Postblogging Technology, April 1955, II: Streaming and Peppermint Bombs

Fortune is going to get you Philistines into abstract art even if it takes another
25 years

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

The much predicted election is upon us. I cannot see "my" side winning, but I have to confess to some trepidation about the nation's choice this time around that goes beyond the partisanship of us wooly-minded young progressives. Anthony Eden is not, quite frankly, in his right mind. I expect the cabinet to restrain him, but I am also worried that he will run right over the men I am depending upon. Rab Butler hasn't the strength of character to stand up to Eden, and MacMillan is too deferential. If Eden hits on some disastrous policy that appeals to the 1923 Committee types, what is there left? 

Or I could just relax and enjoy the optimism of this new Elizabethan Age. (Except, yikes, inflation!)

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Newsweek, 18 November 1955

No Polaroid of a beautiful Newsweek cover photograph this week. Blame the GPO!

Letters

Senator Neely was 81 in 1955. The U.S. Senate, everybody!

The UAW is going to strike GM over guaranteed annual wage instead of Ford because it would be a public relations disaster if Charlie Wilson ordered them back to work over defence contracts. Ike is going to turn over the Joint Chiefs of Staff because he's tired of the Air Force and Navy going behind his back to leak "Let's start WWIII stories." Newsweek thinks the most important thread to unpick in that whole ball of yarn is the leaking, by the way, not the insubordination or the attempted-world-ending. Speaking of insanity in Washington, the Bricker Amendment might come back to the Senate floor. Democrats are going to lay off the President for a month or so because Senator Neely's attack on his religion and an attempt "to portray him as a squirrel hater" went over poorly.

 

Some 25 Democratic Senators are pushing Hubert Humphrey to run for the nomination in '56. Parents and draft-age sons will be glad to hear that the Selective Service call-up is going to be held at 10,000 per month through December. Congress is getting upset that more hasn't been done to protect them from shootings like the ones last year. More tightening is expected from the Federal Reserve. "Atomic scientists" are looking in to "seeding" radioactive particles into the jet stream in Europe so that they out over Russia. The first squadron of B-36-carried "parasite" fighters will be activated at Great Falls AFB soon. "Insiders report that most of Defence Secretary

Wilson's troubles with the press spring from his failure to listen to his staff." Insiders expect Anthony Eden to fire Harold Macmillan as Foreign Minister as soon as he can get away with it. "Canada is getting ready to blow the lid off the Indo-China truce." The long vacancy in the ambassadorship to Thailand can only help the Reds! Turkey and Egypt are really, really mad at each other over the Baghdad Pact. The U.S. Navy is building Terrier anti-aircraft missile batteries around Cadiz and Cartagena. Red China is leading to more heroin addicts, somehow. A new Soviet six-engine bomber with four jet engines and two conventional ones crashed on takeoff "27 miles west" of Moscow. Where Are They Now reports that Mrs. Mussolini is living quietly on Ischia, as is Ivy Low, otherwise the Widow Litvinov. I mean, not in Ischia. In Moscow.  

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that the civil war in southern Indo-China between Premier Diem's forces and the sects is turning into as big a crisis as Quemoy/Matsu. The French have been saying that Diem's  not the man for a while now, and now General Collins is reported to agree. "It is now known" that the Administration contributed to Malenkov's fall by insulting and ignoring him, and this was deliberate because Communism is bad, but now people are airing dirty laundry to the effect that maybe he wasn't that bad and we should have been nicer to him.  

National Affairs

Corsi, an immigrant himself, was an immigration guy. The NYT
 obituary blames Dulles for the firing. 

The major controversy of the week is over whether Americans support intervention to defend Quemoy and Matsu. Just to be clear, the controversy isn't over whether they support intervention. They overwhelmingly don't. The controversy is over whether they should, c'mon, let's go, let's do this, c'mon! Bill Knowland says we should! The President isn't just out playing golf. He's also tipping his caddy, redecorating the White House, and signing some papers John Foster Dulles brought him to sign. General Ridgeway says we shouldn't be cutting the armed forces by 270,000 men and the defence budget down to $34 billion if we're going to have  war over Quemoy and Matsu soon. Edward Corsi, the Republican war horse who was brought in to straighten out the State Department's implementation of the Refugee Relief Act that was supposed to bring in 214,000 refugees by 1956 and has so far only reached 13,000, has been fired because he was in a Communist front organisation in the Thirties or because the job was actually temporary or something like that. The Hiller version of the Aerocycle puts the rotor blades in a ducted fan so that they can't just jam on a tree trunk, so it's better that way, I guess.  The Navy is looking at it as a landing craft replacement. There are more bank robberies these days. 

"Appointment with Ike: Who Gets to See Him, Who Doesn't, and Why" A four page special report about how the President is ducking everyone but his buddies. John Nance Gardner is home back in Uvalde but is still available to say outrageous things to the press if they will just pay attention to him. They have cherry blossoms in Washington now since seventy years ago. But actually they were originally Korean cherry trees. Have I filled the paper yet? Where's the news? Heck, let's run a Spaatz guest column about how NACA is a good thing. 

