R. C.,
Shaughnessy, Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
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| Smaller than Sputnik, but solid state. NASA. No spying, pinkie swear! |
Looking around Nakusp and comparing it with Kamloops, I certainly see the advantages of being on a river that flows into the United States, the innocent young mother said, innocently!
Your Loving Daughter,
"Second Stop on Formosa" The Americans and Chinese are talking in Geneva, the Chinese have freed the American airmen and are being very moderate, while the Americans seem to have reconciled themselves to "two Chinas" as an alternative to WWIII. So maybe there is going to be detente in Asia, too. And talking about talking, it's Recess in London and a good time to blather on about British politics and remind everyone that inflation is terrible and can be compared to high unemployment under Baldwin. That's still not enough talking about talking, but a bit of blather about Adenauer's upcoming visit to Moscow. The Ministry of Housing isn't doing enough to prevent the "suburbisation" of Britain. If this keeps up, Britain could lose 8% of its farmland and be confronted with terrible traffic problems.
The plebiscite in the Saar is on for October, but that's just a sentence of news and we need to write three entire paragraphs, so now is the time to worry about how the vote and campaign will be conducted. It might be wrong, somehow! Marshal Tito is currently saying nice things about the Kremlin, and the Government seems to be coming around to thinking about what it is going to do about the Nathan Committee's report on charitable trusts, which is pretty much nothing. The Economist disagrees.
"Reaching for the Moon" The dramatic announcement that the United States is "planning to launch into space the first man-made satellite" has naturally excited everyone on all quarters, although investors who have bid up atomic energy stocks in New York instead of "certain chemical and engineering" firms which are actually involved, come in for a scolding. It is planned, The Economist summarises, as a contribution to the International Geophysical Year, and will involve a multi-stage rocket soaring "though the troposphere and the stratosphere into the ionosphere at an orbital speed of 18,000mph. The Economist then proceeds to embarrass itself on the subject of celestial mechanics by supposing that American scientists must have licked the problem of propelling "the bird" "sideways" as well as "up." (Honestly, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to point my finger and laugh, which is why I have a husband!) Certain Senators are upset that the Administration has called on the ret of the world to collaborate, but, after all, it will be flying over them, the magazine points out. The countries of the world, that is, not the Senators, who still live on the next Earth over, which is flat. The President's order on security, which led to 3,432 civil servants being dismissed and 5,447 resigning, has been upheld by the Court of Appeals, and will go to the Supreme Court, which is likely to take a hard look at it, as the courts have lately been doing in matters of security and subversion.
"Social Credit Looks East" It's nice that The Economist is paying attention to Canada, and in its foreign news section, at that. I guess we will just have to wait a generation and see if the Social Credit Party (but not, as the article takes pains to point out, the Social Credit movement, which is still dead) "sweeps to power in Ottawa." I have my doubts. Also, is Nato going to be the basis of the United States of Europe via its Atlantic Assembly? No! Is implying that a good excuse to talk about its latest reorganisation? Sure. Everyone loves talking about the reorganisation of diaphanous international entities! Our Tokyo Correspondent concludes his explanation of "Problems of Japan's Defence, II" with an extended observation to the effect that Japan's defence problem is that it isn't fascist enough. And the last time worked out so well for Japan! Our Wellington Correspondent explains that "New Zealand Tackles Inflation" by running a budget surplus and cutting consumer credit. "Whether [restricting capital formation] will also restrict development in a young country, will continue to be a matter of argument." Red China is getting riled up by bad economic times. The Economist points to reports that "royalist rebels" are on the rise, meaning Uncle George and his last three friends in Peking? Because someone has been feeding The Economist prime grade manure, and it's not just The People's Daily!
"Camera weather" More than ten million people in Britain own cameras and they'll all be out taking pictures because it is summer time and the living is easy. The industry wishes that people would start taking snapshots all year round, achieving new frontiers of revenue above the current £20 million a year for personal photography. Winter flash photography might be easier with the new, cheap GE flashbulbs, but that is not showing up in the numbers yet. X-rays and photocopying still buoy the industry in the off months and get its total revenues past £50 million. Film, for domestic and export sales, is the most important component of that, and the U.K. market is divided between Kodak, which imports film from the United States, and Ilford's Bexford plant, sponsored by the Board of Trade and jointly owned by Ilford and BX Plastics. Everyone is concerned by Britain's failure to compete with German high grade precision cameras, apart from markets like aerial reconnaissance and movie cameras.
Developing is a much smaller part of the industry, although it hopes that colour photography will change that.
Tight money, etc., some more, gold outflows bad, the EPU is almost as bad as the alternative, hire purchase purchases are at a record high, which is probably bad. Yorkshire miners are refusing to work with the Italians that their lodges have agreed to accept, and the number of foreigners working in the coal industry is holding at 10,000, against a deficiency of 12,000 to 15,000 in Yorkshire alone. It's all very discouraging. The increase in coal prices is working its way through industry. About 776,000 televisions were produced in Britain in the first half of the year, with 467,000 televisions sold domestically and a total £13,501.000 in exports for the consumer electronics industry, up £500,000 over the same period last year. The industry hopes that sales will be maintained despite the new restrictions on hire purchase, that is, tight money, etc. Remember the sulphuric acid shortage? Well, now there's too much of it! There has been a fifty percent increase in British production capacity since 1951. Consumption will rise over the next few years as new plant comes into production, and in fact more production capacity may soon be needed; but right now there's that surplus to be got rid of. ICI's sodium reducing process for making titanium is so superior to the Kroll process used in American plants that it is thinking about building a plant in the United States, and exporting titanium there, in spite of the fact that the American stockpile is piling up thanks to industry's inability to consume it at the rate so confidently predicted when the current industry expansion began.
