Postblogging Technology, May 1955: The One I Forgot To Post On Saturday!

R_.C_.,
The Lodge,
Campbell River, British Columbia,
Canada




Dear Father:

The election is well on over here and how I wish I was off the Spit casting my line, and I hate fishing. Of course, so do you, but it is good to see you out of Vancouver, if only to look at mining plays. You will see a great deal in this letter about how the inflation in Britain is due to prosperity and can only be fixed by wage restraint. That's the real fishing for what matters, which is votes. Britain will feel the hook this summer, but by then we'll be in Hawaii and San Francisco. Sorry, sceptred isle. You should have known better than to trust Rab Butler. 

And while you're looking at Canadian investments, don't be taking any magic radar stopping paint!


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The Economist, 7 May 1955

Leaders

The Conservative election platform is better than the Labour platform although The Economist is disappointed at the way that the Tories keep telling people what to do instead of telling them to do what they want to do, which sounds reasonable until you note that the magazine is specifically referring to air pollution and child labour laws. Also, something really long and turgid about negotiating with the Communists and the Western European Union and stuff like that. So I'll tell you what. If we get world peace and the United States of Europe before this letter goes out, I will come back to this. If not, not! 

"Mao's Home Front" The Chinese need to invest in industry, and while the Soviets did this by liberating capital through collectivising agriculture, the Chinese cannot do this. So instead we look at the tentative moves towards collectivisation and relate it to the recent political upheavals. It will be interesting to see if the more radical members of the Party agree with The Economist's assessment. 

From The Economist of 1855, we have a discussion of the nation's "State of Morale,' specifically concerning the Crimean War. It seems like the country might give up on the war. The magazine is torn because it really wants to join in with all the criticising, but it likes the war. Can't it support the war while yelling at the Government? Yes, it can! 

The Election of 1945 introduces the magazine's election coverage, which will all be moot in six weeks, unless Labour wins, against all expectations, and its high moral dudgeon against H-bomb tests persuades the Americans, Russians, and, presumably, the French, to give up their fallout-producing ways. Also, Labour handled the last debates before Dissolution badly, because Labour is bad. For example, they wanted to talk about Cyprus and Northern Ireland. How parochial when they could have been talking about world peace, instead! (The Economist is, obviously, very much in favour of talking about world peace.) Speaking of disappointing amounts of parochial peace, the French and Germans appear to not be fighting, and, in fact, are thinking about expanding coal and steel community comity to aircraft production, transportation, and especially atomic energy. 

Notes

"Who's Whose in Saigon" Diem is still prime minister. Binh Xuyen troops are still in Saigon. Bao Dai is still the legal head of state and is corresponding with Diem again, but on the other hand the generals who supported him are in hiding. Most of Diem's cabinet has resigned. Diem should go, but there are no alternatives, so he won't. Meanwhile, because Diem is anti-French and the Americans are pro-Diem, Vietnam is "between Allies." Arthur Deakin has died, which is too bad, because he was the right kind of Labour statesman. No, no, not the dead kind, that's not what the magazine meant! Okay, maybe a bit. It's because he was an anti-Communist. Strikes are up, and down, and all around. The Colonial Development Corporation's financial numbers are improving and they might even make a profit one day, bearing in mind that in the future it will make sure to budget enough money for "public utility" like houses, roads, and so on. 

"The Reluctant Dragon" I am not absolutely sure what Red China is "reluctant" about, except possibly negotiating a cease fire in the Straits. To be clear here, what it is not reluctant about is its policy, which is that it is going to restore Formosa to the bosom of the nation one of these days, and "other people have no right to bother about the internal holocausts of a sovereign state." It is hard to tell how Pakistan finds a way back to proper democracy in the short term. Mendes-France is probably back. Details of the new university student grant scheme, which increases the maximum grant to £400/year, relaxes the parental means test, and increases the universal honorarium to £50/year. (The £2200 cap is replaced by a sliding scale with bigger deductions for other children.) Viscount Montgomery has popped up to remind us that we aren't doing enough about civil defence. Kenya's budget continues to be in deficit, with Britain expected to make up £20 million this year. Almost the whole cost is that of prosecuting the Emergency, and the hope is that it will end soon. In the mean time, the Colony's finance minister (Who's Who says that he ran a cinema in Nairobi before getting into politics in 1937), points out that the Army and RAF are spending £450,000/month somehow, and while Kenya can't look into it, the British probably should. The Conservative proposal to expand the Patent Library into a "National Reference Library of Science and Invention" is a great idea except it would cost money so it is a terrible idea. 