 

International

"British Elections: The Conservative Swing" Churchill's out, Eden's in, election expected. In related news, sun rises, leading to daylight. Eden and Churchill gets boxed timeline biographies. The suppression of a palace revolt in Yemen gives Newsweek an excuse to write a self-referentially "Arabian Nights"-style account.  Russia is ready to agree to an Austrian peace treaty but has renounced its wartime friendship treaties with Britain and the United States over German rearmament. Newsweek explains how both are bad, actually. Khrushchev is purging state farm leadership, and Valery Alexandrovich Lysikov, the 17-year-old Russian runaway recently celebrated as a refugee from Communism, has returned to East Berlin because he was just a silly kid, after all. The French are a very silly people. 

The purge of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih is probably related to problems with the Five-Year Plan. Newsweek has been told that S. K. Patil is an anti-communist, so it checks in with the way he's doing things, and confesses to liking the cut of Patil's jib. I'm sorry, this just in, that was Time that likes jibs. The Japanese government believes that it cannot afford the original, ambitious rearmament plan that was going to give it a ten to fifteen division army, abut it can't talk about it with the United States because Dulles has somehow managed to get on the wrong side of his ambassador in Tokyo and doesn't want to be seen fighting with him. South Africa has left UNESCO because it is mad at UNESCO for publishing a pamphlet that says that white South Africans are racially prejudiced against the black population, and that counts as interference in South African affairs. The Shah of Iran has forced his army chief to resign for not being servile enough. Things are heating up in Brazil as the price of coffee falls, and someone, like the Army or a Vargas protege, might do something.  

 Buried at the back of International because he is off on a world trip and has to file columns to claim expenses, Ernest K. Lindell's Washington Tides column offers "An Asian Friend of Ours." That friend is Pakistan. What a great country! "Elections are promised within a year." Although it was such a pain cashing his travellers' cheques. The Liberal government in Canada is trying to buck up the stumbling economy with tax cuts. 

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports additional  hints that the recovery is well on, with autos and the aircraft industry doing particularly well and an auto strike likely, which is also the lead story, followed by a short profile of the Lockheed C-130. Republic Pictures' annual stockholders' meeting was extremely contentious due to the company reporting losses and suggesting that it might turn to producing television movies exclusively. Products: What's New reports that the latest from Western Electric is "talking elevators," with recorded tapes reminding passengers to keep back and release the door. Ford is producing tricycle farm tractors. 

"Diversifications" Textron's first steps towards diversification is acquiring Ryan Industries, " a prime supplier of electromechanical and electronic devices to the Air Force." France's Femmes Chef d'Enterprise, mostly heads of fashion houses, are over in the United States to see what's up and remind the attached press corps of how much better American law treats women in business. A box interview with Labour Secretary James P. Mitchell promises a million more jobs by June. 

Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides argues for Senator Byrd's proposal allowing the President to veto items in the Federal budget line by line. 

Science, Medicine, Education

"Atom and Aftermath" "The most encouraging defensive weapon of the atomic age," in case you are wondering, is an atomic anti-aircraft bomb. "Authorities hint broadly that thousands of AA A-bombs can now be made and held in readiness." Japanese scientists report that the presence of U-237 in fallout from last year's test "made a strong case for the existence of a U-bomb, an H-bomb encased in natural uranium which appallingly multiplies the radioactive fallout." And last week Dr. Yusuke Yokoyama of Tokyo University reported finding U-237 in rainfall soon after the Soviet nuclear tests in Siberia last September. 

"War for Life in the Islands" Newsweek reviews public health in the Caribbean, inspire by the President forming an advisory commission of physicians to report on same. For example, in Haiti, "about one quarter of this Negro republic's annual budget now goes for public health," with the rural rate of yaws falling from 80% to 1% in just ten years. 80% of rural Haitians had yaws in 1945? Proctor & Gamble is introducing a fluoride toothpaste, called Crest, and two VA doctors have come up with a plastic artificial eye. 

"Schools and Scholars" rounds up things educators have been saying. For example, Dr. Hilda Threlkeld, the University of Louisville Dean of Women, points out that, these days, instead of being expelled when they get married, female students expect to be engaged by Commencement. Beardsley Ruml says that Federal aid to education is going to increase from a very large number to an even larger number. "One V. Vesipov" demonstrates that educators are the same the world around by being caught complaining about the youth these days. Most elementary school teachers in Minnesota are motivatged by their love of children, a senior at the Chicago Institute of Technology has been elected Chicago Man of the Year and put on probation in the same week. The Institute of International Education is bringing over some Russian student editors. Education also runs a major article that isn't a profile of an educator this week, "Conversation, U.S.A." The thesis of the story is that the art of conversation is in rapid decline in the United States. Dr. Whitney Griswold, Jophn C. Gerber of the University of Iowa, John Baxter, and the producer of NBC's Conversation all think so, but on the other hand Irving Lee of Northwestern thinks that Americans have never been more fluent.  

"Come In, Jupiter" The Carnegie Institute set up a "bizarre new radio telescope" on a farm in Maryland last year consisting of a half-mile wide receiver consisting of 128 linked antennae arranged in a cross. It was to listen to interstellar gas clouds and colliding galaxies, but instead kept picking up what sounded like spark plugs misbehaving, and turned out to be Jupiter. Astronomers at Princeton think that Jupiter's radio activity might have something to do with the Sun, and reflect sunspot activity, and it might help us understand the Sun's influence on the Earth's weather. 

The Periscope is one for three on showbiz news. The embarrassing part is being reduced to giving Richard Ney free publicity. 