From All Quarters reports that a Vickers Valiant is going to fly down to Australia and swan about for no particular reason, and, less important but still newsworthy, the Americans are on about the first Earth satellite, which will be 20" in diameter and weigh 110lbs or so. Flight echoes The Economist's comments about a "side blast," in this case with the further information that it will be provided by the third stage. I should really look up the original press release rather than continuing to make fun of the press' inability to grasp celestial dynamics. The RAF is returning its F-86s now that it has Hunters. More details of the British Lockheed Trophy, an imitation Bleriot Flyer has flown across the Channel on the occasion of the forty-sixth anniversary, it is now permissible to mention the Napier Gazelle and Scarab rocket engine, there is to be a missile range in the Hebrides, and Hunting-Percival's P. 105 experimental helicopter has rotor tip jets fed gas by two Napier Oryx engines.
Here and There reports that charter lines are flying charter services, that Poland is working on a 20 seat helicopter for short haul services with Polish Airlines, that aerial sprayers in Northern Australia and adjacent parts of Queensland and are also dropping poison bait to control "dingoes and wild dogs."
Dennis Powell, "The Veteran Stratoliner: A Remarkable Record of Commercial and Military Service" TWA's five Stratoliners were sold to a French charter in 1951 and ever since they have been doing charter service, which, as always, will have some interesting interludes to fill out a page with desperately needed editorial content, you would think, but this is just a rehash of the history from some Boeing publication. The Aeronautical Bookshelf reviews Gerald Bowman's Jump For It, a history of parachuting, and Aviation English by S. Humbert, which is a primer for French speakers.
It is August, when the people left in charge at the offices of The Economist (SEE. ABOVE. INFRA. ETC.) try to imitate Time and fail horribly. The lead Note is some kind of attempt to link a news story in Pravda about the Politburo going on a picnic with the release of the American flyers, with a through line of Communism being bad. The Wages bill gets a discussion, and the so-called limits of equal pay, which is that obviously women aren't equal, and more complaining that there isn't to be more television coverage of political events, in this case the party conventions, and a bit of worry about all the nuclear tests this year that can't help itself but dissipate into communism being awful, and Jugoslav attempts to revitalise the Socialist International, and a paragraph that shows that The Economist can be moved to care about racial prejudice when it comes to attempts to bring Italian miners into Yorkshire pits, and a survey that shows British agriculture moving in the right (to The Economist, anyway, output being down) direction, and complaints about the civil service pay rise. Syngman Rhee is starting trouble in Korea and needs to be slapped down, is the magazine's opinion. Burma is in economic trouble due to the rapidly increasing rice production of the rest of the world, "Old China Hands" in British business are reported to be sick and tired of the Reds (British American Tobacco can't find a way to sell its Shanghai interest!), the Agricultural Ministry has an advisory service for farmers which hasn't had things its own way, there is an argument over budgeting hospital costs, The Secretary of State for Scotland has announced another new town, for Glasgow, which might be a mistake, there is too much litter in the parks in London, and The Economist apologises for slandering the National Union of Public Employees.
R. H. Osborne of Edinburgh explains why there shouldn't be a greenbelt between Edinburgh and the Esk Basin for very good reasons. "A Manchester Merchant" explains how Lancashire's inability to see off competition from Hongkong must have more to do with industrial inefficiency than Hongkong's competitive advantages. R. W. Bullard reads advice from 1580 to the effect that merchants in foreign lands who find that they can't sell English cloth because of poverty, should invest in local agriculture until they are rich enough to buy English worsted. (Which I think is actually a mix of wool and cotton, and so wouldn't be what the English were exporting in 1580, but sounds very old-fashioned, so that's why I said it!) Roy Peters explains that Americans don't buy more film and cameras because they have better photography weather, but rather because they can afford more. He points out that a Viewmaster, for example, costs an American worker $3, or two hours pay, while in Britain it costs 44s, or ten hours pay. "You will agree that the comparison is too ridiculous for comment."
