Saturday, November 16, 2024

The Electric City, VII: Normalising Telegraphy

 


So, and as will come as no surprise, I've had the experience of a short work week pulled out from under my feet at something like the last minute. It was perhaps not impossible for me to write Postblogging Technology, August 1954, I: I Know Eyewash When I See It, and I'm honestly not sure who besides me to blame for my taking a day off on the 11th and yesterday, but I'll settle for Larian Studios, for making Baldur's Gate III so seductive. That, of course, means that instead of something long, with a lot to chew over, you're getting a bit of a dive into semi-random thoughts I had this week. 

In this case, and as a development of "smokeless powder is just another textiles industry development, therefore the modern rifle, and modern war, comes out of industrial cotton," I am wondering about how normal early telegraphy was. (Is the rifle, or telegraphy, more important to the transformation of war before 1914?) So 


let's forget about all that "information  industry" stuff, and look at the telegraph as it came in, and try to understand why people might take the first steps to improve on semaphore and heliographs and pony expresses, and see where we are.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Gathering the Bones, XXXI: Raven And The First Men

 

This morning I am thinking about Raven the trickster, creator and king. but I also travelled on the weekend and visited my world-travelling doctor brother and his wife, who in conversation chanced to mention how much better the Pacific Northwest art held at the British Museum is than that shown here in its homeland.










"Raven and the First Men" is a Haida creation myth, here truncated. The second image is a rattle, used in shaman and healing dances. The specific meaning belongs to the owner who commissioned it, but the general theme is the transfer of power, which is another way to understand the creation myth. Deprived of its context by the decision to sell it to an outsider, it remains an eerie symbol of the relationship between Raven and one man, no doubt privileged.  I would be stretching nonexistent wings in a ludicrous play at exegesis to go any further (Raven would approve!), but we can reasonably ask how it was made around here.

Saturday, November 2, 2024

Postblogging Technology, July 1954, II: Somewhere Between Unacceptable and Unattainable


Because Betty Boop cartoonist Ving Fuller is in a What's New segment. Deep cut, I know.

R_., C.,
Nakusp,
Canada


Dear Father:

Well, I left my current numbers of Aviation Week and The Engineer on the train when I dashed to catch a connection to Weybridge. So if this letter isn't to your liking, blame the clowns at Handley Page for not putting the tail of the Victor on firmly enough to balance flying without the "weapon system"-y radar that's supposed to go in the nose. (James thinks, anyway. He was right about the Comet, though!) This led to an all-hands-on-deck sales meeting over the Viscount replacement, from which I had to turn around for my flight to Montreal, upon which I am writing these words, far away from replacement copies, and there you go.

As for the meeting, the super-Viscount, or whatever they're going to call it, might be completely different from the Victor, but that isn't stopping the American industry, as you can see from the Newsweek coverage. to be fair, it is good news for them that the Victor won't be out setting high publicity speed records while there is a Vickers team still touring the States. I know I would have loved  some British Pathe footage of the Victor prototype landing in Montreal, not that it was even vaguely close to ready for a trans-Atlantic flight, but a girl can dream. 


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Sunday, October 27, 2024

Postblogging Technology, July 1954, I: Red Meat and Free Men

 

Nurses of the Experimental Civil Defence Mobile
Column like motorcycles. Do they get to ride 
motorcycles, or is just their despatch riders?

R_.C_.,

Nakusp,

Canada


Dear Father:

It is so wonderful that you will be living in the lakehouse this summer! I am sorry that we will not be able to visit, as James' leave for my trip to Montreal can't be extended to two weeks thanks to Farnborough preparations. (The Fairey "The F-102 Can Eat My Dust" is being talked up as a static display, but I don't think that it is going to be anywhere close to ready.) 

Around here, meat rationing ends this week, and while I'm not sure how much difference it is going to make in daily life, it seems like some kind of patriotic duty to go out (or in) for roast beef like a free and patriotic Englishman could never do under those socialists. Or, on the other hand, it's some kind of disgusting display of complete loss of self-control. But as that verges suspiciously on vegetarianism if not outright Bolshevism, the roast beefers are winning the day.  Just have a look at the latest edition of my beloved "Schweppsshire" ad series. If only poor Orwell were alive to see us now. (Except wasn't he a vegetarian? I should look that up. Doesn't seem like the healthiest of lifestyles if you're going to farm in the Outer Hebrides!) 