Art, TV-Radio, Press, Newsmakers

"Glory to the Gadgets" There was a Slinky on display at the American art show at the Musee Nationale d'Arte Moderne, but that's not what's important right now. No-one like American painters, even though American gadgets are neat. Periscoping the Theatre reports an Anderson and Logan musical based on Huckleberry Fin, Tom Sawyer, and Life of the Mississippi from unfinished lyrics by Kurt Weill will appear next year along with Richard Ney's first play. Seventh Heaven will hit Broadway next month.

"Growing Impact of Disney Art" Disney is launching The Mickey Mouse Club on TV next season and it would be awfully crass for the magazine to just publish that as a four page special report,so here's a retrospective of all the other stuff Disney has done for a bit until we've got enough to fill out the page count.  

Did you know there's a press strike in Britain? The British are doing some crazy things to fill their newspaper addiction, like importing an extra run of the Paris Herald-Tribune and listening to the BBC. Imagine that! Also there have been changes at the editorial board of the Herald, a press delegation from Oregon is upset it didn't get to see anyone in the Politburo, not like the Hearst delegation that went over recently. Colonel McCormick's replacement has been named, also Joseph Pulitzer's. 

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Jesse Holman Jones, Oliva Dionne, Mario Lanza, Tommy Manville, Harry Truman, and Marilyn Monroe are in the paper for the usual reasons.

Senator Henry Dworshak is in it because people accidentally thought of Idaho this week. Various royals would be in the paper if there were papers in Britain right now. Look at the different impacts of the dependents' deductions in the three countries! Babies are worth a lot more in the United States! Pierre Monteis and Mary Pickford have had birthdays. Frederick Brown Harris is retiring. Charles Hanger, Jesse D. Locker, and Stanford Hooper have retired. Theda Bara has died. 

The New Pictures

Three Cases of Murder, from Associated Artists is an anthology, and "intermittent fun." Mambo is an Italian import starring Silvana Mangano. It's terrible. 

Books

Merriman Smith's Meet Mr. Eisenhower says that Ike probably won't run in '56. There's not much to review here, so Smith's book is paired with Robert Donovan's The Assassins, about Presidential assassins and would-be assassins, beginning and ending with Puerto Rican nationalists who tried to assassinate President Truman in 1950, and covering the two successful and four other unsuccessful assassination attempts on Presidents, President elects, and former Presidents. Giorgio de Santillana's The Crime of Galileo is the most exhaustive treatment of the "Galileo Affair" since, I guess, the last one. I'm no expert! Czeslaw Milosz's The Seizure of Power is a treatment of the Communist takeover of Poland from the perspective of a man who has written on the effects of totalitarianism on the mind. 

Raymond Moley uses Perspectives to look at the future of atomic power, which might be bright considering the ever-increasing demand for electric power and the shortage of coal, but on the other hand might not be as coal power plants become more efficient, and, oh, by the way, "socialised  hydropower has no future."

Aviation Week, 

News Digest reports that the F-100 will be doing supersonic test runs soon, that Bell's I3F turbine helicopter testbed will begin test flying soon. Long-range radar flight control will begin in the New York metropolitan area next week. The longest operational runway in the continental United States is Albuquerque's 13,773ft runway, which is only exceeded by Edwards' 15,000ft runway. Continental is sending a group of executives to Europe to talk to Vickers, Rolls-Royce, and Fokker about the future of their fleet. The heavy forging press facility in Cleveland will be the first in operational one in the Air Force's heavy forge programme when it starts up next month. Curtiss-Wright has now delivered 5000 J65s. Minneapolis Honeywell and Raytheon have formed a jointly-owned company, Datamatic, which will produce new data-processing systems. Convair has sold six 340s to Saudi Arabian Airlines. Industry Observer reports that the RCAF hasn't decided on the replacement for the F-86, but is choosing between the F-102 and F-104, and also an "Americanised" version of the Bristol Britannia transport. The USAF is looking into a long range missile for photo reconnaissance. The first XF2Y Sea Dart is likely to be the only one with the v-shaped single hydroski. Vertical tests of the Lockheed XFV-1 VTOL have been interrupted by problems with engine and propeller surges, while Bell's VTOL is showing its ability to fly forward and backwards. Tactical Air Command has received its first batch of 14 Piasecki H-21Bs. Chance Vought is working on a new high performance guided missile for the Navy. The prototype S.E. 210 Caravelle is complete. Lockheed is building a two-seat trainer version of the F-104. Washington Roundup reports that three Congressional committees are looking into profits in the defence industry, that the choice for the new Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Materiel is between Clarence Irvine and Edwin Prawlings. CAB's executive is up in arms over leaks, but will get its full request for airline subsidies. 

National Affairs has William Coughlin reporting that "Production Lags Behind R&D," meaning that Major General P. W. Smith has scolded the industry for not delivering production aircraft more quickly. Homeowners in the San Fernando Valley are suing Lockheed for being a noise nuisance. Charlie Wilson has reminded contractors that they need to take care of security. Meanwhile, Aviation Week can't even get information about an everyday contract for some mapping flights in Iceland because everyone in the Pentagon is afraid to talk. The Fiat G-91 has won the NATO light fighter contract. General Benjamin Chidlaw of Continental Air Defence Command told the Management Club at Hughes Aircraft that the Soviets will have a Mach 10 intercontinental missile capable of hitting any target in the continental United States within ten years, and a cruising missile with a speed of two or three times sound before that. Meanwhile, development of their long-range bombing force is not far  away from the ability to attack anywhere in the continental United States. The mechanical minds capable of intercepting such weapons are in development at Hughes today, following the trail of the machines that guide the latest generation of air-to-air rockets. 