The Political Economy of American Foreign Policy is a report by a study group sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the National Planning Association, because publishers hate bibliographers. The book is as long as the bibliographic entry, and, the reviewer says, almost as boring. It's about how "supra-nationalism" is good. Maxim Litvinov's Notes for a Journal is probably mostly a forgery. Peter Quennell's Hogarth's Progress is a book about . . . Hogarth! He's one of those early Eighteenth Century Englishmen that you're supposed to drop into conversation to imply that everyone who doesn't know what you're talking about is too ignorant to be in a grown-up conversation. (He was a cartoonist.) Raymond Aron's L'opium des Intellectuels is a clever play on words. He explains how, given that communism is awful, French intellectuals could be attracted to it. It's because they're unpatriotic and probably also crazy. Glad that's settled! Mark Rutherfortd's biography of William Hale White has all the inside scoop on "The Big Haley," as we call him in learned circles. Better not let on you've never heard of him! M. H. A. van der Vault's The Economic Future of Canada has a foreword by Prince Bernhard, so it must be good! It is wrong and stupid, especially the part where it says that Canada needs more people. M. d. H. Parker and Robert Speaight have studies of Shakespearian literature, Dermott Morrah a History of Industrial Life Assurance, and C. M. H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History, 1851-1900. with such important books to review, it's no wonder that Frederic Benham's Economics, 5th Edition, gets a short notice in spite of being the fifth edition of an economics textbook, alongside Henry Mayer and John Rydon's The Gwydir By-Election 1953, which is a new departure in books about byelections because it is an Australian byelection!
It's August so the first Leader is a look back at the past Congressional session that says nothing interesting or original that might lead to someone getting into trouble. But inflation is up and something has to be said, which is easy, because the answer is, as usual, tight money. Then, because the first Leader went over so well, here it is again! Labour negotiations with the copper workers isn't going well, but Congress has stepped in to repeal the Capital Transit Company's concession to operate the buses and trams in Washington so that the Commissioners can negotiate an end to the sttrike that has paralysed services in the national capital. As the Washington Post points out. it was probably Louis Wolfson's plan to spend the CTC's capital reserves and leave the husk to the District in the first place. Roy Roberts' proprietor of the Kansas City Star Company, has a monopoly on news and print advertisements in the Kansas City area, as well as being the eminence gris behind Truman and Eisenhower, so the trust-busting case just brought against him by the Federal government is going to be interesting to watch, especially now that the District Court has found for the government. "Banking Goes Gay" begins a Leader about how various American retail banks are doing various colourful things that staid Europeans might deem frivolous.
"The Woomera Valiant" The Valiant which has flown down to Australia for no particular reason sure is causing a stir!
Civil Aviation reports yet more about the Viscount, yet more about Canadian Pacific's trans-polar service, which you really cannot say enough about. So how about that CP polar service? Did you know that Peter Mansfield recently flew it? It's true! So how about it! That's it for that joke, so you can start reading again. Two years ago, Aviation Traders was talking about its "Accountant," a proposed twin-Dart DC-3 replacement, and has popped up to tell us that it is still under development. Aer Lingus has made a profit, The new terminal at London Airport is coming together.
W. Lewicki launches the multipart "Some Physical Aspects of Lubrication on Rolling Bearings and Gears," the Joint Metallurgical Societies' Meeting in Bochum launches off with some factory tours and an introductory talk on the Krupp-Renn process for smelting low-grade, highly silicious ores that was a big part of Germany's wartime mobilisation and which might be resumed in the future. The factory visits are documented with brief discussions of some big machines for the making, shaping, and treatment of iron and steel. Rolt Hamilton continues "Geophysical Prospecting" continues with a discussion of interpreting the results of gravimetric surveying.
A Seven-Day Journal reports that the thirtieth "Model Engineer" exhibit will be quite the affair, that the UKAEA reports that a low-power model of the Dounreay fast reactor will be in operation at Harwell by the end of the year and is codenamed ZEUS. Cambridge is setting up a new radio observatory with a £100,000 benefaction from Mullard, more of the Royal Society's proposed IGY work is announced, and DSIR is joining an international scheme to investigate the desalination of brackish water. The British Association is meeting in Bristol, and coverage of the Joint Metallurgical Societies' Meeting reconvenes in France, where it visited the works at Persan to look at the hot extrusion of steel, and at Creusot where the attraction was the continuous casting of alloy steel, which is done with the Holtzer Process, and is only really necessary or economical with high grade steels in small quantities. Gordon Wright has "Technical College Libraries: A Service to Industries," underlining the difficulty that industry has with keeping up with the flow of technical information. Speaking of flows, we receive a dispatch on the opening of the Usk Dam in South Wales.
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
The Economist, 6 August 1955
Leaders
From The Economist of 1855 comes "Professional Bureaucrats," which is a screed about how the civil service exams are bad.
Notes of the Week
The section leads off with a full page of denunciations of Labour and the TUC for not doing enough to getting ready to fix the country by being less leftist, broken with an apology to American subscribers. It turns out that The Economist is delivered so late because by law all foreign publications received by the US Post Office are sent to the Bureau of Custom for review as potential foreign propaganda, and this is leading to massive delivery backlogs. "We feel that any comment by us on this state of affairs might be in bad taste, and is certainly superfluous." That's what I was going to say!