 Letters

Nalubaale Hydroelectric at Lake Victoria. 
By Fredrick Onyango from Nairobi, Kenya - Jinja Dam,
 CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.
php?curid=2267854

J. Spedan Lewis points out that there is no reason that "Fairer Shares" can't mean less poverty and more "levelling down" when there are still "excessively rich" people in Britain. Patrick Jenkin explains why socialists are making too much of tax cuts. Geoffrey Tyson points out why the paper's Indian correspondent is talking rubbish about Nehru's tax policy of taxing rich people  more. George Floris writes to point out that the anti-colonialists at the Bandung Conference actually have something of a point. Silvan Jones points out that the only way to get rid of public housing subsidies is to get rid of public housing, Frank Meissner points out the paradox that, under full employment, "abnormal demands develop," which is to say, people only buy good food at higher prices. W. N. Allen argues the case for dams in the South Sudan versus dams in Egypt.John Paxton explains why publishers use wholesalers and several writers explain what you do with burned diamonds. (Polish and resell.) 

Books 

Herbert Deane's The Political Thought of Harold Laski explains the "tragedy of Harold Laski." The tragedy is that he was wrong about everything but his intentions were good. Francis L. K. Hsu's Americans and Chinese  is a treat because it is all stereotypes about Americans and Chinese and Communists. Aylmer Vallance's A Very Private Industry is about "financial crimes" starting with the South Sea Bubble to the "Cotswold Cider fraud in 1945." It's a fun read but the author is some kind of socialist who wants to make some kind of crazy point, so The Economist feels bad about enjoying it. Lord Strang "and other members of the Foreign Office" bring us The Foreign Office, which is about how the Foreign Office is great and how. K. W. Rothschild's The Theory of Wages explains why purely economic theory has so little to say about wages these days. John Stewart Collins' The Moving Waters is about geology and rivers and stuff and has too much poetry. Richard Pear's American Government is a very worthy book. 

American Survey

"Trading with the Senate" I'm sure American tariff policy will be worked out eventually. Three out of four Americans want talks with China to settle the Straits, which is probably why the Bricker Amendment, which is supported by "extremist groups throughout the country' is back in the news. It would make all treaties subject to approval by all state legislatures, city councils, county sheriffs, and homeroom teachers. Okay, maybe just the first. The House is on about farm subsidies again. Under the heading of "Vaccine's Mixed Blessing," it is reported that the public has been shocked by twenty-six recipients (out of "several million") of the Salk vaccine have developed full-blown polio. Twenty-five of those cases have been traced to one  manufacturer, Cutter Laboratories. Meanwhile a black market has developed, and the New York Herald Tribune has called on the government to take over the production, distribution and use of the vaccine, and control supplies. The President has promised, at the very least, to buy up the entire supply of the vaccine and distribute it free if "poor children are being put at a disadvantage." Follows a discussion of the way in which slight restrictions on credit have led to slight reductions in homebuilding, with some handwringing about whether demand will keep up with housing starts. The Justice Department is still pursuing anti-trust actions because it hates business despite the President, but probably the Hilton chain will get away with it. The Texas City tin smelter will continue in operation at the United States Government's expense because it has to buy Indonesian and Bolivian tin and add refined tin to the national strategic supply or someone, somewhere will have a coup. Texas? A long explainer about party politics in New England. A look at the way that voluntary marketing cooperatives are or aren't controlling potato markets, which are prone to overproduction and price collapses, especially because annual potato consumption in the United States has fallen from 180lbs in 1900 to 99lbs in 1955. 

The World Overseas 

"Faeroes: Squalls and Heavy Seas" "The immediate threat of serious bloodshed in the Faeroe Islands has been averted." I haven't beein paying attention? Anyway, there are radical separatists and not-radical not-separatists (I imagine), and there was a general strike, and the provincial government called for some Danish police to restore order, and there was a confrontation in the harbour when they debarked. "The Faeroese, descended from Norsemen, are a strange and unruly race." Uganda's progress to becoming a "predominantly African state" continues, but so do fights between Buganda and the central government. The Dutch and Indonesians are squabbling, over New Guinea among other things. Two kinds of Italian Christian democrats are fighting while the Liberals and Social Democrats try to be helpful. The Central African Confederation has politics now, here's some! A second installment on "Spain in Transition" goes into details about how Spain, which is not Fascist, is getting less Fascist. We get a review of "Chile's Economic Troubles," which are due to inflation, and the cuts in public expenditures, price controls, obligatory savings and wage controls prescribed to control it, and the bad government of Carlos Ibanez, who turns out to be too old to be a proper strongman. 

A Special Feature on "Building Societies and Housing" follows. It is quite long. 

The Business World

"Flexible Money in Action" The recent monetary policy is great! Shipping lines are doing okay right now and stuff, with two charts with more details. 

