J. Peress’s 1 atmosphere diving suit — referred to as Tritonia or “Jim 1″, after Peress’s chief diver Jim Jarrett — preparing to explore the wreck of the RMS Lusitania in 1935.

Tritonia, Lusitania. 1935 [vintagephoto]

In 1936, two stories by H.P. Lovecraft appeared in the pages of Astounding Stories, At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time. Howard Brown did the cover and interior illustrations for both of these and they are fantastic. I really like Brown’s sense of scale with all his humans dwarfed by their surroundings and their inhabitants.

Howard V. Brown’s Illustrations for Astounding Stories, 1936 [Golden Age Comic Book Stories] : Thanks, Asa!

“God does not create instruments without a tune in mind.”

So was the mantra of Mildred Blumenthal, wife of Albert Blumenthal and mother of one Harold Blumenthal. It could be argued that Mrs. Blumenthal’s belief in a life’s purpose may have been born at the same time as her son, whose prodigious length caused her body to balloon to then unheard of proportions and required a birth of nearly fifty-nine hours in order to uncoil and expel him from her womb. Regardless of its roots, it became a fixture in her repertoire of sage advice and it was to Harold’s great relief that she lived long enough to see him hired at the New York Stock Exchange.

Board Room, NY Stock Market, Wall Street. 1936 by Bourke-White [vintagephoto]