British, unlike American schools, seem to be getting on top of the (much smaller) postwar childbirth bulge. The White versus Coloured labour problem in the Copper Belt seems headed for crackup, since the white unions want what is going to turn out to be apartheid, and that is just not going to fly. The Assembly is in summer recess and "the colonialists" in Paris are demanding that they be allowed to put up their summer camp on the Quai d'Orsay in case the government sneaks back from Provence to appoint a regency council in Morocco. The situation in Goa would be so much nicer of the "anti-colonialists" in "Asia" would just admit to themselves that Goans like being oppressed by Salazar and that when it inevitably and democratically becomes part of India it will all be painless and reasonable for reasons that do not even need to be explained except that India and Goa both have, I don't know, mango trees or something. This year's harvest is crucial for Khrushchev's regime. If the Soviet Union gets 20 million tons of wheat off the "Virgin Lands" and 18 million tons of maize ("the latest panacea"), it will be able to export grain to the satellites, so they don't have to buy it in the West. Parliament is still being a bunch of sissies over politicians on TV. A Royal Commission may soon be set up to study "re-rating," which is such a self-evident part of the British taxation system that it doesn't even need to be explained. British immigration isn't nearly nice enough to tourists, who bring money.
"More Haste in Malaya" Obviously we have to resist demands for the rapid transfer of self-government to Malaya and Singapore, but maybe we shouldn't be that stubborn, because the Communists will take advantage. Pakistan is finally falling in line with the British and Indian devaluation of 1949 and cutting the official rupee-dollar exchange rate. Now that they have a trade treaty with Red China, the Japanese are discovering that Communism is bad. The Assistance Board has done a special study that shows that over-80s are actually doing fine. The Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development would be a very worthy initiative if it ever got going.
Books
Hans Gatzke's Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany mercilessly exposes interwar German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann as being implicated in German rearmament, and draws the lesson that the Germans are okay right now, but you never know. L. S. Amery's My Political Life, Volume III, The Unforgiving Years, 1929--40. is a volume in the memoirs of a politician that The Economist really, really likes, which is my review of the review. Maurice W. Lee's EWconomic Fluctuations casts too wide a net in terms of the range of economic fluctuations it covers in various countries, and too narrow a one in the economics literature, failing to mention this writer and that, probably including the reviewer, oops! Albert Lauterbach, Man, Motives, and Money, and George F. F. Lombard, Behaviour in a Selling Group are both looks at the role of non-economic motivations in economic activity, and are part of a strong but not decisive challenge to economic science. Crescent and Green: A Miscellany of Writings on Pakistan is sixteen essays on the cultural heritage and life of Pakistan. The reviewer really liked it, although the reviewer also really likes Pakistan, so might be a bit biased. Alfred Salt's Jottings of a JP "could have been a very good book." But Salt doesn't have sufficiently pungent opinions. Adolf Berle's The Twentieth Century Capitalist Revolution is about how corporations have revolutionised capitalism and maybe need to be revolutionised themselves a bit
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Letters
D. H. Sargood of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce writes to explain that Australia can't have tight money because it is growing too quickly. James Tinn writes to explain why the housing market can't be just supply and demand. It's because of all the "homes broken and other social evils" which are not included in the economic cost. C. Henniken-Heaton of the Federation of Master Cotton Spinners' Association writes to explain why Lancashire deserves wool and cotton goods import tariffs. (I am going to spoil the ending: It's because they want to make more money.)
American Survey
"Balance in Sight" "In an economy of the fantastic proportions of this one, with output running at an annual rate of $380 billion, a swing of a billion dollars or so one way or the other in Washington" can't be that important, but the Administration has committed itself to a balanced budget as "almost a matter of honour," and the $3 billion deficit in sight is bad. But next year's budget will be balanced, and since next year is an election year, it actually matters! He will also be able to project a balanced budget and a tax cut in 1957. It is ironic that this is because Americans are "Keynsian in spite of themselves," in that they have a system of heavy taxes levied almost entirely on personal incomes and corporate profits, so that revenues fall in a recession and push he budget into deficit which stimulates the economy, and rise to create a surplus that checks the expansion, automatically stabilising the economy. The President should be grateful for this system, which he inherited from his Democratic predecessors. Congress has gone home after a productive session that gave the lie to the President's prediction of a "cold war" between White House and Capitol. But it was very boring for journalists to cover. Boo! Speaking of frustrating journalists, Harold Talbot has resigned as Secretary of the Air Force on the little matter of extracting at least $136,000 from Defence Department contractors he directed to do business with Paul B. Mulligan and Company, his "special partner." Various people are concerned about consumer credit again, so we are going to have a recession in 1958 to teach everyone who borrows money now a lesson then. I mean, I could be wrong, I am just a young mother, but every other time we've tightened money we've had a recession, and the President can't run in 1960! Speaking of which, American cotton farmers are irked because they'd like to sell more cotton even though we are selling less cotton, and would like some solution along the lines of the government paying customers to take it off the farmers' hands.
"Cultural Exports" A Special Correspondent looks at American cultural exports, which are taking off with official encouragement and corporate support. The Special Correspondent has a very broad idea of what cultural exports are, and includes NCR sponsoring supermarkets as well as performances of Porgy and Bess, "Which do much to dispel exaggerated ideas of racial prejudice" in the United States. This, of course, leads into the major motivator for this, which is the Soviet Union's success in portraying the United States as philistine as well as imperialistic and capitalistic. The President is looking to build on this by adding a National Advisory Committee on the Arts to the United States Information Agency.