"British Improve Bomber Range, Mobility and Accuracy on Target" Specifically, they're working on air-to-air refuelling, new navigation and bombing systems, mobility plans to deploy bombers from Middle Eastern and African bases, and rocket-assisted takeoff to allow Valiants now, and Victors and Vulcans later, to operate from even smaller airfields. The Undersecretary for Air's report to Parliament continues, observing that the industry has built 6000 aircraft and 12,300 engines between November 1951 and March, 1955, of which 200 were Hawker Hunters and 750 were jet trainers. A contract for Venoms was cut by 750 aircraft from 1000, and for Canberras from 1200 to 800. the Gloster Javelin is still beset with developmental problems, but none that are irremediable. A preproduction order for 18 Javelins with thinner wings and an Olympus engine replacing the Sapphire. Improvements in the "Rotor" radar defence system continue, while anti-aircraft missile development has been punted forward because existing ones are too short-ranged. A new anti-submarine helicopter is in development. 

The Air Navigation Development Board has a new ten station automatic weather reporting system that stores the latest local weather report on a magnetic memory drum and then forwards it to other airports with the reporting system by teletypewriter. The ATA is asking for a long-range collision avoidance radar. The avionics industry is upset at labour raiding by aircraft frame builders, especially to develop their own electronics sides. Stay out of our business! (Airframe industry to avionics industry: "Drop dead!") The Air Force has a new electronics system for ordering spare parts. 

"Turbine Plane Economy Hinges on Outcome of Fuel Controversy" Kerosene gives lower performance, but doesn't boil off at high altitude, which is why the British like it, in spite of American efforts to get everyone to agree on JP4, with arguments also about safety. The USAF would be the odd man out were it not for Trans Canada's decision to modify its Viscounts to burn JP4. A short profile describes how important El Al is for Israel, and another reports on improvements in the terminal at Mexico City. 

David A. Anderton reports for Aeronautical Engineering on "How a Weapon System Operates in the Field" He describes Nike launching sites. Thrust & Drag quotes Vannevar Bush to the effect that the Library of Congress collection has grown to vast proportions, but the catalog is still in the  horse-and-buggy era, so you can't find anything. Walt Disney's recent film about the prospective first space flight was great! 

Irving Stone reports for Production that "Marquardt Pushes Supersonic Projects" Elsewhere in this issue (okay, Industry Observer, and I skipped it) it is reported that UAL is taking over Marquardt. Here, we get somewhat more detailed than usual discussions of the various ramjets it is making for missiles, and its afterburner business. It is also looking at small turbines, and titanium welding. Separate Production stories report that Du Pont has received amortisation aid for its new titanium facility and that MIT is offering a course on automatic tools. 

Letters has J. Francis Taylor of the Air Navigation Development Board on TACAN versus DME to the effect that he really like the Aviation Week article while G. F. Quimby of National Aeronautical is upset that DME is being abandoned after all the work they put into it. They do not recall being warned that developing an airborne DME was a "highly speculative undertaking," as the Air Force now says it warned the company. Jerome Lederer is an old time aeronautical pioneer, or, in other words, an idiot.  S. C. Timson is upset at a recent article implying that the aviation industry isn't that great. Several engineers write to point out that they know plenty of underemployed engineers, so this talk about an engineer shortage is pure bunk. On the other hand, Name Withheld points out that Lockheed in Georgia has raided a lot of NACA engineers. B. Cutler of Gillifan Brothers points out the problems of automatic ground control. A correspondent is upset that ALPA is dictating work hours for pilots. 

Philip J. Klass reports for Avionics that "Line-of-Sight 'Barrier' Latest to Fall" That is, he is summarising recent work by the Air Force to establish beyond-the-horizon transmission of ultra-high frequency radio waves. These have long been observed in nature, but the Air Force is interested in exploiting this phenomena systematically to provide long distance communication in the Arctic, where High Frequency is often blanked by static. Beyond the horizon transmission of uhf occurs when the signals are reflected by belts of ionised air in the sky, the so-called ionosphere, but theories of how these bands form in the troposphere, and about their consistency and reliability, seem to require revising. Klass cites a paper to the recent Institute of Radio Engineers convention by Kenneth Bullington of Bell, and experiments by Collins Radio and the NBS. Then, in another example of Amateur Editors Week, the article sort of runs into one about Philco's new digital computer circuitry using only transistors and resistors (that is, no vacuum tubes), as used in Philco's Transac computer, and described by Ralph Beter and William E. Bradley to the same session of the IRE, and incorporated into the VRC-24 "module,"

which iis being used by other Signal Corps equipment. This then has nothing to do with the triple antenna aerial array for air navigation developed by Jacobs Instruments, also presented to the IRE, and the Hughes Typotron, a vacuum tube display incorporating a storage tube to eliminate the need for an indepent memory unit, or ther completely transistorised IBM 608 that will be available commercially next year, Lockheed's use of a printer with an IBM 605, or the new model UNIVAC. Woosh! At least the new Marconi ASR (low frequency, long range surveillance radar) installed at London Airport to eliminate ground clutter, gets its own headline! (Probably because it is not a retyping of Klass' notes.) Also, Sperry wants us to know that its drones now have an autopilot so they don't just fall out of the sky when they lose UHF guidance, North American has put its new MG-4 gun control system into the F-86K, the new ones with 20mm cannons, various avionics firms report good profits, and Filter Centre reports that the Project Tinkertoy factory is up for sale, Bell is pushing inertial navigation, the Swedes have another DECCA chain working, Stanford Research Institute is scheduling a summer automation seminar, and so is the University of Michigan.

