Midweek Matinee: Free and Easy: Vacuum Gearshift, 1940

All photos are frame grabs from video below.

This charming film uses up a third of its time allotment just to get around to today’s topic, but fear not: The Jam Handy crew will explain the mysteries of marine biology (as applied to exploding fish), poorly lit underwater photography and why the sky is or is not blue… and connect all three to the workings of various mechanisms deep within your 1940 Chevrolet. In under nine minutes.

Meet Joe Citydweller, who has no hesitation in carrying on an extended conversation with an uninvited, all-knowing Voice From Above.

Those cool vacuum-actuated windshield wipers on Joe’s 1940 Sport Sedan Special De Luxe are briefly explained using smoke, but not mirrors.

How to entertain guests at your next party with a laboratory bell jar; rubber hoses; and a running, six-cylinder, valve-in-head automobile engine. And more smoke. Plus a toy balloon instead of a goldfish, because that would simply be wrong.

And, with only moments left, we learn how Chevrolet freely and easily puts 15 p.s.i. of air pressure to work for the good of all mankind.

Public domain archival footage courtesy of the Internet Moving Images Archive, in association with Prelinger Archives.