The World Overseas
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| We have met the enemy, and it is Gore-Tex. And the EU. |
"After Israel's Election" The swing to the right nationalist Heruth party came as a surprise in the recent elections to everyone except people who attended the enthusiastic rallies for Menahem Begin, former leader of the Irgun. The General Zionists, who campaigned as the champions of free enterprise lost votes in spite of greatly reducing rationing and wage and price controls because organised labour is still too strong. Meanwhile, Mapai lost votes, and eight seats, because of fatigue with the Mapai regime. Ben Gurion's call for a stable majority that would allow him to introduce the British electoral system in place of proportional representation, has been repudiated. The three socialist parties together have 58 of 120 seats, and will need to attract the labour wings of the religious parties to form a government. What they will not do is ally with the extreme right-wing and expansionist Heruth.
The Business World
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| By Thistle33 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58654646 |
Developing is a much smaller part of the industry, although it hopes that colour photography will change that.
It's nice to have the leading article in Business cover an industry that actually makes things, but you can definitely have too much of a good thing, and an inquiry into marine insurance margins follows. Lloyd's was hurt by the American hurricanes due to its reinsurance business, which will be hit by windstorm claims, but mostly by the Wilcox scandal.
Business Notes
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| Once the F-108 and B-70 go into production all that titanium will be used up. By Anynobody - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18445244 |
Tight money, etc., some more, gold outflows bad, the EPU is almost as bad as the alternative, hire purchase purchases are at a record high, which is probably bad. Yorkshire miners are refusing to work with the Italians that their lodges have agreed to accept, and the number of foreigners working in the coal industry is holding at 10,000, against a deficiency of 12,000 to 15,000 in Yorkshire alone. It's all very discouraging. The increase in coal prices is working its way through industry. About 776,000 televisions were produced in Britain in the first half of the year, with 467,000 televisions sold domestically and a total £13,501.000 in exports for the consumer electronics industry, up £500,000 over the same period last year. The industry hopes that sales will be maintained despite the new restrictions on hire purchase, that is, tight money, etc. Remember the sulphuric acid shortage? Well, now there's too much of it! There has been a fifty percent increase in British production capacity since 1951. Consumption will rise over the next few years as new plant comes into production, and in fact more production capacity may soon be needed; but right now there's that surplus to be got rid of. ICI's sodium reducing process for making titanium is so superior to the Kroll process used in American plants that it is thinking about building a plant in the United States, and exporting titanium there, in spite of the fact that the American stockpile is piling up thanks to industry's inability to consume it at the rate so confidently predicted when the current industry expansion began.
Flight, 5 August 1955
Leaders
"The Form for Farnborough" Will it be a good Farnborough? The Handley Page Herald and Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer will get their first show, and the Fairey Delta 2. The Hunter 6 will probably show up, and the Gnat P.1. The Gyron and Rolls Royce Conway will probably have static displays, and the Fairey light helicopter, some CF-100s might round out the show. Also, British Lockheed has given the Royal Aero Club a new trophy, for a new international aerobatic competition, which will have substantial cash prizes.
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| Napier Gazelle --By Nimbus227 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7872829 |
J. W. Hogarth, "Marine Salvage by Helicopters: Achievements Realised and Possibilities Foreseen" In the news today, Flight is having trouble scrounging up enough copy for this issue and will publish a half-baked summary of recent uses of helicopters in marine salvage, combined with a bold prediction that there will be more of the same in the future. Still more exciting than a review of all the new light aircraft built by various European hobbyists and chancers and on show in Venice this month. I'm a little surprised that Venice needs to throw an air show to pack in a few more tourists, but Italy needs all the foreign exchange it can get, so, I guess?
"Super Sprite: The First British Production-type A.T.O. Rocket Motors" For a simple peroxide rocket it's a pretty long article.
"Napier Oryx" Also a very long article, much longer than the one about the National Gliding Championships that follows. Do they ever just glide?
Aircraft Intelligence reports that from America we get some solid information about V-bomber performance, specifically that they have a ceiling 5000ft above J57-powered types. Short blurbs describe the Lockheed C-130A Hercules, Fairchild M-225, a new North American jet trainer, a Convair conversion of the C-54 as an air search and rescue type, the Avro CF-100, the Morane-Saulnier M.S. 760, and the Fiat F-86K.
P. Oomen, "In Memory of MF and MF/DF" We look back, in a very untechnical way, at Europe's MF radio relay network, which was initiated in 1919, and was recently wound up.
The Industry reports that Steel, Pech, and Tozer are getting into steel ring for ball bearings production, that the British Plastics Exhibition was very successful, that the Viscount has air conditioning now, that Witton-Kramer has a variety of magnetic sweeps for airport service, and that both Shell-Mex and BP have new petrol tankers going into service at London Airport, that the Narco Simplexer VHF transmitter/receiver for light aircraft is great, and that they spray crops in Spain now.
