Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.
Postblogging Technology, February, 1955, II: Diamonds in the Rough
R_., C_., Shaughnessy, Vancouver, Canada
Dear Father:
Here is your biweekly news summary, boiled down to a single sentence: Peter Sellers is the funniest thing in the world and the cobalt bomb is the scariest. Are they related? They are! Pardon me for giving away the plot of a movie that's still in the theatre, but the reason that the Grand Duchy of Fenwick wins its war with the United States is that it captures a doomsday device, "the Q-bomb." If you can't laugh at the end of the world, what can you laugh at?
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Letters
Downtown Kennebec today. The county seat of Lyman County had a population of 281 in the 2020 census.
Tor Myklebost of the Norwegian Information Service writes to correct a silly thing a silly person said in Newsweek. Several people share their opinions about Eddie Cantor, whom they like better than a critic writing in the magazine. George Brown writes from New York to remind us that Yale's debating society ("Whig-Cliosophic") is very posh. S. S. Gray of Brooklyn jumps on an emerging trend and makes a fool of himself in the pages. (A recent letter presented a picture of a new sea creature as a discovery; Gray says that it looks like a sea lice to him; The actual point of the article is that it isn't, Mr. or Mrs. Gray.) Some Italians like Clare Booth Luce, but most don't, is the balance of two letters, which being evenly divided, can't prove one thing or the other. Joe Teasdale of Kennebec, South Dakota, predicts that Ike will lose worse than Hoover in '56 for being too pink, while Charles Reinnel of Chicago backs the President's Formosa policy to the hilt because it is time to stand up to Communism. For Your Information explains that the new and better addressing system with labels on the side of the magazine and not the bottom is thanks to Newsweek splurging on three new Cheshire addressing machines.
The Periscope reports that when the President says that his last direct communication with Marshal Zhukov was in 1946, what he means is that he is in regular indirect communication with the Marshal. The DNC is going to try to get rid of Texas Governor Allan Shivers over a real estate scandal. AFL-CIO merger talks are going ahead now that Walter Reuters has dropped his "no-raiding" stance. The Dixon-Yates fight will be followed by a fight over expanding the TVA. HUAC and the Senate Investigations Committee are going to look into left wing defence funds. Everyone at the AEC hates Lewis Strauss even more than last week. The FBI is looking into the mysterious fire that destroyed the Navy's biggest plastic minesweeper, and Congress doesn't want to hear an annual report on the Federal courts delivered by the Chief Justice, because it would be boring. Where Are They Now catches up with Ernst Heinkel, who makes scooters now, and Hanna Benes, who is old and frail. "Evidence is mounting" that in another Soviet espionage coup, Alfred Sokolowsky will turn out to be a Red spy, and you know how important HE is! "It's a nervous time for top Communists" because people are talking purge again. The Air Force is making a play to have their commander in Europe succeed Alfred Gruenther as Supreme Allied Commander, which has the Army up in arms. The U.S. now plans a large permanent base in Antarctica with 2000 officers and men to do year-round scientific work and bolster U.S. claims to the territory. Nehru and Russia are joining hands to back Pathan raiders from Afghanistan making trouble for Pakistan because it is too pro-Western.
Heinkel Kabine, 1956. By Thesupermat - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30902958
I know I make fun of the accuracy of this feature now and then, but I actually went to the library to confirm that Mrs. Benes died more than a year ago.
The Periscope Washington Trends reports that the Khrushchev clique is expected to be more belligerent than the Malenkov group. They do not expect Red aggression, and the Administration has decided not to compete with the Soviets by "matching favours to neutrals," but will instead wait for them to get tired of the Soviets, like everybody else does eventually.
National Affairs
The President is very calm about WWIII but Congress isn't so sure and Democratic leaders now say that they shouldn't have given way on the manpower cuts. People are talking about an Ike-Zhukov meeting and whether the Reds are going to invade more islands in the Straits after all. Then because it's February and there's not anything more pressing, let's have a couple of columns about whether Ike will run in '56.
"Beyond Fancy: Push Buttons And Deliver Atomic Disaster 5000 Miles Away" There seems to be some kind of general agreement that we need to pretend that atomic missiles are a new story. A tiny little box mentions the Army's various flying missiles, the Army and Navy surface-to-air missiles, and their air-to-air missiles, but the real story is an intercontinental ballistic missile, which raises unsolved questions about the rocket motor and guidance, which will have to be at least ten times as good as the V-2's was supposed to be, but never actually managed. Guidance will presumably be by rudders during the initial climb out of the atmosphere, and might be executed by internal guidance calculated to take into account the "lumpy" Earth, or by mechanised celestial navigation, or by mechanised "gravitational" control (gyros?) or by ground-based electronic control. The missiles will also have to resist great heat when they re-enter the atmosphere, and there will be some room for private business in the End of the World, which would be bad advertising, but who cares? It's the End! Speaking of which, the FCC is hearing proposals about pay-television, everyone in Washington hates Lewis Strauss even more than at the beginning of this issue.
People: Children's Hour reports that Mrs. Bernard Schmees has given birth to the first of a set of twins on 28 January and is still waiting for the second birth, which is unusual even though spaced births are not unknown in twins, that a fireman in West Ridge, NH saved a toddler from a train (no, seriously, it's in the national press!) and another set of twins caused a commotion in Brooklyn when one of them trapped the other in the oven and the fire department had to get her out. And at the top of this column but not precisely part of it, a seventeen-year-old New York girl taken hostage by a car hijacker burns to death when the fleeing car flips at a police barricade and the watching police can't get her out.
Ernest K. Lindley's Washington Tides says nothing at all about the new Soviet leadership after take up a page of words in doing it.
International Affairs
After a special report on "The Unending Revolution," reported as a return to Stalinism under Khrushchev's leadership, and ascendancy for the Army as Marshal Zhukov becomes the new Defence Minister. Are the Soviets going to be more adventurous under Khrushchev given his outbursts? Possibly, possibly not. Bedell Smith has a boxed interview in which he is cautious, Carl Spaatz a boxed commentary in which he is pointless, and Ivan Volkov's regular column reiterates the "Stalinist" interpretation based on the recent turn away from consumer goods production, although he points out that raising wages ahead of disappointing production numbers (especially considering the recent drought) risked inflation.
"Asia: A Ticklish Moment and a Question" Newsweek sent its Tokyo Bureau chief, Compton Pakenham[!!!], down to Formosa because he knows Asians, having grown up in the Orient. Based on the results, a waste of a ticket.