Business Notes

Money! Finances! The cotton industry wants even more subsidies! Copper prices need support! "Waterloo for Lorry Sales" traces the failure of the Government's failure to sell off the lorry fleet it built up in the roughly two weeks that road haulage was nationalised. That was bad, whereas leasing Government lorries and then dropping them off at the Government depot is great. For business, not so much the taxpayer. The British Trade Fair that's apparently too big is off to a quiet start, while the price of coal will be pretty low this summer due to the usual off-season price cuts meant to encourage stockpiling. It is still not clear when commercial television gets a proper start in Britain, event hough there is now the first (BBC radio) VHF station broadcasting in Britain, with more to follow in Scotland and Northern Ireland. They are meant to compete with all the offshore medium frequency stations that drown out the BBC during the night. 

Aviation Week, 2 May 1955

I always assumed that Stan Lee was using 
"transistor" like he used "cybernetics." But it
turns out there was at least one past-his-prime 
German talking about broadcast power
transistors and being taken seriously.

News Digest reports that Douglas is working on a turboprop version of the DC-8 and that the first DC-7B has made its maiden flight. Curtis-Wright is building a new research, development and test flight facility in "central Pennsylvania." Joseph Towle of Lockheed is the latest aviation industry figure to die before his time at 49. Industry Observer reports that it was an armaments explosion that apparently caused the loss of one of the two XF-104s last month, and, according to Lockheed, there is nothing wrong with its aerodynamics, structure, or powerplant. The initial cost of the Hughes Falcon missile was $89,000, it is currently $19,000, and Hughes hopes to get it down to $10,000. The Bell Rascal air-to-ground missile is getting closer to service. The Navy is sending its atomic-power-for-seaplanes project from the Office of Naval Research to the Bureau of aeronautics because the project is "taking shape." Various parts are lasting longer, making planes like the B-47 cheaper to operate. The USAF now has 16,000 J47s or the equivalent in spare parts in its inventory. If you've ever wondered how many planes in a wing, it is 30 in a heavy bomber wing, 45 in a light, 48 in a fighter-bomber, and a fighter interceptor squadron is authorised at 25. The present fly-away cost of a B-47 is $2.25 million. The Bureau of Aeronautics is launching a programme of replacing or rehabilitating Government-owned machine tools ordered during WWII and will do 10% of them in 1956. Hydro-Aire's Hans Holmann is working on small transistorised devices that require no power source because they are powered by the carrier wave of conventional broadcast stations. "Technique has important military uses." Washington Roundup reports that there's a new guy at the Defence Department trying to get a handle on classified information, but the industry is steering clear of him because who wants the trouble? American is leading industry resistance to the Navy plan to lease out its cargo planes. Congress wants to know why the new ARDC centre is going in at Dayton instead of Baltimore like they promised. The Pentagon is looking at painting buildings on exposed bases in neutral colours so bombardiers can't see them. (Your tax dollars at work!) The Chief of Naval Operations "Staunchly defended carrier aviation" at recent House appropriation committee hearings against Representative George Mahon, who doubts that they are cost effective, in the Mediterranean, anyway. 

Robert Hotz reports for Aviation Week  that "Airpower Advances at 'Teapot' Tests" I include the original punctuation because I am confused that we have given up the all-capitalisation format for operational code names and adopted a new and confusing punctuation instead. Oh, right, the article. There's a few more details than in the article in The Economist that I have already discussed out of order below, such as that one of the operations to test the idea of "exploiting a nuclear breach" was the largest helicopter assault operation yet by 34 Sikorsky H-19s, and that it was possible to drop atomic bombs on the test site accurately because of excellent traffic control and improved group-drop techniques. Also in the news is the latest reassurance from the Department of Defence that small business is getting its fair share, the latest on the services' air power plans to be presented to Congress, word of the USA's "Project 299" to produce "an entirely new family of weapons on short notice, Los Angeles' reply to the Secretary of the Air Force's incautious comments about not sending air force contracts to the city because it had enough business already, and more from CNO Admiral Carney's deposition, including that the Navy is going all in for sea planes, wants more helicopters, and is worried that the Reds have better jet engines. The Secretary of the Navy chimed in with hopeful words about VTOL aircraft and cold water for ICBMs. (I'm sure you can work out the abbreviations by now.) The Army is working on a Nike successor, the CAA is tired of would-be helicopter lines pretending that it is the lack of heliports holding them back, and the furor over Karl Honaman's appointm

ent to control nonclassified-information-that-we-need-to-start-pretending-is-secret has turned into a party fight based on the premise that it was a sop to the GOP delegation in Congress. It is now-not-classified-but-also-not-secret that the Army is going to use 50 helicopters to do topographical surveys in Alaska and Iceland, among other places. The work will be done by the 30th Engineer Group, and the rest of a page-and-a-half article is about the Group and the Army's new De Havilland Canada Otters. 