Correspondence has John Bennet, A. F. Cressal, and J. Arnold recalling the old days, before the war; and Geoffrey Dorman demonstrating that he hasn't stopped being stupid since being shown the door at Flight. Civil Aviation has some Viscount news, the astonishing news that no-one is using the useless BEA South Bank-London Airport helicopter service, that London Airport is not going to be closing Runway 1 at night any more, the neighbours be hanged. BOAC Stratocruisers are getting vibration indicators like the ones that American operators are getting, to detect cracks in their hollow steel airscrews like the ones that have caused so many recent accidents. A Lockheed El Al Constellation has been shot down. The Bulgarians say that it flew off course and ignored radio instructions, and that AA opened up, and managed to hit it and bring it down, with the loss of 58 lives. BEA is introducing a car hire service at some Continental airports it serves, CAB is defending its decision to allow Lufthansa into some routes to Latin America by blaming the State Department for putting pressure on it, as it would be good for American diplomacy. Australian National Airlines is the latest airline to plan an experimental helicopter short haul service. Pan-American is negotiating a partnership with Siam Airways.
The Economist, 13 August 1955
The Economist, 13 August 1955
Leaders
The Economist points out the real problem with the Labour Party these days. The Tories are right about everything, so what has Labour to do? Pakistan is probably having an election or such. (I looked it up a newspaper that doesn't mind reporting the news in simple sentences near the top of the article; the election was in June and what The Economist is burbling on about is the formation of a government under Chaudhri Muhammed Ali. The Economist seems very pleased by it all. Germany, the next Leader points out, is having a boom that is now so bubbly that the German national bank has had to tighten credit, though not as much as it might have had to were Germans not great savers, and how about them apples, feckless British non-savers? But the Germans aren't perfect, as witness the fact that they still have to import coal.
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| "Rivers of blood." This crap just keeps on flowing. |
From The Economist of 1855 comes "Town versus Country," which explains that it's not really a question, because towns are great, and not nearly as non-patriotic, cosmopolitan, and so on, as has been supposed.
"The Repressed English" Twenty years ago, people were so awfully naive that they thought that "national character" was just a bunch of silly stereotypes. Now, thanks to war and postwar national mixing, "national character has regained respectability." Even from The Economist that is just such a terribly sad passage to read, especially after our Editor of 1855's inane meditations about the Russian war, patriotism, and free trade. (The point being that free trade doesn't make you less nationalistic, with the ancillary point that anyone who wants peace with Russia is not patriotic.) Which, slowly and indirectly, brings us to our point, which, because this is an August issue and the junior staff is in charge, is that Geoffrey Gorer has just published a "character-study" of the English, a sequel to his studies of the Russians and Americans, which have been well received. SIGH. And whereas the exquisitely constructed research of his previous book consisted of talking to people he met on his trips, this time he has done a mail-out questionnaire! The editorial writer/reviewer is all in for the conclusions (the English are very repressed), but thinks that mail-out questionnaires are a terrible thing because psychologists will use them to twist the masses around their little finger, or something like that.
Notes
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| Apart from the industrial park that The Economist is worried will attract new inhabitants rather than housing Glaswegians, Cumbrnauld is the site of the "only exposed Roman altar in Scotland." Becaiuse it was on the Antonine Wall, you see. I'm a bit surprised that the Wall has such prominent survivals! By Ross4587 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27607289 |
Letters
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| It appears that the British product would have been the Sightseer, a "copy" of View-Master's True Vue competition, so that as usual in these comparisons it is apples to oranges. |
John Harley has opinions about "rates." R. J. Venkateswaran points out that directing capital into small business in India carries the risk of perpetuating low incomes. James P. Macfarlane objects to The Economist's characterisation of the Fifth International Students' Conference. H. R. Pelly thinks that investment trusts are good for naive investors. Roger Falk wants to announce a travelling scholarship.
Books
American Survey
"Texas Towers" The first "Texas Tower," or offshore early radar defence platform, is now going in 110 miles southeast of Cape Cod. There will be between five and fifteen of them, eventually, and they will relieve current radar picket ships.
The World Overseas
"Fair Reports from France" Cancel all those gloomy reports on France's economy. It turns out that it is doing fine. Austria is finding that paying the Russians for their investments in their oilfields is hard because the Russian national bank drives a hard bargain. The United States of Europe continues to develop. The United Nations is also doing better this year than last. Indonesia has a new cabinet. Southern Rhodesia's scheme for housing Africans shows that it is committed to racial harmony. A Special Correspondent in Australia writes that everything is awful in Australia due to Labour Party infighting, backbencher dissension in the Liberal Party, low labour efficiency on the docks, rising prices and industrial unrest, and the weather. (I made that part up!)
The Business World
The Central Electrical Authority's first bond issue is very exciting to the kind of people who buy bonds. "Atoms for Sale" discusses the "Atoms for Peace" exhibition in Geneva, which has everyone very excited about the future of fusion power, which is certainly brighter than coal and oil, which are running out. The British and Russians are on the cusp of a more conventional(!) fission atomoic power industry. Americans think that atomic power is farther off, and are also making trouble over the supply of atomic fuel by offering it at a lower price than Britain can manage. Britain, which is prepared to export reactors but not fuel, has been wrong footed. That doesn't change the fact that the conference was very exciting, with a heady atmosphere thanks to being the first time that international atomic scientists were able to talk freely for the first time.