George L. Christian reports for Equipment about "Ejection Seat Design: Two Approaches," or in other words Republic focusses on standardisation, Chance Vought on weight and safety. Carmody of Buffalo has been asked to build 41 capsule-ejection trainers for the Air Force at a cost of $680 each, while Navy chemist Harold Rayner tells the American Chemical Society that experiments with a fluoridated lubricating oil show promise of superior performance to conventional oils in jet turbines and other high temperature applications. New Aviation Products reports a camera, a portable blower for air flow tests, a centrifuge, and a servo-rotated dome for instrument installments from Oerlikon of America, which finally has an American factory (in Asheville), and a product.
 

Robert Holtz's Editorial is upset at Congress cutting $8.8 million from the NACA budget (probably what Spaatz was on about in Newsweek), calling it a false economy. Ed Hunsaker has received the Langley Gold Medal for being old and having lots of friends. 

Letters

Some correspondents think that Senator Neely is right about that the President shouldn't get all publicly religious, and some people disagree. Two correspondents think that they've found a mistake, one makes a joke, J. R. De La Riva is upset at positive coverage of Franco's Spain, Dan Johnston celebrates Montana as a tourism destination, William Johnson and Ejler Alkjaer speak up for Europe as a tourist destination for Americans, especially Copenhagen. Nevea Donell Kohout and Joseph Weiss are upset at the article about Coloured education in South Africa. For Your Information has a letter from Newsweek chairman Malcolm Muir, who is travelling in Europe and is staying with the King and Queen of Greece, personal friends. Greece sure is improving, Malcolm thinks. 

The Periscope reports that U.S. intelligence services have set up a national intelligence centre in a Pentagon basement, that Congress is going to intensify its inquiry into why so many bright young generals and admirals are quitting and going into industry, that younger and more liberal GOP legislators are upset at the amount of influence the "Old Guard" has over the President. The Army is testing a mobile microphone that can pinpoint snipers. Harold S. Vance is going to be made the "titanium czar" to sort titanium out. Army enlistments are starting to improve, but Marine and Air Force, aren't. Charles Wilson wants Secretary Benson to sell U.S. wheat abroad at reduced prices to clear the surplus. Antarctica's population will increase to 2000 next year thanks to all the science. The AFL and CIO are in the final stages of negotiating their merger. Dr. Friedrich Jensen, the Austrian journalist who died on the Chinese airliner headed to Bandung was actually a Soviet agent watching the Chinese. Soviet intelligence has a red face over all the Russian diplomats defecting in Latin America these days[?]. The British are going to push hard to keep their radar stations in Germany. Czech secret police have razed several border villages to prevent smuggling and defectors. Russian propaganda (disguised as Czech propaganda) is claiming that the Red Army defeated the Japanese. The Chinese are rebuilding a Japanese air base near Nanking to take Il-28s. "Every tip out of China" reports more purges, which informed observers see as increasing the power of Liu Shao-chi. Maxfield Parrish is 85, a widower, and not doing much. George Magerkurth is also retired.  

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that the 1956 election is definitely on, and that Premier Bulganin thinks that the whole Formosa Strait thing is overblown.  

National Affairs

"Beyond Polio: A Great Task" Newsweek reports on the international celebration of the polio vaccine and then calls on the United States to buckle down and work on heart disease, cancer, and mental health. 

"The Corsi Incident" Edward Corsi is now accusing John Foster Dulles of lying when he said that Corsi was fired as director of administration of the Refugee-Relief Act because he lacked administrative experience, denied that Corsi had been fired at Congressman Frank Walter's instigation, and that the refugee programme was "working reasonably well." The only Democrat to give the attendees what they wanted at the recent dinner for Sam Rayburn was Truman, who took on the President and called "unleashing Chiang" a "barefaced political fraud." Everyone else is getting ready to fight Eisenhower without being mean to him, understandably when Democrats support much of the President's programme, excepting his highway and school building initiatives, which are dead on arrival, and farm price supports, where the difference is in the details. Speaking of the Far East, everyone is getting tired of waiting for the UN to bring our fliers back from Peking. U.S. population is 164,367,000, but "the amount of land for its people to live on decreases." What does that mean, you ask, is San Marino washing into the sea? Well, no, it's the introduction to a General Services Administration survey of Federal lands. Republicans are in a tizzy over the question of who will run for them in '56 if Ike doesn't. Ike would be 66 at the beginning of his second term, has high blood pressure, and bursitis, and says he won't run again if his physicians advise against it. 

The relationship between this Eugene F. Suter and the purported inventor of the 
perm is unclear. The model is credited as Imaanhammam/Instagram.