 George Hoover reports for Aeronautical Engineering that "Spaceship Instrument Study Needed Now" This is actually a call for a spaceship control console with some arguments for what should be included in the way of display information. It's fairly extensive but also seems a bit unreal, for example calling for instrumental measurement of "meteorite hits," which it seems to me would be hard to miss, far too destructive to be worth measuring, and a trivial risk in any case, as I understand the astronomical numbers. Henry Lefer reports that "Trade Secrecy Slows Aviation Progress, SAE Panel Holds," although in practice much of the discussion revolved around the services' secrecy efforts. Though, when you think about it, there's a connection. How exactly does security classification interact with trade secrecy? Canada has a new wind tunnel, cheaper magnesium, and better hand tool alloys are reported.

Philip J. Klass reports for Avionics that "Punch Card Control Gives Auto-Assembler Flexibility" GE's Automatic Component Assembly System was actually in a 1952 article but now the problems that we didn't mention then are completely solved and it is better than all its competitors because it has punch card control. It sounds like it  just plugs components into printed circuits, and the story has a box feature about United Shoe Machine Corporation's automatic assembler, which is just like the General Mills Autofab. 

"Experts Doubt Claim Paint Blinds Radar" So this is connected to the story I made fun of above about the Air Force painting hangars at exposed bases. Canadian Inventive and Scientific Associates, Ltd., of Toronto, reports that there's a paint that blinds radar out there somewhere, so Aviation Week went to talk to a leading scientist at a leading USAF research centre and he says, "No way!" But the president of the Canadian firm, and don't ask me why a firm is "reporting," Dr. John D. Laun, tells Aviation Week, "Way." It was invented by two Swiss scientists, who were flown to the U.S. by the Defence Department eight months ago. Dr. Laun doesn't want to name the research agency involved for secrecy reasons, and instead will demonstrate the blinding paint on Canadian television soon. Filter Centre reports that the ANDB is working on a simpler transponder, that the Hughes interceptor fire control system is up to at least the Mark 4, which is installed in the RCAF's CF-100, weighs 48lb, occupies 15 cubic feet, and uses 211 tubes. The WADC has a 591p booklet on frequency control, write for your copy, Filter Centre apologises for making it appear that the AFCRC was the only sponsor of triplate microwave components, and an air force general reminds the industry that reliabilty is important, too. 

Irving Stone reports for Production that "Mars Turbine to Power Avionics Tests" And no, this isn't a continuation of George Hoover's article about what controls the astronauts of the future will need to navigate from Jupiter to Mars. It's a reference to Solar Aircraft's Mars gas turbine, which will be attached to test planes on the emergency circuit to provide more electric power to test their avionics to see whether they will work if the engines are lost and the plane has to resort to emergency power, only without turning off the engines first. Probably. Since it's actually mostly an article about the various models of Mars turbines available, which are distinguished mainly by the way that they hook up to aircraft electronics, the details of the tests probably don't matter very much. Northrop has a new iridium anti-corrosion treatment, and Chance Vought likes its new chemical etching technique.

George L. Christian reports for Equipment that "LASI Tailors Aid Plan to Smaller Fleets," In other words, Lockheed's aircraft service division at Idlewild is available to support the maintenance departments of smaller airlines. Philips Control of Santa Monica has the best hydraulic actuator ever. Chemstrand has put the best new fuel cell ever, made by Firestone, in its Lockheed Loadstar. RCA is offering a C-band weather radar through AiResearch. New Aviation Products reports the best cockpit loudspeaker amplifier ever, from Aircraft Radio, while Precision Threaded Products demonstrated a bolt with a built-in loading gauge at the recent SAE confab, Crane Packing has Teflon packing yarn, Cincinnati Shaper has a 36 ton press brake, GE has a submersible motor, Magnaflux has a one-handed adapter, Ivy's creep and fatigue detector is cheaper than the competition and just as good. What's New covers one guide, one catalog, three bulletins, a product sheet and a booklet, and has received Air Navigation, Jane's for 1954--55, and the Television and Radio Encyclopaedia. The company literature includes three on materials, one on a hydraulic component and two on instruments. Air Transport has a coverable story, as Boeing reiterates that it will be able to deliver jet airliners in '58. 

Robert Hotz's Editorial supports American Airline's proposal of a 20% "fine" on no-show passengers and looks into the USAF's extension of its research into the effects of air crashes into automobiles, noting that 678 USAF personnel were killed in auto crashes last year compared with 700 in aircraft accidents. "So far the auto industry has shown little interest in the project but we expect that the public that contributed 36,200 highway deths in 1954 will be vitally concerned." 