Business Notes
Money is up everywhere but in Britain, where the Treasury Secretary is just "exhorting," and unemployment is at record lows in Britain and Germany for any period since the war, British exports are up, the Volkswagen may well be the "Model T of the Fifties," with production at 1100 per day, rubber prices are up, American coal is flowing across the Atlantic at ever higher rates, and Britishi coal to Europe. Liner rates are going up, and Australia and New Zealand are not pleased. Copper futures on the Metal Exchange in London are subject to new rules, timber importers feel squeezed between suppliers, consumers, and the docks. Canning is at is seasonal peak, coffee prices are easing, the sterling area's trade deficit is growing, and Union Carbide is the first company to annoounce that it will produce polythene in competition with ICI once its patent expires.
Flight, 12 August 1955
Flight, 12 August 1955
Leaders
"Customs versus Customers" The Air League of the British Empire has published a blast against British Customs for scaring off custom.
From All Quarters reports that the Hunter has achieved an informal speed record and also that Hunters are crashing everywhere about. Pretty much a regular jet fighter, then! Speaking of which, the Bell X-1A has exploded at 30,000ft, while still attached to its B-29 mothership, although as I read the blurb, it caught fire, was separated from the mothership after the pilot climbed out, and exploded only once free. Hall Hibbard says that atomic-powered aircraft will be "a development of the 1960s." Following the American 'earth satellite' announcement, the Royal Society has edged up to the podium to tell us that it has cadged £100,000 from the Treasury for a sounding rocket that can achieve 120 miles altitude, which will do various very scientific studies of the ionosphere and such. The Bristol Orpheus is going to go in one or the other European fighter, and American flight tests of an experimental turboprop fighter, the Republic XF-84H, is undergoing flight trials. Certain informed sources who wish to remain anonymous and also that we will have cherry upside down cake again tonight report that it is very, very loud.
Here and There reports that the Gyro Sperrin is flying at Hatfield, that the Woomera Valiant is setting stage records on its trip out to Australia which is just for some bombing trials, that the SNCASE Trident II is test flying, and that Heinrich Focke is showing off a convertiplane that he is hoping to sell to the Brazilians. Typical mid-August articles cover a test flight of a recent Piper light plane, notice that they have firewatching planes in Canada, and describe Beirut's stylish new international airport, one about B.K.S., a charter airline operating out of Yeadon, a report from America about the development of "America's vast Arnold Engineering Centre," and more national gliding.
P. R. Payne, "The Design of Small Helicopters: From the Economic Aspect" Helicopters are pretty expensive these days, in spite of which "Rotterdam's Helicopter Congress" last week was about short haul helicopter services.
"Bristol Britannia by the Technical Editor" Just so the dustcovers come off the typewriters at Flight offices this week, I suppose. This is a general article about cabin arrangements, some structural and engine details.
Correspondence has F. Meos, a Russian aviation history, recalling years ago, before the war, except in Russia! So does K. Westcott-Jones. E. G. Hardy reports that the Westland Pterodactyl at the Science Museum has been stored away in the transport museum across the street from the main museum where no-one is likely to find it.
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| RuthAS |
The Engineer for 5 August premiers a new layout, at least for me, since it might have started last month. In a long overdue move, the Leaders have been moved to the front from the middle, and the "Seven Day Journal" is back, albeit with no Victorian hyphen. So, on with the coverage!
Leaders
"Clean Air" The details of the proposed Clean Air Bill are given a full airing(!) It is a weaker bill than The Engineer would like, but it accepts that action can only be as forceful as the community will allow.
"Satellite Vehicles" The Engineer actually understands celestial mechanics, and so points out that the satellite era is part and parcel of the new generation of 100t rockets, because it implies a rocket that can put a container at 100 to 200 miles altitude at 17,500mph. It will actually take more energy to put a satellite in a high orbit at a distance of one or more Earth radii than to fly to the Moon! (Because you only need to intercept the Moon, not achieve the velocity required for a sustained orbit.) Inorder to achieve that 200 mile, 17,500mph performance, the Americans must have either perfected a three-stage rocket, or developed an engine capable of a specific impulse of more than 300 seconds. The former is more likely. The Atlas project, if it is capable of this, will be a formidable intercontinental ballistic missile, but based on statistics released, it will need a third stage giving a further acceleration of 7500mph. This final acceleration will be very high, and the satellite will have to be extremely robust. With direct conversion of solar into electrical energy by transistors, it will be a very capable cosmic ray observatory and will rapidly exceed the measurements possible from even a very large and expensive sounding rocket programme.
A Seven-Day Journal reports that the recent trade mission to Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia found promising signs, that there will be a Study Conference on the Human Problems of Industrial Communities next summer in Oxford, that a list of some of the road expenditure authorised by the Ministry of Transport is now available, that a new anhydrite mine is now operating in Cumberland, that the Institute of Sanitation Engineers is changing its name to "Public Health" Engineers, and that Arnold Hall is leaving Farnborough for Hawker Siddeley.
Letters and Literature has E. B. Parker reminiscing about the old days, before the war, R. H. Parsons' reflections on Rolt Hamilton's comments on dowsers, J. M. Kirkby's correction that, while HMS Grey Goose is very, very loud, it can't possibly have been "more than 100 decibels." C. E. Philips thinks that D. William's method for measuring the resliience of gymnasium floors can be extended to other working surfaces. L. R. Ingersoll, et al, have Heat Conduction, with Engineering, Geological, and Other Applications, while G. L. Clark has the fourth edition of Applied X-Rays. They are both good textbooks.