Pakenham was just a garden variety cad, but his second wife, now there's a story.
South Africa cleared the first of the Negro communities on the outskirts of Johannesburg that offend the spirit of Apartheid so. Donald Campbell has launched the Bluebird, in which he hopes to hit a 200mph water speed record. Svetlana Aliluyeva gave the Hearst Press an interview in which, as is the fashion in Moscow these days, she didn't say much of anything. Pierre Pflimlin is the latest candidate for the French premiership to see if he can form a cabinet. Marshal Tito is back in Yugoslavia after his 73 day state visit of India and Burma. Jean Monnet has stepped down as President of the ECSC to fight full time for a United States of Europe. Ticking It Off reports the opening of Rome's first subway, Pakistan is trying out some land reform but its attempt "to impose unity on West and East Pakistan" has foundered on an adverse court ruling, and the King of Cambodia has won the staged referendum he held.
In this hemisphere, the aftereffects of the assassination of the Panamanian president and the failed invasion of Costa Rica are still being felt. A prominent attorney has been accused in the assassination, and the murder weapon found, but there's a certain unvoiced sense that there is more to the story --that there MUST be. From Costa Rica, Associate Editor Harry B. Murkland bulletins that Costa Rica is very tense and that President Somoza of Nicaragua is upset that the United States didn't back his little counterrevolution against the Costa Rican "communists."
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that the recovery is going well, that truckers are fighting to prevent the release of a report that "excessively favours the rails," and Democrats are likely to give up on their hopes for a tax cut due to the need for more guns thanks to Formosa and Khrushchev.
The lead story in Business covers the AFL-CIO merger at great length, but we eventually get to the latest atomic power news, which is a Con-Ed proposal to fund its own reactor on the Hudson. Also in atomic news is speculation that controlled gamma ray emissions from reactors might be the next thing in crystal micrography. Notes: Week in Business reports that two big drug companies are merging (a textiles merger gets its own story), that Jones & Laughlin Steel will be turning out extruded carbon steel sections at their new $1.3 million hot extrusion plant in Pittsburgh. It also goes on about rising auto sales, already covered in The Periscope. The latest word from the ongoing Montgomery Ward takeover effort is that the outside group trying to buy out Avery are perhaps cheating with their stock purchases. Products: What's New reports that Litton Industtries' Nuclear Electronics Division is selling a portable X-ray machine powered by a bit of thulium-170. Two companies are offering nylons with 90 day guarantees. Yes!
Henry Hazlitt uses Business Tides for "Time for Reappraisal," which proposes to reappraise American foreign policy by making the same recommendation he always makes, to cut all foreign aid, albeit now on the pretext that Europe is rich, as opposed to a hopeless basket case, as was his argument against aid in 1948, if I recall correctly, and also defence spending, because our alliances aren't really alliances because Americans did most of the fighting in Korea. (No notice, as usual, that the French and British were already fighting Communism in Malaya and Indo China.)
Science, Medicine, Education
"Atom: Who Gets Hurt" Three individuals are in a city which is fifty miles from an H-bomb detonation. A. tries to evacuate, gets caught in a traffic jam, and dies of radiation. B. has a bomb shelter in the basement, where the family spends two days and experience only minor exposure. C. digs foxholes for each member of his family and covers them with blankets, leading to the C. family getting a bit more radiation than B., but not much more. The moral of the story is, surprisingly considering that everyone is surviving H-bombs with blanket forts is that, according to Ralph E. Lapp writing in the latest Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that fallout is probably more dangerous than the blast itself. Fallout from a blast will contaminate an egg-shaped area 200 by 50 miles with enough radiation to be lethal after a day's exposure for several years. Lapp concludes that an attack by 28 H-bombs might render 50 million Americans vulnerable. Lapp recommends the construction of concrete bomb shelter rings around every city and mandatory bomb shelters in the basement of every new home.
"Real Thing" GE scientists announced this week that they can make diamonds. They're not big and beautiful like natural diamonds, but they're good enough for machine tool heads. Periscoping Science reports that manpower experts are mad at the Army for drafting scientists and putting them on K.P. and that "tubes of synthetic yarns to replace human arteries" are just around the corner, which rumour is followed by some gibberish that, if I read it literally, implies that they're about to start making these artery replacements with a converted string-tie knitter at the North Carolina College School of Textiles.
"A Boy and a Miracle" Juan Iregoyen Yepez is a great Bolivian kid who happened to be born without arms and legs (although with hands and feet), and has benefitted from rehabilitation in the United States and from American doctors telling the Bolivians that they have to look after him from now on. Also, Eisenhower's pick as head of the VA has done a great job of reorganising it.
Various Southern states are passing various anti-desegregation legislation. The Administration's school aid proposal is unexpectedly generous.
Press, TV-Radio, Art, Newsmakers
A feature article in Press celebrates The New Yorker.
The mustache is trimmed, implying that James Thurber meant to look like this. And it worked for him, which is a lesson about something or other.
TV-Radio looks in at the results of Pat Weaver's edict that NBC Television do more culture of three years past. Not much, is the conclusion. Fortunately, Dr. Herman Harvey, an assistant professor of psychology at USC (and a TV lecturer on KNXT), suggests that TV doesn't actually causes juvenile delinquency and we should all relax. At the AMA's 51st Medical Education Congress in Chicago this week, 600 doctors agreed that closed circuit TV shows for doctors were unquestionably beneficial, but TV doctor shows just lead to everyone getting "medical studentitis." Periscoping Radio-TV reports that Bing Crosby, George Allen, Jack Benny, and Gracie Allen will do a TV version of The Mikado next autumn, that Marie Wilson might have a CBS show next year in which she plays a receptionist at a model agency, while NBC will turn The Grouch Club into a show with Jack Lescoulie as the emcee.
An image appropriated from a website that appropriated it from a book (by Ladislas Segy) that appropriated African art!
Ladislas Segy's New York gallery specialising in African art is five years old this week, which is a reason for an Arts story, unfortunately not illustrated.
Charles Steen, Moira Shearer, Frank Lloyd Wright, Betty Hutton, Paul Douglas, Ava Gardner, twelve Explorer Scouts, and just one royal are in the column for the usual reasons. Oilman T. E. Robertson is in it for offering a bounty on Red MiGs, and Rodney Dee Brodie for being released from hospital after his head separation operation from his Siamese twin two years ago.