The Economist, 14 March 1955

Leaders

"Electing Peacemakers" Three pages about how all the parties want to be peacemakers but mainly the Tories, probably because Labour and the Liberals (SIGH) to follow. It is explained that there are too many strikes and everyone hates them, and that the Western European Union is not, in fact, the United States of Europe. An installment of "The Election of 1955" follows, looking at the marginal constituencies that will determine just how big the Tory wave will be. 

Notes of the Week

There is talk of a disarmaments conference in Moscow, the Warsaw "conference" of Communist European states propose that the conference should be the model of an all-European security system excluding American and British forces and bases. Walter Ulbricht suggests that German reunification will not lead to Western financiers and industrialists regaining their property in the East. The Economist suggests that the nationalised concerns will remain nationalised and that instead it will entail American aid to make everyone whole and that payments will not be generous, and it piously hopes that Washington will make it clear just how little they will get back. The Liberal election platform is awful. The Economist urges newly neutral Austria to build a large army just like Switzerland's, in spite of it upsetting the Russians. Both sides are at fault for the situation in Cyprus. Everyone is waiting for one more signal from Peking that it is willing to talk about peace that will finally correct the impression left by the military buildup on the Straits. All three parties are wrong about agriculture, just in different ways. Labour is daft for being in favour of building the hydrogen bomb but being against testing it. Fallout isn't so bad! Honestly, with all our dysgenic breeding these days, a bit of genetic mutation from fallout isn't so bad in comparison. A long Note explains how hard it has been for the Japanese to negotiate that long sought-for trade agreement with China. It looks as though the Turkish-Jugoslav Balkan alliance won't be a bulwark of regional security, after all. Under the promising heading of "The Coldest War," The Economist explains Britain's decision to submit its Antarctic claims, which mainly have to do with the established settlement on the Falkland Islands rather than its claimed slice of the coldest continent, to the International Court of Justice, unilaterally. It is hoped that Chile might come along eventually, but probably not Argentina. Whether this leads to the coldest and most comic-opera, war of all, seems a bit unlikely to me.  Speaking of possible comic-opera wars, the delegation from Somaliland that was in London protesting attempts to give away a vast region of desert pasture, which has been incorporated in Ethiopia for many years de facto, and per final treaty settlements, hence forth de jure. This is particularly upsetting since they have absolutely no desire to associate themselves with Somalia to the south, but the border rectification leaves the two protectorates forming a perfect  "7" on the Horn of Africa, and who doesn't like a country with symmetry? The new Irish budget is terrible but thanks due to Finance Minister Gerard Sweetman for not making them worse. There are cost of living problems in Eastern Europe, and the price cuts implemented everywhere but East Germany and Hungary, where inflationary pressures are particularly acute, are not going to be enough to quell dissent. European-held dollar funds might be enough to support convertibility soon if Germany plays along. 

From The Economist of 1855, "Evils of War and Peace" "To war men are impelled by their natural impulses, wich carry society forward in their course." War. It's unavoidable, and maybe good. But only as long as it is paid for with tax increases, which will be enough if there is no "mismanagement," and not evil war loans, which are actually worse than wars. 

Letters

S. H. V. Sanandaji writes from the Iranian embassy that Iran can join the Middle Eastern security pact if it wants to, and Russia can stuff that in its pipe and smoke it! A litigator for the liquidator of the Lake Copais Estate is for some reason given four paragraphs to lay out the fight that the liquidator is having with the Greek government, which has a snake for reasons that I will now [SNORE]. Harold Manheim writes from New York to explain why the fraud at Lloyds would never have been possible in the United States with its more stringent laws about cheque cashing. 

Wikipedia: "A British-built Lake Copais Company dredger at work." The picture is from an ancient edition of the Britannica, and the story 
is interesting enough for an appendix. It's rare to find a  business story that bridges Bronze Age and modern times! 

Books

Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash is not the book about the Wall Street Crash we have been waiting for. The reviewer clearly regards its causes as somewhat mysterious, its consequences unclear, and its relation to modern times also a problem, since claims about a repetition being impossible are being made on both sides of the argument for controls on stock market activity. So being silly and flippant, as Galbraith is, is definitely not what the current stock market highs call for! R. K. Kelsall, Higher Civil Servants in Britain is not nearly as worthy a book as its stupefying title suggests. GT. S. Gale's No Flies in China is one man's view of China, according to which China is undergoing its first revolution in thousands of years, and that it is no less popular for being driven by foreign ideas, and that the higher ranks of the party will have to reckon with that popularity eventually. R. K. Webb's The British Working-Class Reader, 1790--1848 is a study of what British working class people read, which, remarkably, is possible, with lots of quotations and even reprinting of shorter documents in full. Nevertheless, it's not terribly good. Pamela Bright's Life in Our Hands is a "the personal story of a nursing sister who landed in Normandy soon after D-Day" and who sounds a bit priggish. W. D. Lamont's The Value Judgement  is deemed to not be a very successful study, featuring a psychologist intervening in a philosophical debate with some not-too-useful theoretical tools drawn from economics. 

