"Power To Cheap To Meter:" A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, August 1955

 

The now-closed Dounreay fast breeder reactor in Caithness, Scotland

I had to watch one of those "You should totally buy AI because it can actually do stuff" ads to get to this clip. 

Anyway, the experience of postblogging technology is always weird because it's the most direct and easiest way to encounter that classic historian's disconnect between the popular history that solidifies around an event, and the actual events. Guys! There was no Sputnik surprise! Everyone  knew that the Americans and Soviets were going to launch satellites during the (eighteen month) International Geophysical Year and that the Soviets were talking about an earlier launch date than the Americans. I don't think I've come close to unpacking why it was said to be a surprise, but we've got two years to go on that one. 

 "Power too cheap to meter" is a quote from Lewis Strauss, speaking in 1954 to the National Association of Science Writers. Strauss has not been well treated by history, and I am not here to be contrarian, but he went on to offer water as an example of something that progress had made "too cheap to meter," and from that perspective it's at least a plausible bit of prediction. Had he chosen to talk about about long-distance telephony, he would come across a regular prophet! For that matter, he turns out to have been a lot more wrong about predicting extended lifespans. Unmetered power turns out to be further away than ever, but at least there's a road to this outcome. The Wiki goes on to explain that the "statement was contentious from the start . . ." pointing out that, even in 1954, the AEC was not boundlessly optimistic about the future costs of nuclear power, and that one researcher found "dozens of statements" to that effect. Strauss' son seems to have hijacked the conversation by proposing that Strauss was talking about fusion power, something that we've seen as problematic at the Geneva Atomics for Peace conference, where Strauss comes out with a more typical blunder, trying to keep American fusion research secret for no particular reason. But, of course, "power to cheap to meter" comes out of Geneva very directly in a way that has nothing to do with either conventional atomic power or fusion: Breeder reactors. 

Postblogging Technology, August 1955, II: Plane On Ice

(Per Newsweek of 1955, the theme of Porgy and Bess is that American racism isn't as bad as they say.)

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

The last Renata cherries are off the market here, the peaches are ruined, it's raining,  the roof is leaking again, and James is off to his squadron. Summertime is not easy! And the worst part is that we only have a week to go, because I have to go down to San Francisco to look at our new digs and meet the partners, who seem very pleased to have someone with a track record of staring at patent applications all day, albeit admittedly in the service of selling turboliners, rather than making vast sums of money defending and prosecuting patent violation cases. At least I got to wear a nice flannel plaid to market in Nelson, which you would ordinarily not do in August.

But we did get Canadian polio vaccinations, and I guess no-one ever offered to cancel September. And, even if they did, I voted for the other guy. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, August 1955: Open Skies

R. C.,

Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Smaller than Sputnik, but solid state. NASA. No spying, 
pinkie swear!

The slow task of reassembling my subscriptions continues, with an all-British collection this week, just in time for Canada to abandon the Old Country in favour of  the United States, which I am sure will not be a problem notwithstanding the warnings from down Vancouver way that since Canadian rivers run south, except where they don't, we all shall be induced by easy fits of relaxation to join the United States to enjoy all the advantages of efficient transportation. 

Looking around Nakusp and comparing it with Kamloops, I certainly see the advantages of being on a river that flows into the United States, the innocent young mother said, innocently! 


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Satellites, Satelloons, and Golf: A Technological Prologue to Postblogging Technology, August 1955

 

"Dirk Boh-Garde"

So I discovered, while trying to re-order some of my requests from the library, that the ASRS definitely doesn't have my email address, or isn't bothering to send me, specifically, emails, by the simple expedient of noticing that the catalogue was listing my Flight retrievals as being held for pickup. I have physical copies of Flight, Newsweek, and The Economist in hand, and I may have missed the pickup windows for retrieval requests for Fortune and The Engineer, so God knows when I'm getting those. (Online subscription for the Aviation Week archives seems to be re-enabled, although I'd prefer to have physical copies for image quality and because it is cheaper.) More importantly, due to my boss getting his three-times postponed vacation this week, I worked 6-2:30, 1:30-10, 8:30-5, and 5-1:30 schedules this week, and was either washed out or lazy this weekend. 

Anyway, here is a  technological prologue instead, because between Eisenhower revisionism and post-revisionism and the announcement of a planned IGY American satellite launch on 29 July 1955, there's a pretty good reason to run one!