Rosemary Clooney has had a baby, Albert Wilson, the 108-year-old last veteran of the Union Army had a birthday, Princess Maria Pia is married, and Rush Drew Holt (which is a real name), Pierre-Andre LeFaucheux, and Ona Munson have died. Pierre S. Du Pont has left $33 million to the Longwood Foundation to maintain his Longwood Gardens.
The Periscope isn't completely out to lunch. The Jack Benny Show did a Mikado episode in 1956, although needless to say that Bing Crosby and George Allen weren't in it.
The New Films
Jupiter's Darling is an Esther Williams movie with swimming and bathing suits. Bad Day at Black Rock is a pretty good movie, a contemporary Western crime thriller featuring some (anti-Japanese) racism. Fox's The Racers has fast cars, Kirk Douglas, and Bella Darvi, whereas Underwater is an offering from RKO so it is mainly about what Howard Hughes wants, and, in this case, it that Jane Russell be a star, which a swimming movie is well-calculated to do. It is pretty good. New Orleans Uncensored is a pretty terrible offering from Columbia.
Books
Gustav Flaubert's A Dictionary of Platitudes is a worthy book full of talking about talking about how Communism is awful. Or alternatively it's about what the title says, now available in translation. I think that Flaubert's contemporary witticisms suffer a bit from being published almost a century after his death, but what do I know about platitudes? (Which is a real sentence.) Leonard Wibley's The Mouse That Roared is about an Alpine duchy (of medieval English people, for some reason) that invades the United States to get revenge for a Californian winery copying their wine appellation, and for some sweet postwar reconstruction aid, but ends up conquering the world by capturing the Bomb. That's a much longer summary than I usually give novels, but it's quite the sensation, so I guess it tells us where the world is now. Speaking of novels that I pretty much ignore, Joseph Wechberg has The Self-Betrayed and Elizabeth Hardwick has The Simple Truth, both literary novels, although the second one is about the intimate murder of a co-ed, and is a bit sensational. Periscoping Books predicts the publication of The Assassins, by Robert J. Donovan, the second volume of The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud, and a second novel from Norman Mailer, The Deer Park.
Raymond Moley uses Perspectives to suggest that Richard Nixon isn't a nasty piece of work, but rather a typical politician who uses "hard bitten" tactics like attacking his opponents just like Democrats.
News Digest reports that Air Force B-57s have been grounded after two recent crashes, nd that a General Mills Autofab will go to IBM to produce 20 printed circuits a minute for the large digital air defence computer. Industry Observer reports that the F-104 will be much faster than current fighters, that Beech Aircraft is getting into missiles, that North American is using about 700lbs of titanium in the F-100, that "family of tactical missiles developed for the Army has been obsoleted by rapid engineering developments in atom bomb design," that the army is developing the Redstone as a "tactical ballistic missile," that Bell's HSL helicopter is reportedly getting engineering fixes for its "bugs," that Okanagan Helicopters has 23 machines, making it one of the largest fleets in the world, that Anderson, Greenwood, and Company have a Defence Department contract for a jet-assisted projectile, that the NRL is developing a deck launched version of the Viking missile for high latitude test flights, that Bristol Aircraft will get RAF contracts for the Britannia, including three of the 250LR models to be built in Belfast. Washington Roundup reports that Congress is tired of executive meddling in aviation matters, that press reports about the similarity between the Hunter's problems and the F-100s are worrying to the Air Force, because they are wrong, that Congress thinks that the Defence Department is using "security" to hide cock-ups, that Sinclair Weeks is fighting with White House assistant Charles Willis over the latest Pan Am imbroglio, that the AEC still supports industrial dispersal. A later story covers Navy Secretary Charles Thomas's testimony to Representative Edward Hebert's closed session House Armed Services Investigating Committee hearing on the failures of the Navy's chosen jet engine programmes, which are why the Navy has been short of planes since Korea.) Aviation Week reports on the USAF's latest plan for airline-supported global airlift capability, that the Alaska Airlift Command is slashing costs with higher efficiencies, that Secretary Wilson is forming a jet study group to find out what's happening with jet engines, that the Comet verdict upholds previous RAE findings, that Sucase is taking over Breguet and that the Bell XV-3 exists. Bell has won the Army's new utility helicopter contract and Link has a contract for a new pilot trainer from Flight Safety, Inc., an independent pilot training company.
Convair reports for Production Engineering that "Automatic Riveting Shaves Tolerances" Actually, riveting tolerances have been reduced for the upcoming B-58, and Convair has had to meet those tolerances with a new riveting set up combining "automatic and semi-automatic processes." This is not a story about new riveting methods, but about the production lines that Convair has set up to use them to meet production targets, and a US group for supporting Japan wants the U.S. to order 280 jet planes assembled in Japan before it goes Red, or at least makes trouble over U.S. bases.
Thrust and Drag notes that we still have a lot to learn about how a pilot might get out of a plane that is auguring in, and here is a first-hand account by an RAF pilot who escaped a Canberra.
IAS Summaries four papers on supersonic problems, four on aerodynamics, one structural (on designing swept wings), one on stability, two on aircraft design, and two on meteorology.
Letters has letters from Robert Fleming of Allison and Bruce F. Grimm of Electro-Circuits. The first likes the article about Alison turboprops, the second objects to an article painting the CAA's accident investigation efforts in a good light, while H. J. Colt Pearson is beside himself with anger at what he sees as Captain Robson's hit job on the slopeline landing system. Hugh G. Robbins, who is in the light plane business, finds proposals to extend IFR rules around busy airports to be yet another example of the "compulsory state." Hillyer's really appreciated the favourable mention of Hillyer Radar Test Sets. Follows a pictorial celebrating Sikorski helicopters.
The lead article in Avionics gives Philip Klass a byline, so that's nice for Philip, but it's about a shock absorber. (Damping mounting). Barry Controls is making it to Air Force specifications and hopes to sell it for jet aircraft and missiles, but it's a vibration dampener. And it's FIVE admittedly mostly single column pages! Sylvania's announcement of a company-wide data processing centre with its own UNIVAC gets a single paragraph at the bottom of the fifth column. At least it's less vapid than Micro Switch's proud announcement that it has more microswitches. It's actually news in that they meet new Defence specifications, but seriously. Filter Centre reports that GE's "Scalloped Beam Amplifier" is a novel microwave amplifier, while Boeing's new yaw dampener for the B-52 uses neither gyros nor accelerometers. In a paper given to the Wright Air Development Centre, Dunstan Graham and Richard Lath find that crosstalk between azimuth and elevation control signals limits the accuracy of current automatic GCA. Westinghouse has a new ac/dc chopper, the Professional Group of Aeronautical and Navigational Electronics session at the Waldorf-Astoria is hearing papers on communication theory, gyros, computers and a new light aircraft navigational system. American Time Products has announced a new transistorised frequency standard, which actually means a device to set that standard .