American Survey

"Dilemma in Saigon" Diem is horrible, the Communists will march right in as soon as French Union troops withdraw unless something is done, which the Americans will have to do, but they don't want to. The solution is apparently to keep propping Diem up, which everyone but the Americans think is too silly for words. It is supposed that it is dawning on Americans that a scheme of "Republican" containment of China to match "Democratic" containment of Russia is impossible, that something has to be done with "Asian neutralism" instead, and that this is perhaps the way that the United States can avoid havig to give teeth to its treaty projects with American power. 

Way too much reality in this conversation. 

"Doomsday Drive" The largest atomic device ever tested in Nevada was detonated last week, at nearly twice the power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Eye witness accounts tell of a second sunrise visible 300 miles away, from Oregon to the Mexico border, and it was all in aid of experiments with "battlefield" atomic weapons, so that 55 tanks and 24 armoured personnel carriers, parked within 3000 yards of the blast, were promptly ordered to drive towards ground zero. 2300 soldiers and 700 civilians observed the blast with smoked glasses, and the armoured thrust relieved a model town built "one to two miles" from Ground Zero, driving down a lane posted as "Doomsday Drive" to examine the ten test houses, the furniture inside, the supplies stockpiled there, and the animals penned in them. The test marks a change to more and more open atomic secret sharing with allies, and coincides with Turkey becoming the first participant in the President's "atoms for peace" plan, receiving enriched uranium from the United States for a test reactor. The President is also proposing an atomic-powered merchant ship to show the flag, although Congress is not inclined to go along with it. The steel industry's booming recovery shows the strength of the American economy. 

"Polio Strikes Back" "The bright hopes which surrounded the announcement, a month ago . . ." of the Salk vaccine's effectiveness "are being choked by a confusion compounded oif emotional publicity and official unpreparedness." To this point, 52 of 5 million children inoculated have come down with acute polio, all but eight from vaccines provided by Cutter Laboratories. The NIH has now stopped approvals of all newly-made vaccines while a committee of experts reviews the situation. Distribution of the vaccine may resume after inspections of the factories, perhaps under Federal supervision, but for now everyone is concentrating on what is important, which is criticising the government for its "ineptness." 

A BSA Winged Wheel if I'm not misinterpreting the thumbnail:
https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/date_tax/1955/

The International Finance Corporation is getting final approval from Congress, juvenile delinquents roam the asphalt jungles of New York with impunity due to their seniors being unwilling to discipline them, and there is some question as to whether the American bicycle industry needs tariff protection from surging European imports, or a reversal of its "defeatist attitude," which leads it to produce bicycles that Americans don't want to buy. The Economist helpfully suggests that they get out of the market and make some other product where they have a "competitive advantage." A two page explainer on the burgeoning American "right to work" movement follows.

The World Overseas

The Germans sure are dumb, what with being insufficiently pro-NATO and toying with reunification and all. The Labour Front has formed Singapore's first local government, and has not promptly sent all the priests and nobles to the guillotine, so we can probably relax. The final French evacuation of Haiphong is sending 18000 French troops to North Africa or possibly Saigon. Since the anti-French nationalist revolutions are still in progress there, the troops are more needed than in Haiphong, where it is over and they lost, which might even be a good enough reason to leave Haiphong in itself! Everyone hopes that Dulles will "counsel moderation" to Diem. Afghanistan and Pakistan may be fighting, depending on whether the armed militants involved in the recent Peshawar incident were "Pakistani hirelings"  or Afghan dissidents, as Pakistan has claimed. Although since this was retaliation for attacks on the Pakistani embassy in Kabul, arguably the Afghans were responsible. But since those were retaliation for . . . And there I leave the discussion! A war between Pakistan and Afghanistan seems like a terrible idea, but Russia has offered its support to Kabul,so the consolation here is that it could get worse. Speaking of which, General Peron's anticlerical campaign has reached a new pitch with alleged discoveries by the Argentinian police of bombs and "vast plans of agitation." Our Correspondent in India reports on "India's Socialist Property Owners," who are socialists only by an Indian definition.