"Exhibition of Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy at Geneva, No. 1" covers details of the improved DIDO E43 heavy water reactor now under construction, and a presentation on Calder Hall.
"Pametrada's Progress Report for 1954" describes the work done in 1954 under the direction of former Engineer Vice Admiral of the Fleet T. W. F. Brown. They test proposed new steam and gas turbine machinery and design their own.
"Precast Concrete Factory Structure" is the misleading title for an advertorial about a new factory for making precast factory structures, albeit the structural elements are precast concrete. In other advertorial content we have "Reaction Propulsion for Helicopters," which is Napier trying to sell the Oryx. I bet that if all the other problems with tip jets were somehow solved, this would be the engine of choice! "Extension to Rugby Radio Station" is a loving, lavish description of its new equipment from the contractor, Marconi, specifically the transmitters and aerials. "Training of Engineers" is a visit to Metrovick's apprenticeship training scheme, short blurbs on water schemes in Kenya, "
Ringelmann Charts" of air pollution, storm warning radars, portable air compressors, and an "electrostatic precipitator for coating surfaces with flock" lead into Indian Engineering News, which lays out engineering expenditures under the Five Year Plan, and Continental Engineering News, which looks at a study report on the use of oxy-acetylene flame and the supporting elements for a suspension railway bridge at Wuppertal, which is the long-established German monorail train mentioned in letters.
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Ringelmann Charts" of air pollution, storm warning radars, portable air compressors, and an "electrostatic precipitator for coating surfaces with flock" lead into Indian Engineering News, which lays out engineering expenditures under the Five Year Plan, and Continental Engineering News, which looks at a study report on the use of oxy-acetylene flame and the supporting elements for a suspension railway bridge at Wuppertal, which is the long-established German monorail train mentioned in letters.
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| Cool! By Max Grobecker - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dergrobi /27539703655, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49313814 |
Industrial and Labour Notes visits the TUC's latest confab, looks at wage rates and industrial disputes, and Britain's falling share of Canada's foreign trade as reported in Parliament. The American Scene reviews "Motor-Cars in 1954" and has a short blurb on the American atomic fuel scheme presented in Geneva before filling out with advertorials of a "Radiographic Inspection Tool," and a "250-Drawbar-Horsepower Tractor." Two British Launches and Trial Trips out of a total of nine, a coaster and a lighthouse tender.
The Engineer, 12 August 1955
Leaders
"Forces of Acceleration" We look at efforts to measure the force of acceleration going back to Lanchester's experiments with accelerometers, and the centrifuge at RAE Farnborough that is establishing just how much such force humans can take, which will be important as regards to us ever visiting other planets. "A Locomotive Experiment" looks at the use of ice cubes to get lazy bones out of bed in the morning and to work on their correspondence --wait, no, this isn't about how the husband gets sent to the dog house, but instead some new boilers in British Railways locomotives with impressive statistics. I prefer the ice cubes! The Engineer will be a hundred next year. Don't send cake through the mail!
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| Visit South Wales before the border cordon goes up! By Andrew Hill, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13080671 |
T. J. Barendegt, et al., "Personal Experiences with the JEEP Reactor" If the name of the lead author isn't a clue, this is the joint Danish-Norwegian experimental reactor, which is just like other reactors, but served on a round of crispbread with smoked salmon.
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| Smorgasbord! |
The International Astronautical Congress was fun, Continental Engineering News visits the concrete industry, reports on a navigation radar to be installed at the mouth of the Elbe, and a proposed research reactor for Germany.
Letters and Literature has J. William writing to tell us to get used to coal shortages, because they are not going away, and reviews of monographs on Materials of Construction (Withey)and Titanium in Industry (Abkowitz), and textbooks on Structural Analysis (Fisher Cassie)and Vibration Problems (Timoshenko), and Symposium on Sinter (Iron and Steel Institute).
"Exhibition of Peaceful Uses of Atomic Power in Geneva" continues with a look at experimental equipment, including a furnace from GEC and the UKAEA's "Analmatic" automatic laboratory. They could really have afforded to go on for a bit just to bump E. C. Poulteney, "Notable Locomotives of 1905" when absolutely no-one who isn't tipsy and bored will be reading. "Automatically Operated Skip Winding Gear" is an exciting missive from Wintershall (It is for digging up potash.) A.G. Five advertorials, including a full-age one on the new line of diesel engines for locomotives from Davy Paxton. Industrial and Labour Notes
has the meeting of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, which is upset that the shipyards are giving back all their profits as dividends, and worried about automation. United Steel is expanding, and British unemployment continues to fall in spite of lower employment in several sectors including engineering. The National Fuel Efficiency Service is looking into training boiler operators.
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| SS San Fabian: https://www.helderline.com/tanker/hastula-1-ex-san-fabian |
American Section is taken up with a summary of the standardisation of high-tensile steel bolts for structural joints issued by the American Research Council in New York this summer, with only room for one advertorial, for an automatic tube bending and cut-off machine. Launches and Trial Trips has five ships, four British, two oil tankers, a bauxite ore carrier, and a coaster, two motor ships, two steamers.
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