George L. Christian reports for Equipment that Capital is getting ready to receive its Viscounts, and is looking at engine brakes and oil consumption. The former seem to be needed, the latter is very low. Capital Viscounts use mostly American equipment in the cockpit but are keeping Marconi radios because of the flush antennae. New Aviation Products reports that the Skyhawk oxygen regulator is from Scott-Firewel and is very light, that the CAA has approved the Blink-R flashing light installed on the latest Cessnas, and that Fenway Machinery's new light-duty Nibbler cuts through 18 gauge steel. Also On the Market us expanding in a disturbing way, but if certain makers of solder, tachometers, and variable hydraulic pumps want coverage here, they can pay to get their tiny-winy advertorials above the fold.
Captain Robson's Cockpit Viewpoint is on about air traffic control and runway management. Robert Hotz's Editorial has a series of short entries all focussed on engine development programmes in the light of Wilson's testimony about the collapse of the Navy programme. It certainly is an interesting point that half of the American engine building programmes have apparently collapsed while all four British builders have competitive products on the market, some being built in Britain. Holtz's suggestion that there isn't enough competition in the United States is hard to take seriously, and pointing to the Air Corps decision to abandon air-cooled motors before the war, which was not a problem because the Navy continued to develop them, is just about meaningless when no such decision was made in the U.S.
Letters
Hubert Arndt of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, isn't impressed by Carl Sandburg, but H. O. Metcalfe of Marfa, Texas, is. Five letters on the recent article about the revival of humanistic studies. (Medieval philosophy and theology, that is.) Robert K. Osborne confuses Kathleen Wilkinson for another "Dolores" in show business, Nordine Lattimore, who made the mistake of not marrying a rich man of a certain persuasion and died at 40 of being poor. For Your Information reports that various Newsweek editors and correspondents have travelled to various places.
"Lamplight" is the seaward extension of SAGE with radar pickets.
The Periscope reports that the National Security Council has agreed to fight if the Reds attack Matsu or Quemoy, but only after much soul-searching, that reliable sources say that the Soviets will remain in their Port Arthur naval base in spite of their agreement with Mao that they will leave by 31 May. "High official" at State think that the French are bribing Iraqi officials to not join the CENTO alliance. Ike continues to make nice with Marshal Zhukov. The White House is afraid that house building is running too far ahead of the family formation rate and that the boom will collapse soon. "The whispered readon behind much of the opposition to Eisenhower's reserve programme is race discrimination." Southern National Guard units are segregated. "The Navy has just made a historic scientific breakthrough in the underwater detection of submarines. Details of the operation, code-named 'Lamplight," are quite properly still secret . . . " It is supposed to be radar, but for submerged submarines. Curtiss-Wright has developed the first American throttleable rocket engine. "It's not generally realised how fast guided-missile batteries are springing up around the U.S." Communist Romania tried to kidnap Georges Enesco by offering him some money and the release of his grand-daughter from prison, but fortunately French police intervened to stop Communism in its tracks. Communism also has an alarming radio station in Tokyo. Rumour in Moscow is that Malenkov is seriously ill and will probably die soon and very conveniently. Air Force Intelligence believes that it can knock out Red China's entire war industry with a modest conventional bombing campaign. Russia is keen to sign a permanent peace treaty with Japan to formalise its control of the Kurile Islands. Aristotle Onassis is withholding the knowledge that his new tankers won't be able to transit the Suez Canal fully loaded. I guess the cat's out of the bag now! Falling coffee prices probably mean a Brazilian coup is imminent. Lisbon is full of Red spies trying to get into Spain to look at the new U.S. air bases there. Where They Are Now reports that novelist Michael Arlen doesn't mind that he's not famous any more, because he got rich in the Twenties and is living the good life, unlike Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, who is hiding from the world on his 500-acre plantation in Georgia.
The Periscope Washington Trends reports that the Administration is still working on getting its reciprocal trade bill through with the South becoming increasingly more protectionist even as the Republicans gain strength there. Democrats are worried about that, but happy about Neuberger's win in Oregon. They believe that irrigation and reclamation are key to winning more Congressional seats on the West Coast and in the Rocky Mountain states. Speaking of which, statehood for Hawaii and Alaska still might be on the table in this session, and the Administration is set to make nice with India because it is the country of the future.
National Affairs
Like Iron Man, but with radioactive cobalt. Scary stuff when you're twelve. Also a lot easier to find than the Tom and Jerry (?) with unmanned guided missile sites just sitting around with "In case of war, pull lever" sign. I had no idea t hat was a real thing! More or less.
"To Live --Or Die-- With It" Apparently, the AEC, Lewis Strauss, and the Federal Civil Defence Administration wanted to tell the world just how dangerous H-bombs were right after the Lucky Dragon was irradiated by fallout from Eniwetok, and it was the State Department that said no, because "Western Europe wasn't capable of facing the truth." But since regular scientists are perfectly capable of working these things out for themselves, it turned out to be futile. The AEC now reports that the Eniwetok blast contaminated an area 220 statute miles downwind and 40 miles wide at the widest part, or 7000 square miles in which anyone who did not take cover was likely to die, and food and water were contaminated. There is no conclusive evidence for assessing the genetic impact of the fallout. And even as this is digested, people are talking about the "C-bomb," a hydrogen bomb with a cobalt casing "that could make today's H-bomb look like a firecracker." The United States won't build a cobalt bomb, it says here, unless the Reds build one first. That's reassuring. Also, the latest word on US civil defence is that it is a "farce," and the latest tests at Yucca Flat have drafted in more troops to observe a mere A-bomb detonation.