The Business World

"No Future for Free Markets?" International commodity marketing boards, agreements, associations, strategic stockpiles, and other means of moderating price fluctuations might be a bad thing probably but maybe not. Anyway, they're bad news for the City, and let's keep our eye on the ball, here! Everyone should calm down about Royal Dutch Shell's latest annual report. It's hard to supply all that oil! 

Business Notes

Trade deficit down! Why? Don't know! Factory and machine tool investment is booming even more. Steel capacity is at record levels, 394,000t per week. Railway modernisation is going well, so far. BEA will probably break even this year if it can maintain 65% fleet utilisation, largely due to the falling cost of engine maintenance thanks to the Viscounts. Two British public/private firms for international investment seem to be doing well, but higher interest rates in Britain make it harder for the Commonwealth Development Finance Corporation to loan abroad.  The trial Britannias sent to South Africa were a great success, a certificate of airworthiness will follow in the fall, but will not necessarily mean commercial service will follow, because the Britannia is the largest and most complex machine ever built in Britain, so it is a good idea to make sure that it is ready before it enters service. Production of the current Britannia model is being shifted to  Belfast so that Filton can concentrate on the long range Britannia for Atlantic service. Government finance for films, per the latest returns of the National Film Finance Corporation, is uncertain and mercurial, although on the other hand that means that no-one but the Government will do it.The Independent Television Authority has "completed its programme" for four of the available television channels in Britain. The BBC has already received four, and the fight will now be over the last four. Britain and Brazil are fighting over cotton prices again. I'd go into more detail here but The Economist is doing even more of the usual "All we  have to do is explain how dumb the Brazilians are," so I distrust the value of any summary I can offer.

 

"Houses for Tobacco" So the Americans have troops in Britain who need housing. Britain receives American military aid. So far, so good. But now the Americans are offering tobacco for houses (on rent), so that depending on when the Americans might vacate the housing, there is a prospect of a British windfall (£5.3 million). This is because the Americans are desperate to unload the tobacco. Meanwhile, regular negotiations for the regular aid are extending past the June deadline because the British have decided not to take canned citrus, as while the fruit is grown in the West Indies, who stand to benefit, it has been determined that the California packers who will can it, will benefit more. Instead, the commodities offered to meet the mutual defence aid are a package of cotton, edible fats, maize, and "fruits," plus compensation for shipping costs since the commodities are required by law to ship in American bottoms (£26.4 million). All of this goes into the British defence budget in the first instance, but of the total aid, it has been agreed that $13.7 million  will be used by the Americans to buy British military equipment.

I cannot stress enough how sane and rational these arrangements are!

Flight, 14 May 1955

Leaders

"Concerning This Issue" The world's air forces are great, even if some of them, sometimes, are supposed to drop hydrogen bombs, for which we apologise by noticing that the strategic bombers are pioneering flight refuelling, which is great, and also notice that the Mexican Air Force is dedicated to search and rescue, which is nice. I had no idea what this meant, beside a badge on the cover reading "Military Aviation" that intimated a special issue. This, indeed, is what it's about. Most of the issue is dedicated to a special feature on "The World's Air Forces: Their Composition, Duties and Aircraft." So if you want to know what the tail insignias of the Pakistan Air Force looked like in 1955, this will be the reference work for you!

From All Quarters reports that Americans are interested in Viscounts, Australians are not interested in V-bombers (yet), that Armstrong Siddeley Vipers are doing well in a Swiss prototype, that A. F. Burke is replacing the late Major Halford as chairman of de Havilland Engine Corporation, that Bulgaria has more MiGs, that the Fleet Air Arm loves its Wyverns, more about the first BEA profit, the Sea Hawk production cut at Armstrong Whitworth, that Sir William Verdon Smith is retiring at Bristol, an obituary for Louis Breguet, and very brief blurbs about the first Dutch Hunter amd this year's Wilbur Wright Lecture, "Flight Control," to be given on 19 May, round out this feature. 

All sarcasm aside, the test pilot heroes of the Jet Age earned their press

Here and There reports that employment in the British aviation industry continues to rise at the rate of 2000/month, and that's it, essentially. Civil Aviation has news of new Atlantic "family" fares, coverage of Lufthansa's first international services, notification of changes to BOAC's summer schedules, details of Canadian Pacific's trans-Polar service, and notice of The Journal of the Guild of Air Traffic Control Officers, with a very brief review of articles in the first issue calling for standardisation of air traffic control methods, a call for higher landing fees to fund new equipment, and a slice of life account of air traffic control in Nigeria. 

