You?ll love this Here?s a Fun Friday Thing that also seems like a worthy way to procrastinate: There is a stellar digital database, called AdSausage, with over 40,000 vintage advertisements just waiting for your perusal.
The searchable database has it all: from hilarious 1950s and ?60s advertisements for dishwashers, irons, and ovens, to ?70s magazine ads for the latest in telephone technology, which stood a far cry from, say, today?s smartphone.
We are, natch, particularly enamored of the ?Design? category, which includes a groovy, full-page midcentury Herman Miller Furniture ad for Charles Eames?s Aluminum Group, and the most amazing set of ads for architectural and residential lighting. The spots aren?t just from U.S. magazines, either: In our dive into the archives, we spotted clippings from European journals, too. The documents were digitized under the supervision of a scientist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, who, according to AdSausage, oversees the scanning of each page on the site with a ?multidetector positron scanner.? This minimizes the dirt and other grime on the originals when scanned and, thus, maximizes our ability to lose hours at a time wading through glorious commercial kitsch of yore.
Take a look over at AdSausage.

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