Recent polling says that Eisenhower is up 57 to 40 against Stevenson, 60 to 34 against Kefauver, and that Stevenson polls 56 against Nixon at 35%, although it's moot because everyone agrees that it Eisenhower is going to run in '56. The major party conventions will be in August this year instead of the traditional July because TV and air travel makes for faster campaigns, and the Republicans are holding their convention in San Francisco not because they are worried about the anti-Ike faction of Midwestern Republicans disrupting a convention in the TV-friendly Central Time Zone, but because the West is in play this year. Wayne Morse has registered as a Democrat, but the Oregon GOP is hopeful that they can sweep Morse out of the Senate with a strong candidate. A Chicago schoolteacher named Ida Mighell is a sensation because when she died at 86 early this year, she left a fortune of $1.3 million due to good investments. National news! (Eighteen nephews and nieces get a half million, the rest goes to charity.) a profile of Oveta Culp Hobby establishes that she is great even though some people criticise her.
Ann Corio was being actively tapped when the police broke in, as part of a blackmail ring, and she is photogenic, so here's a picture of the famed burlesque artist from the linked IEEE Spectrum article.
"Tapped-Phone Mystery" The NYPD busted a phone tapping station at 360 55 E in Manhattan, acting on a tip, last week, finding "several men and women" actively listening to five conversations, although a cable capable of carrying 100 calls simultaneously was found connecting the nest to a telephone exchange serving 56,000 numbers, any of which could have been tapped. The question of the last week was who was paying for this, why it took a week for the story to break, and why it came out of the New York City Anti-Crime Committee, with even the DA not being told.
The Rotary Club gets a box story this week. March is expected to be cold and blowy, and Youth: "Get Tough With Us" rounds up stories about teenagers in LA and Detroit who killed babies, two in Macomb, Illinois, charged in a "hot rodding" incident that killed two girls and put eight others in hospital, and a sixteen-year-old girl who conspired with her boyfriend to murder her mother, plus word from the New York City Youth Board and the Gilbert Youth Research group to the effec tthat we're just not punishing teenagers hard enough. However, noted psychiatrist Dr. William Menninger told a Milwaukee audience of 2000 to relax, because kids will be kids. Americana: Right to Protest reports on some insane people doing violent things in colourful ways.
Ernest K. Lindley's Washington Tides this week is "Memo to 10 Downing Street." The memo is that the British seem to be straying from the correct path of supporting the Koumintang, and better cut it out before they encourage the Reds into taking over the world.
International
It is suggested that if the Koumintang have to evacuate just one more island, their will to fight will collapse and they'll all go Red, and there will be an "incalculable chain reaction bound to follow all the way from Japan to the Middle East." Britain says tosh, pull the garrisons from Quemoy and Matsu and be done with it, but they're wrong. But anyway it's a sideshow because the Japanese elections are sure to have Japan falling under Russia's sphere of influence, the next logical step, of course, for a country whose foreign trade depends on all the countries that aren't Russia. Meanwhile China is in charge of subverting Southeast Asia, where everyone loves China, and Thailand is sure to go next. Also the island of Nanki is the next to be threatened. The latest idea for getting our "eleven" fliers out of China (as opposed to "thirteen," as it sometimes is, depending on whether we're lumping Air Force with CIA) is to exchange them for seven Chinese citizens who have been held in Manila for several months after being rescued by American air rescue planes, with the British envoy in Peking and Secretary General Hammarskjöld to convey the offer. The French want us to exempt French owned mines and textile mills in North Vietnam from sanctions, on which condition the Viet Minh will let them keep a share, but the United States is tired of such tomfoolery, which is undermining Diem in the South.
"A Weapon to Destroy, A Weapon to Build" The British got upset when we tested an H-bomb, but now they're building one of their own because, they say, they figured out the secret on their own, and why not? What hypocrites they are! Also, they now have a ten year plan to build nuclear power stations for peace. The experimental Calder Hall station, will have a 50,000kWh capacity, but the next twelve will have a total capacity of 1.5 million to 2 million kWh against a total current installed capacity of 20 million kWh. The plants will replace 6 million tons of coal per year and hopefully build an export expertise. This is in contrast to current U.S. plans for just two stations, with the New York ConEd plant planned as a 125,000kWh plant. Egypt and Iraq are fighting over the CENTO alliance between Turkey and Iraq. David Ben Gurion has returned to the Israeli cabinet as Defence Minister, possibly with the aim of returning to the premier's office. Rumanian anti-communists invaded the Rumanian legation in Bern this week, killing a chauffeur and taking a diplomat's family hostage for several hours and the embassy overnight, until they surrendered to the Swiss police. An upper class Englishman who joined the Foreign Legion on a lark and then deserted after two weeks is a worldwide story, because that never happened before! Christian Pineau and then Edgar Faure have been asked to form a cabinet in France, but that's an important sentence you can summarise in a sentence and we need a paragraph, so we throw in some stereotypical French stuff to round it out. Iraq gets a profile and a neat map of pipeline, dam, and reservoir projects. Princess Margaret is still in the Caribbean and still not making trouble. Richard Nixon visited Guatemala because it is his kind of country, where he skilfully avoided promising to reward the Guatemalans for being a good bunch of anti-Communists. notwithstanding the slip in coffee prices which has blown a twenty million dollar hole in the country's $66 million budget, which is something of a comment on how much tax Dole pays for all that pineapple land!
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that Britain and Germany are booming, France is making steady gains, and Italy is a puzzle with a growing economy but a chronic unemployment problem. Canadian Pacific's plan to launch a polar service from Vancouver to Amsterdam is reported. Midwest Congressmen want the St. Lawrence Seaway extended to Duluth from its current end point of Toledo. It would cost an estimated $109 million and has the backing of the Corps of Engineers.
The lead Business story looks at positive signs on employment.
"Clock Watcher" IBM's Central Control System is a timer which can control a variety of office, store, and school functions, such as turning a neon sign on and off at regular times, switch on air conditioning, ovens, and opening buzzers, and will cost as little as a thousand dollars. ATT is issuing some stock, De Beers isn't worried about artificial diamonds, and the Textron merger has gone through. Pay TV plans get a big story and a box interview with Zenith president Eugene F. MacDonald. Idlewild is getting a massive new terminal development. Notes: Week in Business reports that GM and Chrysler sales are at record highs, and the Southern Pacific is building an 800 mile pipeline into LA. (If that seems a bit slim, there is some merger and financial news in the section, too.) Products: What's New reports a Dow Corning product called Syflex, a silicon-treated leather for damp-proof shoes, and an adhesive strip typewriter key cleaner that you attach to the roll. Set the typewriter to "stencil," and it cleans as you type. Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides has "Truth Must Be Repeated, which notes how hard it has been for the President to defend Dixon-Yates against what he charmingly calls "the fanatic devotees of socialised electric power" and goes on to explain how capitalism must make a global propaganda effort against all that Communist criticism, only not paid for by the taxpayer, which would be socialism. Instead, we'll just write columns in Newsweek about how awful Communism is, because of freedom.