Source: https://www.original-political-cartoon.com/cartoon-gallery/buy/caption-displayed/385/

Historians' views of the Eisenhower Administration have . .  . evolved. Better known as a late-era Modesty Blaise-relief cartoonist, Neville Colvin, a newly-arrived refugee from the "stifling atmosphere of Fifties New Zealand," captures the contemporary view of Eisenhower for Fleet Street. Uninterested, or even lazy, but with a lashing of malice barely under control. This is a thoroughly worthless First Executive. While the Britain, having given the world a senile dotard and a meth-head in succession, is not the country to point fingers, there's a sense that the United States has lost eight years. In contrast, writing in 1986, Robert J. MacMahon reviewed a decade of "Eisenhower revisionism" as being most successful in overturning "the traditional interpretation of an inept, bewildered President overwhelmed by his formidable secretary of state." Although "it can be fairly said that the majority of case studies have not sustained Eisenhower revisionism," because the revisionists "have elevated process over policy," we can at least agreed that foreign policy, at least, was "orderly and rational." I'm a bit surprised that MacMahon never gets into the President's health, but, anyway, about that---

 Satellites. 

War Balloons and Satelloons! A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, July 1955

 

That's "Fu-Go," not "Fugu." Those wacky Japanese! So I hope that the readers have been as struck as I have been by The Periscope's ongoing obsession with balloons. Since the column has been talking up balloon-carried H-bombs as an Air Force project, this isn't necessarily all about the Skyhook programme, but Periscope is definitely on that case, too, with its talk of the programme setting an altitude record soon, and reaching 250 miles altitude, which is why you should never have a third martini when you're having lunch with your sources. I mean, there was a time when cementing your name in history as the dumbest nepo baby ever was a potential achievement, but nowadays we've got Larry Summers. In conclusion, why even try?

The walk along the new lakeshore in downtown Nakusp. The Upper Arrow is mostly too cold for cherry trees to fruit, though.

Just go somewhere that's a ferry from anywhere and wait for this whole "Western Civilisation" thing to blow over. Bring some books. And lots of flour, Spam, peas, and lard.  You'll be fine.

Postblogging Technology, July 1955, II: Cherry Time

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Mon only looks drawn because it's a 25 hour day keeping
the kids from knocking all that kitsch over. 

I am pleased to report that my husband, children, and I are enjoying an idyllic Arrows Lake summer, and that the Nelson Public Library carries The Economist and Newsweek, but that Notre Dame's collection of thinly-disguised advertorial collections is woefully deficient, and wherever in the postal universe my magazines are, they aren't here. I am sure that they will turn up shortly, but everything in life is short except deadlines, however self-imposed, so I am going with what I have got and am then off to contemplate what to do with even more fresh cherries than we can eat raw. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

PS: Upside Down Cake!

The Early Iron Age Revival of the State,, XXXIII: Fish, Tyrrhenian Pirates, and Mainstream Scholarship

 

Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/image/1064/bronze-coin-of-byzantium/

This is not the post that I wanted to write today, the first day of my last vacation week of 2025. (No more paid vacations, not including statutory holidays and paid time off, until the first week of February!) To speak frankly and autobiographically about my process and the University of British Columbia Library, the Library now loans bound periodicals on a two week, indefinitely renewable basis, the same as all other loans to alumni members such as myself. Fines are no longer levied, but replacement fees are. Loans overdue, or perhaps just held over term end (I keep missing the renewal because there aren't any consequences except in May and September) are automatically deemed lost, and the replacement fee exceeds the borrower block. That was my position last week. It was my intention to return my loans last Saturday, but I missed a volume, and because of work I didn't return it until Tuesday. I put in a borrower request for the six second-half-of-1955 volumes in my postblogging series before opening on Thursday morning. These are split between a remote storage facility (PARC), with slow but operational machinery, and the on-campus ASRS facility, which, it seems increasingly clear, will never work again quickly and efficiently. It may be that holdings that were in storage before ASRS are principally affected by this, which is bad news, since both Aviation Week are, very luckily, in that category. (Otherwise they would have been lost to pilfering engineering students generations ago, like Toronto's holdings of early aviation technical journals.) Neither facility was able to meet my peremptory demands yesterday, and here we are. Fortunately, I have something to say, and not just about the bonito of Byzantium.