"Silver Into Brass" The Navy has a 128 year supply of gear drives, the Army Signal Corps has an eight year supply of flashlight batteries, the Air Force has to sell surplus medals as brass at public auctions, finds the Hoover commission looking into wasteful spending at the Pentagon. It is the thirteenth anniversary of the Doolittle Raid, an occasion well worth celebrating when we remember that Doolittle once promised to support the Koumintang. Russell Brand of Los Angeles won a house in that "Mr. Blanding's Dream House" lottery of a few years ago, but then after a few bad turns of business and then some perfectly innocent fraud that he did just because he didn't have enough money, he lost his house and went to jail, and there's a lesson there that good luck can lead to bad outcomes for perfectly normal, good folk who maybe do a bit of fraud now and then. Harry Truman won't stop being in the news, Eugene F. Suter  of New Haven is fighting to not receive a $350,000 inheritance, and convict Orville Gray of Montgomery, Alabama, won't leave jail because he's got a cushy gig with the prison quartet.

"Deadline and a Dare" The Supreme Court still hasn't handed down its promised order on the timing of court-ordered educational desegregation, which the NAACP urges be implemented this September, or, at the latest, in September of 1956. Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana are still going ahead with their plans to dismantle public education rather than accept desegregation, but on the other hand, Arkansas is leading the way, having already desegregated schools in Fayetteville and Charleston. Fortunately all the anti-desegregation organisations have renounced violence, and, as one person noted, these days when a Coloured speaks up against segregation, all he loses is his bank credit, compared with what he might have lost ten years ago. 

Ernest K. Lindell is still on his world trip, is now in India, and offers "Nehru and Us: Some Advice" in his Washington Tides column. The advice is that we should ignore all his awful anti-American comments, which are only for show and also because he was educated in England to look down his nose at the United States. He's still an anti-Communist, and isn't that what matters? 

International

The explosion aboard Kashmir Princess is generally regarded as a failed
assassination attempt against Zhou Enlai by Koumintang agents. CIA
involvement remains contentious. 

"Red 'Gesture: We're On the Spot" The Soviet-Austria peace treaty is an insidious Communist trick. Foreign Minister Mikoyan is nice, which is an insidious Communist trick.  Those football pools they have in Britain are crazy! "Fun-loving Saigon is hungryy and scared" what with that civil war going on. The French are going around smirking like crazy because it's finally dawning on the Americans that they were right about Diem. Premier Faure has promised France its own H-bomb. In an utterly unexpected development, the new Prime Minister is Anthony Eden, and he has called an election, causing Clement Attlee to rush home from his cross-Canada speaking tour. Sir Winston Churchill is on vacation in Sicily, and that's news! The Russians are sneaking into Afghanistan with dirty, underhanded foreign aid and investment! The "real issue" in Bandung is that Nehru and China are fighting, and the Chinese are blaming Koumintang and American saboteurs for an explosion aboard an Air Indian airliner carrying part of the Chinese delegation. Leon Volkhov's occasional column returns with an explanation of the current Soviet food crisis. Soviet agriculture has never been productive enough to guarantee against famine, collectivisation was a step backwards, livestock levels are simply too low, and Khrushchev's new agricultural policy is also a backwards step, but one that he can't reverse for political reasons.

In Canada,  Canadian Pacific is about to start a trans-polar service, second after Scandinavian, so here's a profile of your old friend, Grant McConachie. 

Business

For some reason that is very amusing in retrospect,
the little supersonic interceptor that couldn't 
illustrates the first intimation of the Edsel.

The Periscope Business Trends reports that disposable income, car sales, truck sales, and building are all up, that steel's prospects are bright unless there's an auto strike, and that "the latest word on the automation front is that automation is about to invade even the complex world of aircraft manufacture," because Convair is buying a $1 million electronic milling machine, which I take to mean a numerically controlled miller and not one contouring with electric blasts, as exciting as that would be.

"Autos: A New Entry by Ford?" Ford seems dead serious about opening up a fifth division to challenge GM in various price categories. Various companies are looking at this whole atomic power business, announces a special box story. 

Products: What's New reports that Donald Smith's of Dallas, Texas, has a trunk bed weighing 72lb and supporting 600lb that folds out of a car trunk and includes a netting and awning. Bostrom Manufacturing has a sprung tractor seat that eliminates most of the ride vibration. Notes: Week in Business reports that Anaconda has found a new low-grade copper seam in Butte, that Philadelphia's new telephone book for 1955/56 has a colour photo cover, that Allan B. DuMont Laboratories have come up with a combined TV/film camera that records a TV show on film as it is televised for easy rebroadcast, while RCA has announced a 21" colour tv using only 28 tubes, down ten from current models, probably retailing for only $895, and expects to increase colour tv tubes production more than tenfold this year from 2500 to 30,000/month. A special report on the ongoing takeover effort at Montgomery Ward illustrates the growing story of the "battle for control of business." 

Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides asks, "Who Will Guarantee Business?" AQ guaranteed annual wage is bad because business doesn't have guaranteed annual income. Look at Italy, where it's hard to lay off workers. It's in terrible shape, which goes to show.  

Science, Medicine, Education

"Food: Not Less, But More" Americans have more food these days thanks to agricultural research, especially into  new steroids to make cattle grow faster and antibiotics to improve herd and flock health and possibly even crop yields. In the future there will hopefully be more botanical research to identify new food crops and that something will be done about agriculture's demand for water, which keeps increasing. 

 "A Quiet Young Man's Magnificent Victory" A three page story about Jonas Salk and his vaccine.

The ongoing fight between the Argentinian government and church has hit the schools, the National Catholic Educational Association is being urged by members to adopt the fresh new ideas of "pagans" like John Dewey. The New York Longshoreman's Association is sending sixteen officials to a Cornell course on labour relations to bring them up to speed with the "laws" and such. Women teachers in Britain will have equal pay from 1961. California is looking for teachers.   