Science, Medicine, Education
"Bridge of Empire" The occasion of Victor W. von Hagen's presentation this week to the American Geographical Society on Incan roads and even a surviving road suspension bridge lets Newsweek report on the Inca bridge over the Apurimac River that was not the inspiration for Thornton Wilder's Bridge of San Luis Rey, because Wilder never heard of it, but which sure made an impression on Newsweek, and rightly so! I suppose at some point there will be a book and we can all learn more about Incan roads and rope bridges.
"The Tell-tale Hand" Most people think that graphology, the analysis of personality by handwriting, is complete bunk. But graphologists don't, and one of them, Captain William Perl of Fort Leavenworth Barracks, has an article in the current American Journal of Psychiatry to prove same. I'd go on at length but I think it's bunk.
The oldest U.S. Land Grant colleges just celebrated their first century. 18% of U.S. college students are enrolled at land grant institutions, which grant 20% of degrees, and Michigan State gets a profile, focussing on President John Hannah's ambitious building programme to meet the expected doubling in the student body by 1970.
I find no mention of underwater archaeology targeting the Syracuse Expedition
Art, TV-Radio, Press, Newsmakers
Arts has no painters or sculptors this week, but it does have a Periscope section, so in the interest of our ongoing investigation into the accuracy of the section, I'll note stories about an upcoming Tennessee Williams play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, rehearsals for a dramatic version of The Diary of Anne Frank, and plans for the San Francisco Opera to present its "first Negro star, Mattiwilda Dobbs," this October.
TV-Radio has a breaking story about how hard it is to film commercials sometimes, and a Periscope section reporting that Jim Backus and Zsa Zsa Gabor might have a show next season, Just Plain Folks, that Life Can Be Beautiful might turn up on TV, that CBS will give Joel Grey a half-hour sitcom as a summer replacement, that Harry Belafonte will get a TV film series, Belafonte Performs, where he will "stick to folk music," and none of that disturbing calypso stuff!
Periscope is wrong on every single TV-Radio story, but it's right that calypso can make people of a certain age remembering how to "feel ways about stuff."
The National Press Club has just settled down over the fight to led a Negro in, and now women want in, too! Press Club President Lucien Warren decided that this was a good time to set himself on fire in public, and said to actual reporters that "[t]his is the silly season in Washington."
Tallulah Bankhead, Gordon Gray, the Westminster Kennel Club, Anthony Wedgewood Benn (yes, as in the chinaware), Art Buchwald, the mayor of Florence (Italy), and the Old North Church in Boston are in the news for the usual reason. Billy Graham is in it for the $133,000 publicity budget for his current Scottish campaign, and the Athenian fleet that was sunk at Syracuse more than two thousand years ago is in it because it is going to be dredged up. John W. Galbraith is married, the Baroness de Marigny has had a baby, Barbara Hutton is divorcing, as is Carol Ann Beery. Charles Maginnis, James R. Downes, S. F. Telleen, and Peter Jarman have died.
Life and Leisure checks out that traditional middle class American pastime, African safaris.
The New Films has Cinerama Holiday, a big-screen advertisement for same and about as much fun as any commercial, a Rank Organisation film, Chance Meeting, which is a romantic melodrama and not a comedy about eccentric British people or a shocking horror movie, and therefore boring British stuff, but then this sceptred isle came to its senses and churned out Doctor in the House, whose appeal is lost on Newsweek, but not anyone else. The Wages of Fear is a French Western, only set in Central America, involving drivers with loads of sweating nitroglycerine headed from the port to an oil field with much tension and drama. Newsweek is completely unimpressed with Crashout, an independent production with William Bendix somehow cast.
Books
Newsweek's book column is the one place, besides pictures, where the magazine bieats out Time, mainly because it doesn't try so hard to be middlebrow. But the magazine can't irnore Walter Lippman's The Public Philosophy, because it really likes Lippman, whereas everyone else thinks that he's past it. John Marquand's Siuncerely, Willy Wayne, is a serious novel, while Geoffrey Hoare's The Missing Macleans tells the story of Red spy Donald MacLean and his wife, Melinda, who went to Moscow to reunite the family.
Aviation Week, 28 February 1955
News Digest reports that the USAF's version of the turbo-Super-Constellation, the YC-121F, will be flying by March, as the USN's already is. TWA's lost 4-0-4 (as of the 19th) was found on a 500ft peak that juts up from a 9000ft New Mexico ridge. "all sixteen aboard were killed." Lear has a new automatic flap system. Associated Missile Products Corporation is a new guided missile company. Order your guided missile today! Bell is making 16 HTL-6 helicopters with flotation skids for the USN. Ark Royal commissions this month, with mirror sight, angled deck, and two steam catapults. Sabena has found its missing DC-6 (as of 21 February) on a mountain 60 miles northeast of Rome. The first Vulcan is in flight testing while the first Valiants are almost operational. Industry Observer reports that Lockheed is planning a long range version of its F-104, the first Hurel-Dubois HD-32s will deliver early next year, flight testing of the Convair R3Y-1 continues, the British will commence testing of a new pilotless rocket bomber prototype at Woomera in three months. The sharply swept back missile has a 500 mile range. The Sikorsky HSS was recently grounded for 3 weeks by tail rotor problems. Engineering pilots are not impressed with supersonic bailout provisions. Lockheed is getting "revolutionary" new milling machines from CNC that slice and dice. The next versiono of the F-89 will carry the Falcon air-to-air missile, which is even better than its previous air-to-air rocket salvo. RAE is building a windtunnel good to Mach 9, while Pratt & Whitney is delivering a version of the J57 with 11,000lbs no afterburner and the 15,000lb GE J75 is approaching testing. Washington Roundup reports that Congress is fighting about Pan Am again (Braniff and Mexican routes this time), that the services are still arguing about the 1955 National Aircraft Show, that the trans-Atlantic mail case is far from settled.
You can hike to a small memorial site to Flight 260 in the Sandia Mountains. The initial CAB report was read as implying a suicide pact between the pilot and First Officer.
