!

• [Anonymous]

  Maybe retool that freckle thing a bit, and it wouldn’t at all be out of place amongst the Culture Corner stuff.

• [cleek]

  and what could be more relaxing than sitting on the beach, with a hissing, smoking, steam engine thumping away in front of you ?!

  • [CastanhasDoPara]

    Damn, ya beat me to it. My thoughts exactly.

    Digging deeper into my giant satchel of cynicism though, I would also wonder who the hell would be able to stand the swirling, hypnotic, nauseating perforated disk either.

    Also is she wearing ballerina slippers? To the beach? Such silly nonsense.

• [anansi133]

  What were buyers were supposed to assume about this? The holes in the disk show as bright spots on dark, like the antidote to dark spots on light skin.

  The shade effect from the disk doesn’t require that the disk spin at all… unless one s very close to the disk. If the motor were to stop, the user is probably cautioned to get out of the sun, lest they get burned-in spots.

  Sure, it’s hokum, but it’s plausible if you don’t understand anything about optics. Today’s version seems worse to me, because there’s no excuse for not knowing better.

• [Anonymous]

  you know, there were people who *did* have a sense of humor 100 years ago, really. Witness the many popular comic strips of the day.

• [Anonymous]

  As Foghorn Leghorn was found of saying, “It’s a yolk, I say, a joke, son.”

  Didn’t even part your hair, eh?

• [Anonymous]

  Is it utterly impossible that the idea of telling a joke in the newspaper was invented before 1981 (when Dave Barry wrote his first column)?

• [Phikus]

  Must have been a risque bathing suit at the time. The sun is blushing.

• [Donald Petersen]

  Yeah, it’s gotta be a gag. Otherwise, I don’t think “simplicity itself” means what they think it means.

• [Anonymous]

  Freckles don’t work that way.

• [Rob Cruickshank]

  Bunaen’s stream has a photo of a beagle nursing kittens!
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunaen/40607237/in/set-835920/
  That should derail the thread befor 100 more people out that the illustration in question is either
  A: a newspaper comic
  B: proto-steampunk.

  • [Chentzilla]

    Is that even a female beagle?

• [Anonymous]

  ….. But I love freckles. I think they’re damn sexy!

• [SonOfSamSeaborn]

  No idea what you look like, Maggie, but there’s no freckle limit for cuteness.

• [Ugly Canuck]

  A rather debauched song about how cute freckles can be, from 1947:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt7glLk7TDU

  I don’t know how big a radio hit it may have been.