TV-Radio, Newsmakers

"One Man's Meat" Is Arthur Godfrey a speed maniac who is about to be kicked to the curb by the industry? Well, yes, but that's not going to stop Newsweek from giving him some fawning coverage!

It is said that the London newspaper strike is a win for "the Reds" because Communist-affiliated unions are looking good, and because the papers are in the red. Get it? In the red! A five-page Special Report box story looks at the Knight newspaper chain, in the news because of Pulitzer's death. The even lose some of New Films to fit it all in!

1955, everybody!

Alvin York's tax court hearing has been scheduled for May in Nashville. Edward Horton, King Farouk, Francoise Sagan, Dr. Florence Kluckhohn, Charles Dressen, and Anthony Drexel Biddle are in the column for the usual reasons. Ernest Woolsey, the civil defence director for Pottawatomie County, Iowa, is in it for coming up with an air raid warning system consisting of a giant firework releasing powdered sugar and essence of peppermint, producing a danger signal that acts on all the senses! Frances Dee had a baby, Roberta Peters got married, and General Peyton March, Pierre Teilhard du Chardin, Ray Spruance, Norvin Green, Emir Saif el Islam Abdullah, William A. Roberts, and Allerton F. Brooks died, all in the week of the powdered-sugar-and-peppermint bomb, and so are going to be forgotten by history. Okay, maybe not Teilhard du Chardin. 

 New Films

As mentioned above, the header is lost in getting all the incestuous details of the Knight reorganisation in, but the lead review is of The Informer, which Newsweek liked. Gran Varieta is a very funny Italian anthology film, Interrupted Melody is an effective tearjerker about Marjorie Lawrence's comeback from polio, but Cell 2455, Death Row, from Columbia, turns the Carl Chessman story into another second-rate crime melodrama. 
 

Books

Dominique Maroger's edition of The Memoirs of Catherine the Great is out, and the review is an excuse to retell the story of a remarkable woman. George Lamming's The Immigrants is a novel about West Indian immigration into Britain, while Ronald Ruark's Something of Value is "well worth reading, if you can stand it." It's about how things got so awful in Kenya. Emily Post's Etiquette: The Blue Book, is, well, Emily Post. 

Raymond Moley is upset in Perspective that young people are constantly being infected by socialism, and is happy that Max Eastman wrote a book about how socialism is bad, because that will fix things. 

Aviation Week, 25 April 1955

News Digest reports more Congressional investigation of Pentagon misspending, Mohawk Airlines' sale of its Sikorsky S-55 after dropping its experimental helicopter service, the resumption of DME receiver shipments by National Aeronautical after VOR/DME's new lease on life through 1960, and a version of the C-97 with turboprops. Industry Observer reports that the Super Mystere, Vought XF8U, a commercial version of the J57, and the Pratt & Whitney J75 are proceeding through testing, while Trans-Australian has 86% utilisation of its Viscounts. Republic has switched its F-105 from the Allision J71 to the J75, with early models getting the J57. The Avro Vulcan may be built in Canada, with the planes being made at Toronto, and the Avon engines at Rolls Royce Canada in Montreal. Red sources have finally officially credited Illyushin with the Il-28, reporting that it is in production and makes "621mph." Washington Roundup reports that CAB needs Congressional approval for its airline subsidy payments soon, that Frank Newman, the Defence Department's assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Applications Engineering, is unfazed by industry criticisms of his call for greater standardisation in jet turbine procurement, that R. Karl Honaman has been tapped with sorting out the Pentagon security mess, and Congress is on the verge of a new feeder airline regulatory scheme. 

Claude Witz reports for Aviation Week that "New Cost Plan Threatens Incentive Pay." Follows a brief report from the Aviation Week staff sent to the SAE Golden Anniversary Meeting in New York last week, from which by the sounds of it they are still in recovery. No noise, hair of the dog, etc. Unusually, both British and French engine development processes come in for praise, although (and this is underlined by criticism from the Air Force of recently delivered "expendable" turbines and a postmortem of the Allison T57), it is becoming pretty obvious that there is something wrong with American engine development, the blunt implication being that no-one at the shop level knows what they are doing. "Air Transport" is expanding, say two separate articles from the SAE talk shop, and "Security Cloaks F-104 Crash." 

David J. Anderton reports for Aeronautical Engineering that "Engineers Team With Doctors to Make Pilot's Job Easier," which is about a Hughes presentation to the AMA meeting in Washington, one of a number of presentations on aviation medicine that include papers on the effects of space flight as well as more "human engineering" stuff about making dials more readable. 

"Thinner Wing to Raise X-1 Limit" Stanley Aviation (the outfit formed by some Bell alumni n Buffalo when the company moved to Texas) files a report on the engineering work to reduce the thickness of the wing on the original Bell X-1 to extend its experimental life. "NACA Tests Lead to Flying Platforms" tries to claim some credit for the various Aerocycles for the NACA tests that got them as far as field tests. Wouldn't it be wonderful if every soldier had his own helicopter? 

Letters has Murray Ogman and Name Withheld writing to point out that engineer/scientist shortages are cyclical in a free market so something needs to be done or they will always be with us, with intervening periods of unemployment. H. J. Cory Pearsen enters the landing lights controversy, blaming ALPA with ginning up controversy instead of getting on with landing light schemes. 