Aviation Week reports that something about the Navy's transport aircraft leaseback plan is very attractive to all the airlines who didn't get a cut the first time around, and the Navy has grounded its Lockheed R7V-1s, because they keep crashing, probably because the Wright Turbocompound's power train is far too ambitious. Industrial dispersal might be on again, although contract dispersal isn't, as Western Electric gets the "radar fence" contract. (It's good to call it "Western Electric" because no-one will remember that's another name for Bell.)
Claude Wilson reports from Alaska on "How USAF Tests Planes in Arctic," while the Navy has adopted a version of the Air Force plan to expand development time to reduce the number of necessary field changes after planes enter operational service. David Anderton reports for Aeronautical Engineering that "Engineers Probe Barriers to IBM Flight." Better than just throwing an H-bomb on a rocket and letting her rip, I suppose. Despite the length of the article, it is still the same stuff: Missiles get hot, they're hard to aim, and fuelling presents all kinds of problems. At least this is better than the next article, which is about the cradle being used to cart the R3Y around, since it can't move on the ground or water by itself, and, worse, turboprops tend to roll along on their own when the engine starts idling. I'm sure it is going to be a great LCT. Let's all take a minute to remember Grace going on about the time she had to disembark from a flying boat into a motorboat into foggy, choppy waters in the middle of San Francisco Bay.
IAS Summaries is like that prairie dog you didn't shoot the last time it popped up in the garden. No shotguns last week means that it is welcome, and it's back! Four papers on noise, two on aeroelasticity, two on propulsion, two on meteorology. Production has Irving Stone putting a gloss on a Pastushin Aviation brochure about how it makes its Fiberglas drop tanks, which is a revolutionary process compared to all the other companies that make Fiberglas drop tanks. What did Irving Stone do to deserve this assignment? Also, most of what the article is about is still a proprietary secret, so there's nothing in the article about the article! Philip Klass writes for Avionics that "New Low-Cost ADF Aids Small Airports." Olympic Radio and Television's automatic radio direction finder is cheap and the Army's interested, Olympic says. Levinthal Electronics Products reports that some of its new products are quite small and rugged, so they should go in planes just great. Four different companies have power supply units that are quite small and rugged, so . . . Color Television of San Carlos, California, has six flush microwave antennae that are etc., etc. Filter Centre reports that some airlines are interested in a single-axis autopilot for their DC7s that might be better than the Sperry they use now. Belgium has bought VOR, Panagra has started installing weather radars in its D6Bs, GE has a new high temperature wire, and Electrodata machines are catalogued in a 72p publication on "Devices Useful in Automatic Data Reduction," prepared for the USAF by the Armour Research Foundation. Some column space is taken up at the bottom by a small print summary of some recent advertorials published in Aviation.
Wm. R. Whittaker Corporation of Los Angeles reports for Equipment that "New Valve Cuts Replacement Time 99%." The Douglas C-133 turboprop will have 24. Also, GE has unveiled some new jet accessories at a show, and at this point New Aviation Products STARTS with a portable muffler for tests, an electric gage "that makes oxygen testing easier," a "continuous strip camera for supersonic recon," a dustless blast cleaner, a teststand fuel flowmeter, a time delay relay, and a pressure measuring adaptor with its own cooling jacket from Dynamic Instrument Company, which is the only company to get a manufacturer's credit this wek because it's actually interesting.
Air Transport has more about the $60 million, 655 acre Idlewild terminal plan, which really is worthy of New York!
George Wigg, later a Labour Peer. No-one liked him. The AIM-4, which, contrary to reports, has not entered service yet, will be a year ahead of the de Havilland Firestreak.
Robert Holtz's Editorial looks at "Security: Genuine vs. Phony Brands." It's about how "George Edward Cecil Wigg," which is apparently a real name, is a Labour Party MP who served in WWI and WWII, which if you can't keep up with things, is a BAD thing here, in that he is pretending to be a veteran in Parliament on no stronger grounds than being a veteran (1918--37, re-enlisted 1940) when his last post was with the Army Educational Corps. GEC Wigg has been complaining about lapses in British military security in Parliament, but actually he is just quoting various news stories that are, or should be, in the public record. This is an example of bad security and incidentally shows that Britain is lagging behind in air-to-air missiles, which is also bad.
So what's up in The Engineer for 18 and 25 February 1955?
(Not the Seven Day-) Journal --they need a name for this section if they're not ogoing to use the old one!-- for the 18th reports the first factory in a New Town, parties thrown by the Power Farmers and the control apparatus industries or lobbies, reports by the FBI on "United Nations Technical Assistance" and from the agricultural engineers, and Royal Society of Arts prizes. On the 25th, the IME and the Association of Consulting Engineers throw parties, and reports on the Iron and Steel Development Programme, the North of Scotland Hydroelectric Board, and the Chamber of Shipping are released. We hear about landslips along the "white cliffs" near Folkstone, which turn out to be natural and not caused by rail work at all. They can be predicted and contained, and recently works of that nature have proven effective.
L. R. Blake reports on the 18th on a "High Power Spark Erosion Machine" from BTH that is better than the old ones, which naturally warrants a four page article. In the same week, "Railway Engineering Prospects No. 1" is occasioned by the new ten year railway plan. Railways are modern now! Part 2 looks at traction, discussing first electrification and second the changeover from steam to anything but steam. We get a review of electrification in Britain over the previous fifty years to counter the impression that British railways have neglected foreign innovation. The main cause of slow electrification, it turns out, is the cancellation or delay of plans made before 1914 due to the war. There are many good candidate routes for electrification in Britain, and with atomic power available, the question of coal is no longer an issue. This brings us to non-steam locomotives. Diesel-electrics have yet to prove themselves reliable at the tempo of British operations and the experimental gas turbines are even worse. Better mechanics, particularly transmissions, would seem to be the solution. In the same spirit as the Blake "article," C. Timms gives us "Automatic Indexing Machine for Measuring Gear Tooth Pitch Errors," which is an old NPL machine converted to automatic operation, and, on the 25th, Joshua Bigwood and Sons gives us "800-ton Plate Stretching Machine," which is about same, built at the works for a customer in Norway, the largest such machine in Europe right now, it is understood. In spite of the long article, t here's not much to say about it, the machine is going to its spiritual home, because it is big, good-natured, and dumb. (And possibly blond!) J. A. Tracy describes "Electronic Tracer Control of Machine Tools" on the 25th. How, exactly, you "trace" a model with a lathe has some mechanically interesting details, and the math behind the three-dimensional tracing control must be very impressive, even if it is not described.