"Quidnunc," "More Thoughts on Jet Lift: Getting Down to Economics" Do aircraft that take off vertically under direct jet power  make economic sense? Maybe yes, maybe no. Follows a brief look at current Breguet projects, the 941 turboprop transport aircraft with short runway capability already covered here, and one of those throw-away passenger experience articles, this one about a westward-bound flight in a  BOAC  Stratocruiser. This doesn't quite walk us into the reference section, since Civil Aviation (and the as-usual uncovered Service Aviation feature) intervene, but close enough. If your ears perk up at that last, it is because Service Aviation is just an extract from the London Gazette with (sometimes) service sporting news. It's the place to go if you want to know who the new commander of HMAS Melbourne is and can't be bothered with the Australian equivalent of the Gazette, and it sometimes has nice pictures, but it is otherwise skippable. Like the reference section. 

Correspondence has B. H. Liddell Hart praising Flight's review of Lovelock's book about T. E. Lawrence. F. Gerrie Wilson corrects and expands on the recent article about boundary layer control in the  Lockheed T2V-1. F. C. Carvey and B. G. Howland discuss the latest aeronautical visual mystery, the black lines seen extending behind B-47s flying at high altitude, which are probably shadows. Peter G. Cooksley, F. A. Kappey, and Douglas Taylor are on about the old days, before the war. The Aeronautical Bookshelf receives and reviews Arthur C. Clarke's Expedition to Earth and Adolf Galland's The First and the Last. The first is definitely fiction, the last probably is, and is a more gripping read. 

 

Fortune's Wheel reports that the Chicago Art Club is having a show and you, yes, you, reader, are going to start appreciating modern art, or Fortune will be just so upset with you!

Letters has a nasty letter from Frederick Williams of the Williams Research Council, but Fortune stands its ground. E. W. H. Lumsden and Aloysius Scnuszler want to argue with Russell Davenport because he is too nice to Marx. Gordon Larson of the Air Pollution Council reminds us that the Council exists. F. Gallagher points out that the number of coal miners continues to decline. Elizabeth Read Brown reminds Fortune of the importance of tight money to causing depressions, which makes Fortune all huffy, because it thinks it gave tight money the attention it deserves. 

Business Roundup reports that business is optimistic about 1956 but points out the mystery of continuing high unemployment, which actually should be higher, considering the rate of economic growth and the expected job creation rate. This is probably due to short time in the factories and bad census data. Inventories and wages are increasing. Business Notes From Abroad reports that the French like bottled water, which makes it a good business, that Italy is fussed about oil, especially the Po basin reserves, that Germans are not enthusiastic about price competition because of some businessman who is upset that his cheap radios and televisions are being boycotted by repair shops. Brown Boveri is working on a made-in-Switzerland atomic power reactor for export. Irish distillers are trying to promote whiskey exports to the United States. 

Leaders look at Argentina and Brazil's attempts to find oil in their own territories because the cost of oil imports are holding their economies back. Shorter Leaders are critical of Westinghouse's rationale for protection and plans to expand the TVA, argue for stock options as additional compensation for scarce engineers. It makes fun of the FTC's dogged attempt to hold tobacco companies responsible for their  misleading health advertising, which is apparently an offence against free enterprise because if Philip Morris wants to say that its cigarettes cure red eye, who is hurt besides everybody? A very short Leader points out that Canadians are less boring now because they have a budget deficit. 

Much of this month's Fortune is devoted to management matters. It looks at "middle-sized" management, which is a new thing, the causes of managers' nervous breakdowns ("the managerial crackup"), has a very boring and pointless essay about how taxes and technology have affected the growth of du Pont de Nemours, and corporate profiles of Borg-Warner, which emphasises high profit items, Philco, which is selling its way to success, and Armour's success with Dial deodorant soap.  On a less creditable light, Fortune looks at the story of Arthur Rubinstein through his murder, giving a financial magazine's view of the biggest crime story of 1955. 

"A Normal British Crisis" explains why Rab pushed the exchange rate up, restrained consumer credit, and intervened to support the pound because it was the only alternative to socialist planning. Britain has a reserve of industrial skill that is shown by its many new industries and products, such as the Britannia, the new Rolls Royce turbine,  which will probably go in to the DC-7 turboliner (but see Aviation Week) and nuclear power. 

Dero A. Saunders, "Those Expensive Highways" has statistics about just how many miles and how much money in new roads will be needed through 1975. Lots! Fortune is very concerned with financing it all. 

Francis Bello, "Greatest Year for Glass" A very brief review of a large and growing industry, but mostly innovation at Corning in the field of glass surfacing laminates, extra-strong glass (a French innovation). Very interesting is large furnace optical glass making, as opposed to pot production. This is surely not a Corning innovation, but it allows  for the casting of very large lenses, such as 36" lenses of aerial cameras, so that's a big part of the WWII story. It is also making TV screens, wraparound windscreens, and very large plates for picture windows, where attention focusses on double glazing, since they lose a lot of heat.