Irving Stone is still at Marquardt, reporting for Production this week about how "Marquardt Backs Up Jet Development Work" In other words, he retypes the product catalogue and discusses plant layout. It sure looks like Marquardt is putting itself on the market! Then George L. Christian reports for Equipment that "New Jets Get Ratio Thrust Indicators" They're engine gauges. New jets have engine gauges, made by a bunch of companies to slightly different designs. New Aviation Products reports brightly coloured balls to be hung from high tension lines near airports so planes don\'t crash into them, from Mutto of Ohio, a "Cloudsonde" from Lucian Laboratories that measures cloud layer altitudes, as well as a counter altimeter, small position light flashers, batteries, and nylon gears, and a new, vibration-damping tungsten alloy. 

Philip Klass reports for Avionics that "Solar Energy Could Drive Spaceship's Electrostatic Powerplant, IRE Hears" Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, the ex-German scientist who heads missile research at the Redstone Arsenal has an idea for interplanetary space travel involving spacecraft fuelled in orbit, which get their motive power by using electrical fields to propel gas in tanks. Solar power comes in as a weight saver, and uses a solar boiler. Also at the IRE, John Pierce of Bell proposes "bouncing" television signals off orbital satellites, while S. F. Singer of the University of Maryland thinks we could launch a tiny experimental satellite right about now. Taking it down to Earth, Sylvana Electric shows up to the IRE to tout its new tripolar silicon diode, while Boeing and Texas Instruments caused a stir at the show, Boeing because it was advertising even though it doesn't do avionics, and TI because it wants everyone to know that it is rolling in greenbacks from all those Signal Corps contracts. Maybe this isn't the best time to flaunt it, TI?
 

Robert Hotz's Editorial praises the new leadership at CAB and takes the Detroit Free Press to task for complaining that employment in aviation has exceeded employment in automotives when autos, unlike aviation, are a necessity. Also, he really like the brochure about UAC and NATO, produced by the UAC delegation junketing in Europe this summer. Very statesmanlike! 

Fortune's Wheel reports that Fortune's research division is pretty tough about tracking down mistakes and, with the imminent retirement of Isabel Benney Anderson[??], who joined the division in 1936, was made assistant head in 1942, and head in 1952, it is time to celebrate it. Including, incidentally although not in so many words, as a place where women with graduate educations can get jobs!

Letters

   Stanton Griffis is sure that something is going to happen with the current bull market. Henri Villard wonders whether Fortune editors talk to each other, pointing out that the Fortune explanation for the Crash of '29 is an "unbalanced" market in which profits, interest, and rent rose much faster than wages, and that Fortune believes that it cannot happen again under current circumstances, but in another article it is pointed out that, yes, profits, interest, and rents are growing faster than wages currently. Fortune replies that high income tax rates will sort this out in good time. I. I. Alexander asks for an explanation of "GNP," and Fortune gives it. George Walker wants an explanation of what is up with this whole "money" thing. Henry Allen of Elastomer Chemical is upset that the article on polyurethane doesn't mention other plastic foams. Rosalind Campbell points out that retail products like Campbell's soup most definitely go for different prices at different grocery stores. J. Welsh Crist expresses  himself on highway bonds. Anton Refregier corrects an error, and a correspondent from Arkansas tries out a tepid joke about Arkansas being proud of the one Rockefeller (Winthrop) that it can get. 

Business Roundup is on about the recovery and the incredibly buoyant building sector.  It is a bit magical the way that capital for building exceeds bank reserves so, but magic is what the government does best. U.S. exports have had a banner year, but the U.S. trade surplus is shrinking due to aid and investment. European governments are starting to restrict American purchases, and the solution might be giving the President the tariff-cutting powers he craves. Business Notes from Abroad reports that the China trade is being seen as a panacea in Japan, that European car makers like Renault and, above all, Volkswagen, are dong well for such statist enterprises as Europeans like to indulge themselves in. Britain is unlikely to achieve the domination of the air that it has achieved at sea, but the Viscount is a sign that they can possibly break the American monopoly, so sad about the Comet. Inflation warnings are flashing red in Britain, and Italy is going all state planning. 

Leaders 

Competition is good. Europeans are bad at competition. Charles Abrams, New York State's Rent Administrator, argues that housing segregation does not protect against "blockbusting," where a Coloured family moving in causes a collapse in porperty values. The "blockbuster" effect is, in fact, a speculative bubble driven by panic. Fortune is upset at a TV show that portrays businessmen in a negative light. No one agrees with you pinkos, it yells at the top of its lungs. Fortune liked Sincerely, Willis Wade. 

John Davenport, "Foreign Economic Policy: The Big Thaw" Foreign investment is great! Perrin Stryker explores "How Much Is An Executive Worth?" Eric Hodgins investigates "The Strange State of American Research," which strange state is that not enough fundamental research is being done. Geoffrey Humphrey, who in his spare time from writing for Fortune has a part-time job as Secretary of the Treasury, explains why American monetary policy is great and the future is bright. A profile of frequent advertiser Continental Cans, and a pictorial about the steel industry lead into an excerpt from Russell Davenport's forthcoming book on "The Real Power Behind Communism." It turns out that Communists think that Communism is good!!!!

"Garbage in the Sky" Air pollution is bad. Between Los Angeles smog and one-off disasters like Donora, the United States has a pretty big problem on its hands.