Also on the 18th, we have "Electronic Digital Computers, No.1" This first installment describes the Elliott Brothers 402, which might be cheap enough for your business. No. 2 looks at the English Electric "Deuce," a fully engineered version of its ACE, built for the NPL. One Deuce has so far been sold, to a computing service in Sheffield. A brief description talks about "programming" with a high level of generality, but gets more interesting as it gets into the engineering.
Three on official business on the 18th: "Report on the 'Comet' Accidents, No. 1," and "HMS Ark Royal," by Our Naval Correspondent. The "Report" probably doesn't need more space here than the Comet inquiry has already got, but Ark Royal, a decade in the building and arriving just as the Leader of the Opposition asks whether Britain needs aircraft carriers at all, is interesting. The article explains why Ark Royal is considered adequate when it is so much smaller than Forrestal, which is because it is not supposed to carry medium and heavy bombers for attacks on inland targets. (guns are not neglected on the 25th, with "British Sub-Machine Gun," a description of the Stirling Gun that replaces the Sten.) Finally, Claude Gibb, "Investigation into the Failure of Two 100 mW Turbo-Generators, No. 1" looks at a little oopsie that Ontario Hydro had recently.
By Original photographs by an unidentified US Naval History and Heritage Command photographer, collage by User:Dvaderv2 - https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/artifacts/ arms-and-ordnance/small-arms/automatic-weapons/ british-sterling-submachine-gun.html, Public Domain, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152179513
Leaders for the 18th looks at the nuclear power programme, which addresses the fact that Britain will need to lift an additional 100 million tons of coal a year in twenty years to keep up with grown electrical demand, and this is impossible. With the nuclear programme, demand for coal for electrical power will level off at 60 to 70 million tons by the Sixties, and then possibly begin to fall. Sir Christopher Hinton has estimated, in a paper given to the IME, that nuclear power is likely to cost a penny per unit, far more than for coal, although the White Paper uses a lower 0.6d per unit number, the difference being perhaps reconcilable by technological progress, and the plants can be used to produce plutonium for "Government use" and for burning in fast reactors, which will reduce costs. The Leader is actually longer than the government statement that follows later. It also takes on "Unnecessary Secrecy" in the same terms as Aviation Week. British official secrecy may be more about how far behind Britain is the United States in guided missiles, and how vulnerable it is to Soviet air attack. Leaders for the 25th look at stress, fatigue, and failure, in the news thanks to the Comet report and the Toronto alternator failures, which were also stress failures, probably due to their being forged piece-wise by 4000t presses rather than the unavailable 12,000t presses that would have eliminated areas of built-up stress. (The IME discussion session after Gibbs' paper appears below the fold on the 25th.)
Literature and Letters return on the 25th, with a review of Shepherd Powell's Water Conditioning for Industry and a letter from T. A. Crowe of North British Locomotive explaining that once all locomotives are built by industry, railway workshops will have more than enough to do maintaining them, since turnover at the shops is on the order of 10%, allowing the work force to be painlessly reduced.
"Smoke Plumes and Gas Washing" The IME had a session on the same, and the discussion is reported on the 18th. Gas washing is not the solution to air pollution by coal-fired power stations. Another reason for atomic power! However, tall chimneys might be. The 18th also sees the second part of The Engineer's visit to an alarm clock factory. There are lots of pictures of women working at very impressive looking machine tools and assembly lines. Alarm clocks have to be pretty precise! Another paper, reported on the 25th, had Dr. N. P. Allen reporting on "Ferritic Steel at Low Temperatures" to the Institute of Refrigeration.
"Wind Tunnel Developments No. 1" runs on the 18th. It has more details about the RAE's new supersonic wind tunnels, and No. 2 concludes it on the 25th, with a short discussion that blends in my reading with all the other wind tunnel descriptions I have skimmed over the last ten years. A. D. Baxter, "Prospects and Problems of Rocket Propulsion for Aircraft" looks at one field of application for the new tunnels. Baxter explains the rocket equation, looks at some fuel efficiencies, projects some engine weights, and draws no particular conclusions.
"Pressure Tunnel in London Clay" The deep, clay soil underneath London is fascinating for archaeologists, civil engineers and those who traffic in grand historical explanation (the "Anglo-Saxon invasion" was actually the invasion of iron ploughshares that could cultivate the clay soils of the east coast river valleys!). The Metropolitan Water Board's experience with the Ashford Common tunnel wasn't very historical, but it will interest civil engineers.
Advertorials for a bottled fruit juice factory that can be exported entire, a "particle size distribution analyser," some "Glazing Bar Cleaning and Painting Machines," and an "automatic oil burner," along with notice of the upcoming International Water Supply Congress and a precis of a paper on "Investigation of Factors Contributing to the Failure of Diesel Engine Piston and Cylinder Covers" (Hot spots. It's mainly hot spots) given to the North-East Coast Institute of Engineers and Shipbuilders take us to the American Section on the 25th.
American Section visits the "Restoration of the Saugus Ironworks in Massachusetts" on the 18th. The ironworks in question opened in 1646, and is 10 miles north of Boston. Built under the aegis of John Winthrop, Junior, and Richard Leader, it was funded in London, had a blast furnace, and is a very worthy historical project. A "Turbine-Driven High Speed Dental Handpiece" is described for the masochists among us, and the tunnelling machine being used by the Corps of Engineers to build a spillway for the Oahe Dam in South Dakota. On the 25th it is mainly devoted to "Fabrication of High-Permeability Magnetic Materials," although there are reports on the Allis-Chambers turbine explosion at the Ridgeland Power Station in Illinois last December and a precis of a 208 page report on "Elevated Temperature Properties of High Strength Alloys" at the end. The Ridgeland explosion killed two and took 18% of Commonwealth Edison capacity out of service, and the ASTM report has many charts and graphs to prevent future such accidents. Thinner tapes and better windings of new "permalloys" in place of silicon steels promise improvements in electrical equipment of all kinds.
By Wolfgang Fricke - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102485461
Launches and Trial Trips for the 18th has four motor ships, one steamer, including a cargo ship, tramp, trawler, and tanker in the first category and a cross-Channel steamer in the second. Only one British-built ship, the MV Warringa cargo liner appears with four European-built ships in the feature for the 25th. (In which issue's Industrial and Labour Notes are some all-too-brief comments on the European market for iron and steel. If Britain doesn't want to be in the United States of Europe, it seems like a good idea to join the ECSC!
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