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie




Tuesday, October 15, 2024

A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, June 1954, II: Just You Wait

 

Surely I'm not the only person who hears "[Henry] Wiggin Works" and thinks of My Fair Lady, the 1964 film adaptation of the 1956 Broadway musical based on the 1913 George Bernard Shaw play. I don't even watch musicals, but that particular song, like the dreadful menace of Cobalt-60 Doomsday bombs, from another movie I've never seen, is, well, I guess that's why it's called popular culture. 

You know what's not popular culture? The Wiggin Works, and, for that matter, Nimonic, and Nineteenth Century businessman and Liberal Unionist Henry Wiggin, and finally, the actual operator of the works, Mond Nickel, which probably merged with Inco at some more recent  point. The trademarks for "Nimonic" and other nickel alloys like Brightray, and Inconel, are now held by Special Metals Corporation, and various grades of Nimonic continue to be used in aircraft engines among other specialty applications. I see no evidence that it is used in nuclear reactor fuel slugs these days, although Cobalt-60 continues to be produced in trace quantities by the nuclear transmutation of Fe-58 in steel components into Cobalt-59 and hence Cobalt-60. (I did not know that!)  There's a Wiki page on the cobalt bomb, but it doesn't really get into the isotope as a signifier of universal nuclear destruction, upon which subject I am sure I have seen websites if not scholarly articles over the years. 

Not that any of this really matters. I want to talk about the British steel industry today. It just happens that special alloy steels are an important part of that story. 

Saturday, October 12, 2024

A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, June 1954: Gormenghast

 


Just kidding. Today I'm talking about the pioneering nuclear power plant, Calder Hall, not Mervyn Peake's weird 1950 novel about a giant estate that's a country sort-of-thing. (I'd offer a more insightful summary if I'd ever been able to get into the darn thing. Anyway, here's one of Eleanor Morton's bits. The Mervyn Peake reference is a running gag at the end.) I'm just making a witty (YMMV, as the kids say) literary reference. Somewhat surprisingly I find that I'm the first to do it, maybe because all that "Second Elizabethan Age" stuff is down the memory hole. (Hah! Witty literary reference!) 

Calder Hall actually gets its  debut in the 4 June 1954 issue of The Engineer, exactly a month before the Cabinet reluctantly agreed to go ahead with the British hydrogen bomb, in a not-at-all coincidental development. But we don't cover the first two weeks of the month at The Engineer, so we missed it, and also the ominous foreshadowing that is a picture of a Ruston gas turbine set up to burn methane. "The purpose of the demonstration is to show that natural gas, which is available in almost unlimited quantities on many oilfields, can be burnt with the same efficiency and controls as liquid fuels."

Saturday, October 5, 2024

Postblogging Technology, June 1954, II: We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us




R_C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

And that's the end of my month. If I may dwell on the political for a moment (Moi? Never!), this really is Pierre Mendes France's moment, and I cannot help a smile on my face and a lift to my feet, even more than when the Capital deal went through. (We'll leave aside the question of whether they can pay for their planes.) He has a vision for Europe, and he is going to close out the Tunisian and Moroccan adventures as well as Indo China. Newsweek seems to have capitulated to him, describing him as a Dewey Republican or such. I hope he'll have a chance to apply his vision to France, although the times are running against his economics, with the Anglo Saxons catching up with the Fourth Republic's Government-by-rentiers. On the other hand, Ike seems too sick to run in '56, which means that Stevenson will have a good chance, and we might see the back of the odious Dulles brothers. (Not that the prospect of seeing McCarthy and Allen Dulles tussling doesn't do my heart good.) James is predictably disappointed that there aren't more signs of the party rallying to Kefauver, but I will take what I can get. 

On the other hand, London is a bit giddy right now, so maybe I'm just being infected by the optimistic mood. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie