R_., C.,
Vancouver, Canada
Dearest Uncle:
I think Reggie told you that I was taking these letters over for the winter? He's off in far away Massama --Massachatus --Massassa --however you spell it! And he found these letters too much of a drag on his studies, whereas I'm flitting through the Moderns here at a junior college where they don't even give out degrees. (Kidding, and if you ever make fun of Stanford back to me, I may not be able to guarantee being a member of the gentle sex!) So I am on the job until May! I'd tell you all about my exciting life, but it would boil down to my fiance and I having a very tense meeting with my parents, followed by the red-eye back to San Francisco, followed by Wong Lee very kindly driving me down to campus so that I could take in my very first lecture of the second week of classes. French literature. By a pompous --Oh, I just could --Well, a proper girl doesn't use those words! So I haven't much to report on that score. This weekend, hopefully, I will have time to get up to the city and see everybody, and I will have a complete report on how everyone is doing for you next time!
Yours sincerely,
Ronnie
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| I've never liked the "Yours Sincerely" close because of the way that it implies the possibility that the writer is being insincere. |
 |
| Hey, you, yes, you Communistic, lazy, American-dollar wanting Latins! Take a lesson from Der Bingle! |
Time, 15 September 1947
Letters
Time publishes multiple
letters supporting Harold Stassen for President. Harvey Moore of Rochester, New
York, and Edna Kingsbury Watts write to say that “Headmastter Neill and his school without discipline” are either “perverted” or just plain dumb. Guy
Empery Shipler thinks that some Protestant pastors who visited Yugoslavia and
now have opinions, and who are quoted in Time
to the effect that he is a “gulliberal,” are wrong. One of those pastors,
Emory Stevens Bucke, writes to say that Time
misquoted him. Correspondents agree and disagree about how much Communist
propaganda there is in Czechoslovakia these days. J. Desmond and General O. N.Solbert, and former Coloured Captain, James C. Warren, think that the article
on General Lee, who is “the most God-fearing man in the Army,” was just a hit
and run. The Publisher’s Letter features a letter from Central American
correspondent, John Stanton (actually, Mexico City bureau chief, but he doubles
up), on the way that Central American revolutions have lost their pizzazz.
National Affairs
“When Winter Comes” Europe is short of grain; America is short of
corn; American farmers are going to hoard all of their wheat because the income
tax is too high, or something. Therefore, everyone will starve this winter, for
sure. Meanwhile, inflation is too high in America; and veterans cashing in 23%
of their $1.8 billion in terminal leaves bonds will make things worse.
In other
Down South news, the President is there, in Rio, talking up the Latin American
presidents about diplomacy-things. While he was away, the President arranged
for his friend, Ed Pauley, the one who wants to give away the California oil
fields, came back to Washington for a new job as assistant to the Secretary of
the Army, and possibly the next one. In jobs news, remember John Taber’s
promise to knock a million workers from the “bloated” Government payroll? He
didn’t.
 |
| Goober, not smiling |
“Uncle, Uncle” Congress is tired of all the other three-ring circuses
travelling to exciting places, when they are stuck grabbing witnesses by the
throat and throwing them in jail in Washington. So, with nice trips paid for by
Pan-Am, they’re off to Europe for a travelling show, led by Christian Herter.
They’re there to find out what winter will really
be like. One Congressman looked around Essen and said that he’d only last a
few months living like that before he turned
Communist, and another one cracked that only two hers of it would turn GooberCox (Georgia Representative Eugene Cox) into a Republican! Goober didn’t crack
a smile, because he was buying all the chocolate he could find to hand out to
the kids of Essen.
“Mr. Hoover Speaks” My alma mater could really do better in a
President. Speaking to American magazine,
he basically said that Hitler was right . . . I mean, that America shouldn’t
have provoked Japan and got involved in Europe, because those Communists and
Brits could have won on their own, and if not, who cares?
Short bits cover a ruling in Massachusetts that went against the
fishermen’s union, an ex-AAF gunner named Charles Gorman who was in a plane
crash returning from the Cleveland Air Races and had an awful time, the process
of selecting an Unknown Soldier for WWII, and more ever-so-exciting news about
people who might run for President in ’48. (But not Wallace and Stassen,
because considerate young men and horrible old magazines alike have learned not
to press me with those names, because I just don’t care.) My fiancé is all in
for Taft, though.
 |
| "Abortion mill" running Doctor Brandenburg is one of the topics about which Ronnie doesn't think she can be frank with her Vancouver relation. Though, as you'll see, she's a bit less discrete than Grace. |
“Short Grass Salvation” Altus, Oklahoma, a town on the north fork of
the Red River, celebrated the opening of its new water reclamation district,
with a dam and irrigation canals for 3200 acres on 60 farms. Everyone was very
happy, and Secretary Krug turned up to give a speech about how the world could
use more reclamation projects like the one at Altus.
 |
| The Altus dam has a website. There's probably nothing I can say about modern Oklahoman politics that wouldn't come off as a cheap shot. |
Meanwhile, Los Angeles’
September temperature shot up to 101 and brought the smog back, along with
beach closures due to pollution, leaving people sweaty, eyes watering and the
old folks wishing they could go back to Iowa. And speaking of old people,
84-year-old bachelor John Deferrari gave a million dollars to the Boston Public
Library because he is a very eccentric old man who made a great deal of money
in “real estate and securities” thanks to “daily contact with bankers and businessmen.”
 |
| Los Angeles smog, Christmas Eve, 1948. I suspect that there's something seedy in John Deferrari's background, but I don't notice any historians of the Boston Public Library rushing to investigate the matter. |
“More Elbowroom” Americans don’t usually emigrate, but this week,
twenty American veterans and their Aussie war brides headed off to Australia to
populate it up, as Australia wants more emigres, so long as they are not of a
coloured hue. Australia will pay forty percent of their passage.
 |
| Off to White Australia! |
Speaking of. .
. brides? (I’ve got nothing), the Miss America contest was this week. Look,
I’ve got nothing against beauty contests –some of my most disgustingly chipper
friends are pageant contestants—but girls and women are never going to be taken
seriously –And you know what? I’m just going to get down from my soapbox after
looking at the punctuation that’s got me to this point in my train of thought.
I’ll clean it up in translation, but it’s not doing my presentation any good. I
will also not deflate the rest of my point by even trying to summarise all the
gossip about Doris Duke in the story that follows.
Americana California is now
the second most populous state, Los Angeles the third largest city. The InternationalCigar Band Society met in New York to comfort each other about cigar-band
collecting not being as much fun as it used to be. We still don’t know if the
Midwestern corn crop will come through. B. F. Goodrich says that glove sizes
are getting smaller, showing that U.S. hands are also getting smaller.
International
The delegates at Paris are making progress! The Exodus refugees are
still being mistreated!
 |
| It helps --a little-- to know that they can't go to America, because there aren't enough liners running. |
Egyptians are pleased that the Security Council seems
to be taking their side against Britain. The TUC is going along with the
Directed Occupations order, even though the TUC and coal miners are silly, as
is Ernie Bevin with his carrying on about gold and the Commonwealth. So silly
that Lord Beaverbrook agrees with him. The British Fascists had a fine rally in
Bethnal Green at which they agreed that the only way to prevent Jewish
terrorism in Palestine was to take whole Jewish families out and shoot them,
and that they should start in London, and that the House of Commons, the war on
Germany and Communists are also terrible. Speaking of communists, a three-page
history of the city of Moscow, the “third Rome,” is next. It’s “third,” because
they hadn’t invented “Miss Congeniality” in the old days. I think Miss Istanbul
is runner-up?
Between communist and Taft is the “liberal,” a mysterious species
always inclined to turn into communists if left untended, except in Greece,
where Themistocles Sophoulis is to be premier, because he is a liberal, and
very, very old. In Italy, communists are having rallys, and in India, someone
put flowers on the statue of Queen Victoria in Lahore because everyone is
killing everyone and Gandhi is fasting. In China, they haven’t had to kick out
the English, and the Americans aren’t there enough to be kicked out instead,
Hong Kong excepted, General Wedemeyer notwithstanding, and there are no Muslims
to kill Sikhs, or Sikhs to kill Muslims. Fortunately, there are Communists and
Koumintang, and that is enough. Time has
now decided that Washington can’t “judge China by standards of political
morality higher than those applied to Greece, Turkey or Russia, to whom the
U.S. gave billions without inquiring whether their officials were competent or
politically pure.”
The question, my
dear Mr. Luce, is whether those billions end up being spent on real estate in
New York and San Francisco. And if the answer
is “yes,” then the next question is,
“How much of it ends up with you?”
But I suppose that if you own the paper, you don’t have to worry about the question! In Latin America, they’re all
on about either the Rio treaty, or skiing, if it is Chile. It turns out that
since Chile has mountains (and snow, but the other way around from here!), it
can have skiing. In South America!
Truly, I am breathless. My camisole is too tight. In Peru, students at the one public high
school in Lima are demonstrating. In Canada, the Combines Investigation
Commissioner is looking into dental supplies, and there was a train crash in Manitoba. Thank God for that, as otherwise Times
would have to run one of those stories about how someone is going to run
for President, only Canada doesn’t have Presidents, so it would have to explain
what they have instead, and who this person is, and it would all be so, so
boring.
 |
| Because they're using jewelry to identify bodies, which is not the most gruesome thing you'll read in this post. |
Science, Medicine,
Education
“Moderately Safe” Fourteen months after hosting half the US Navy and
some super-critical AAF boys, Bikini Atoll is “moderately safe” for human
settlers, who can stay for up to a year. In other atom-bomb related news,
German physicist Werner Heisenberg admitted that Nazi scientists didn’t even
try to make a bomb, as they forgot to carry the two and decided that you
couldn’t use graphite as a “moderator.” Using only heavy water, they were
nowhere close to having a “pile” that could have made plutonium, never mind all
the fancy equipment needed to “enrich” regular uranium. The Bureau of Standards
has discovered that diamonds are a “1000 times more sensitive to dangerous
radiation than the famous Geiger counter,” and have built radiation detectors
out of good quality, colourless, flawless diamonds. [pdf] Radiation knocks electrons
free, and they flow in the “channels” that run through the atoms of a
diamond crystal, which produces a
detectable piezoelectric effect that can be picked up in an ordinary telephone
set. Such a detector could be miniaturised, put into industrial equipment, or
even a human body! (I’ve been accused of wanting to have a telephone cord
implanted in me, but not to listen for radiation!)
“In 10 or 15 Years, Maybe”
Cancer doctors met in conference in St. Louis against a grim prognosis. Cancer
deaths have jumped 25% in America in the last decade. Admittedly, this is
largely due to longer life spans and better diagnoses, but it appears there is
little reason for optimism in spite of a few solid gains such as new clues to
its causes and the release of radioactive isotopes for both “radiotherapy” and
“tracers” for diagnosis. The title refers to the prediction by some hopeful
researchers that a cure might be so many years away. The thought is that cancer
is just a regular cell turned malignant by effects such as radiation, metal
dusts, tobacco, and even the sun’s ultraviolet rays. The reason for this
malignancy seems to be in the cell metabolism, and might be due to a shortage
of zinc. Other times, cancer may be caused by hormonal imbalances, and could be
cured the same way, and then there is the new anti-cancer vitamin, folic acid,
discovered by Dr. Ray Lewishon. The Russians are still working on KR,
discovered by Nina Klyueve and Grigori Roskin, although some American doctors
report that it has not performed in laboratory tests. Wonder drugs penicillin
and streptomycin haven’t been effective on cancer, but new drugs from
aspergilli moulds are reported effective in mice.
We've heard about "KR," a Laetrile for the Forties, but Dr. Lewishon's appropriation of everyone else's work on folates is new, and earns this post a "Patent Trolls" label!
The U.S. Office of Education reports that US college enrollment will
set a new high of 2.75 million students, 600,000 more than last year’s figures.
1.325 million of them will be ex-GIs. In other news, Queen Mary carried 52 US undergraduates bound for Europe when it left
New York last week, the first American students to study abroad in Europe since
the war. There were various strikes here and there. (The one in Gary, Indiana,
is over attempts to end school segregation by moving some Negro students into
Emerson Elementary, leading parents to withhold their children.) Kindergarten
and first grade enrollments are “bulging” with the first war babies to reach
school age. An Ohio psychiatrist warns that children born in such tumultuous
times are likely to be jittery about such a “violent novelty” as school.
British poet-novelist-teacher Leonard A. G. Strong says that the way that
poetry is taught in school leads to children hating it. Marshall Fields has
taken a different approach by setting up a Teen Age Book Club to wean the
dreaded teenager from the even more dreaded comic book. Time disapproves, because the books chosen haven’t enough forehead.
Business and
Finance
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| "Camisole" still has an attested usage as a kind of jacket, so get your minds out of the gutter. |
“Reopened Door” Japan has reopened its foreign trade office.
State of Business The NYSE continues
to drift lower. US exports are falling as the world runs out of dollars.
Duesenberg is going to make autos again, for not less than $25,000 each. My Dad will probably buy
two, because they’re made in Chicago, and because he is who he is. The Austin
four-door trunk sedan is now available in America. The Department of Commerce
is loosening restrictions on the use of natural rubber, but not in automobile
tires and tubes, yet. Airlines are making a new drive for passengers.
The New Pictures
The Kiss of Death is another in a new
trend in pictures which are shot “on location,” in the streets of Manhattan. Time found it suspenseful and gripping,
but writes up one of those plot summaries that won’t tell me what happens! Lured, on the other hand, is an
agreeable and tongue-in-cheek murder mystery that is publicised by a picture of
Lucille Ball and George Sanders looking cute, unlike Victor Mature and ColeenGray looking steamy.
The cut-line says, “Wanted: danger,” which tells me all I want to know. I Know Where I’m Going “doesn’t even try to be a great movie, but is a very good one in its charming, unpretentious way.” It’s a Rank picture, and features a girl who wants to marry a rich man and ends up with an “impoverished Scottish laird,” instead. I hope there’s a lovable, eccentric Scotsman in a kilt, but there probably isn’t, because it is “never traveloguish.” Deep Valley is about a remote California farm which is “opened up” by a convict road gang. There’s a daughter, and, oh, I see where this is going, giant eyes rolling. No, wait, the “fugitive convict” is Dale Clark. I don’t care that I can see where it’s going!
The cut-line says, “Wanted: danger,” which tells me all I want to know. I Know Where I’m Going “doesn’t even try to be a great movie, but is a very good one in its charming, unpretentious way.” It’s a Rank picture, and features a girl who wants to marry a rich man and ends up with an “impoverished Scottish laird,” instead. I hope there’s a lovable, eccentric Scotsman in a kilt, but there probably isn’t, because it is “never traveloguish.” Deep Valley is about a remote California farm which is “opened up” by a convict road gang. There’s a daughter, and, oh, I see where this is going, giant eyes rolling. No, wait, the “fugitive convict” is Dale Clark. I don’t care that I can see where it’s going!
 |
| Ida Lupino |
Books
Holbrook Jackson has a book out about The Reading of Books, which explains that you’re doing it wrong.
Ben Ames Williams has a novel about the civil war out, House Divided. The Time section
head is “crinolines and corruption,” which will do just fine as a review!
Lillian de la Torre has Villainy Detected,
a book of “chronicles of crime” from 1660 to 1800. Reilly Out of the White House is an insider’s scoop on the
Roosevelt White House, and some guy has edited an anthology of the best of Thomas Peacock, who wrote funny novels about funny people in funny British mansions inthe old days.
Press, Radio, Art, People
The Lisbon Falls Enterpris ehas funny news stories, thanks to editor John Gould, who also does funny radio
shows and a funny column in the always-funny Christian Science Monitor. Take my Governor. Please!
Time leads off its art
feature with another joke, this one about how hilariously ugly modern art is by talking about how hilariously
ugly modern fashion is, making the connection that sometimes women in modern
art look ugly. For example, George Braques, Fernand Leger and, of course,
Picasso (oh, that Picasso!).
In the old days, painters made astonishing art, too. For example, Bosch, who
has a biography out. Rube Marquard is
upset that some drunk is trading on his good name. And a newspaper in Long
Island is shutting down because its typesetters joined a union and want a contract. What a bunch of
bullies!
“Langour, Curls and Tonsils” Various people are trying to be the Next
Big Thing on the radio, including Mel Torme (who looks to be about fifteen in
his picture, with half of his pimple-less face going into making those velvet
tones), Gordon McRae, “Bing-bald” Buddy Clark, Dick Farney, Johnny Desmond and Jackie
Smith.
Rita Hayworth is divorcing wonder boy Orson Welles. Tyrone Power
misses Lana Turner. Gregory Ratoff is divorcing Eugenie Leontovish, or the
other way around, while Danny Kaye has moved into a hotel and away from his
wife, Sylvia. Ralph Bellamy is being sued for separation, while Marie “The Body” McDonald is getting married, notwithstanding a fire at her ranch.
Victor F. W. Cavendish-Bentinck, former British ambassador to various places, is out of the Foreign Office and a job after getting a divorce. John Franklin Norris is in Rome to see the Pope and explain that not all Baptists hate him that much. Eric Johnston is in hospital for “inflammation of an elbow joint. RoddyMcDowall has been in an auto accident, Ambassador Jefferson Coffrey runs 51 laps a day for health, and looks absurd doing it.
[Picture in People, Style] Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., and wife Ethel are now in even more trouble over their drag racing adventures, as they have failed to turn up in court. John Francis Kieran and Margaret Ford are getting married. Hans Kahle, commander of the international brigade, has died after a stomach operation, as has Lieutenant General RossErastus Rowell, originator of dive-bombing, as have Sophie Paschkis Lehar and Mary Emma Woolley and Major Frederick Russell Burnham. (Who singlehandedly ended the Matabele Wars by killing the god M’Limo in a cave. It must be nice to get so rich off oil that you can make everyone listen to your stories until they’re good enough to get repeated in Time.)
 |
| Just in case you thought they invented nicknames in The Jersey Shore. |
Victor F. W. Cavendish-Bentinck, former British ambassador to various places, is out of the Foreign Office and a job after getting a divorce. John Franklin Norris is in Rome to see the Pope and explain that not all Baptists hate him that much. Eric Johnston is in hospital for “inflammation of an elbow joint. RoddyMcDowall has been in an auto accident, Ambassador Jefferson Coffrey runs 51 laps a day for health, and looks absurd doing it.
 |
| They're weights, and he made it to 88. So there. |
[Picture in People, Style] Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., and wife Ethel are now in even more trouble over their drag racing adventures, as they have failed to turn up in court. John Francis Kieran and Margaret Ford are getting married. Hans Kahle, commander of the international brigade, has died after a stomach operation, as has Lieutenant General RossErastus Rowell, originator of dive-bombing, as have Sophie Paschkis Lehar and Mary Emma Woolley and Major Frederick Russell Burnham. (Who singlehandedly ended the Matabele Wars by killing the god M’Limo in a cave. It must be nice to get so rich off oil that you can make everyone listen to your stories until they’re good enough to get repeated in Time.)
Flight, 18 September 1947
Leaders
“The Tudor Accident” This is about that prototype Avro Tudor that was
lost with Roy Chadwick on board. Turns
out that the ailerons were hooked up to their controls in reverse. The pilot should have tested it and found the
mistake, but if the KLM pilot (“Geyssendorffer,” because foreigners don’t have
Christian names) who killed Grace Moore and the Crown Prince of Sweden could
miss the elevator locks, “Mr. Thorn” could miss his reversed controls. It was a
natural mistake that anyone could make.
“Science and Politics” Scientists good; Politicians bad.
“Good Work, Well Done” Flight enjoyed
the Anglo-American Conference and the Radlett Air Show, and thinks that anyone
who complained about this and that had a chip on their shoulder. Though my
dictionary says I shouldn’t use that expression, because it’s insulting, so
please forgive a humble girl who asks only for enlightenment.
“Radlett Releases” New planes were seen at Radlett, including the
Hawker naval jet fighter, a two-seat Sea Fury trainer, the Avro Athena, AusterAvis, and the first working version of the helicopters with rockets on their
blade tips, the Fairey Gyrodyne. Oh, and the Newbury Eon, but Reggie says that
nothing’s going to come of that. Also, one of the Cierva helicopters he is afraid will come to an bad end. I know people say that Reggie is
too cautious to be a great pilot, but, honestly, he goes up in weather that
no-one less cautious would live
through! If that makes any sense. Anyway, if I have to fly with anyone, I would
make it Reggie!
 |
| Gyrodyne! |
Here and There
The fellows who are trying to make it rain by dropping carbon dioxide
into clouds were in Britain last week, but couldn’t find any clouds! They did
find clouds over Munich, and made it rain for 40 minutes. The Australians are
hoping for more rain for less “seed” by using calcium chloride instead. Russian
parachutists continue to jump out of planes at ridiculous heights, with the
latest record being 44,000ft, from which Colonel Romaniuk took 21 minutes to reach
the ground. The Russians are setting up pest control-aircraft-flying-spray-using
bases all over the country, and this is news. Vickers-Armstrong is setting up a
huge atmosphere chamber at Weybridge to do stratospheric research for some
unexplained reason that will turn out in twenty years to have been for a Mars
rocket. (The Mars rocket part comes from me. The facts are from Flight.) The Missionary Aviation Service
is buying a Gemini, the better to spend my mother’s money on butting into the
natives’ lives all over Darkest Africa.
“The Anglo-American Conference: Three Further Lectures Summarised:
Sweepback, Airscrew-Turbines: Helicopters” R. J. Richards, a British scientist,
explained that sloping the wings of a jet plane back allows them to get closer
to the speed of sound before the airflow goes all kerblooie. (“Compressibility
effects occur.”) But the wings have to be thick, so they don’t bend, and the
air keeps slipping off them, so they need better “gust alleviation,” amongst
other things. F. M. Owner, of Bristol Aircraft, explained why Bristol’s
turboprop gadgets (the free power turbine and heat exchanger) are good ideas,
even though no-one else is using them. Two
helicopter experts from Bell said that helicopters would be doing better if
engine manufacturers would cater to their needs more.
 |
Bell has dumb ideas, too. |
“Standardised Cockpit Design: Risk of Too Many Standards: The Need for
International Agreement: A Case for Functional Arrangement” Getting everyone to
agree where to put things in aircraft cockpits is just so hard!
“The Guildhall Dinner: Historic Conclusion of Anglo-American
Conference;” “Radlett;” “R Ae. S. Garden
Party;” “Navy Display at Yeovilton;” “Battle of Britain Flypast” Flight reviews its busy, busy social
life, and finally gets on to writing about airplanes when it comes time to talk
about the Attackers, Sea Furies, Sea Hawks, Firefly IV and V, Seafire 47s,
Wyverns, Lincolns, Mosquitos, Brigands and Sturgeons on show. The Chipmunk is
dainty, the Heston AOP interesting, The Boulton Paul 108 much-admired, the
Ghost Lancastrian a vision of an exciting future. The Portsmouth Aerocar flew.
The Solent, Ambassador and Hermes II were there. The Miles M. 68 almost was.
 |
| I am not linking to all those planes. |
“Helicopter Development: Igor Sikorsky on Recent Achievements and Prospects”
Sikorsky’s latest helicopter has achieved 114mph, 21,000ft, 18 passengers
“with outside seats,” and is very easy to control. He told a story about how
stress measurements on the rotors showed excessive levels of stress, but that
turned out to because the instruments were vibrating (“in resonance”), and the
actual stress was quite reasonable. He thinks that thesingle-rotor-with-torque-compensator configuration will win out in the end,
just as monoplanes with controls in the tail won out over biplanes, triplanes,
wing warping and so on. He told a hard-to-understand story about a navy
helicopter with jettisonable pontoons that can land into those same pontoons,
as an example of how controllable modern helicopters are. Icing is not a
problem whatsoever, and, if it were, electrically heated rotors are easy to
build and economical to operate.
Civil Aviation News
 |
| It wasn't. |
The Martin 202 will enter service with Northwestern next month. TAA Skymasters will have Aerogram plane-to-ground service while flying between Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth next month. The “G” flying boats have found no takers second-hand, and will be broken up. Pan-American’s San Francisco-Tokyo service via Honolulu and Wake will start next month. Swissair has made Atlantic proving flights with Skymasters.
Correspondence
Roland Beaumont writes to explain why 2nd TAF and ADGB
fighters weren’t at Arnhem; it is because an 11,000ft haze-fog blanketed
western Europe from the United Kingdom to the Schelte, reducing visibility to
700—1000 yards. This meant that control of mass close air support sorties was
only possible by radio homing, and the “whole support programme broke down
unavoidably.” “Vertigo” writes about the unbelievable response of the company
that made an instrument that he was criticizing, back in the old days. It’s
something about how one instrument should or shouldn’t show both pitch and
roll. Unbelievable! (Eyes roll; and my eyes are extra wide and round!) H. R.
Barnard has doubts about the pusher configuration in Fedden’s latest proposed
plane. “Still A.1” has opinions about how the
basic trainer controversy. So does “Pre-War A.1.” R. Cheater(?) thinks that the
performance of the Aerotec Sportsman is being overstated by Aerotec, and shows
why, in detail.
 |
| Because the things they're doing with airscrews these days are bound to cause accidents. |
The Engineer, 19 September 1947
Seven-Day Journal
The Engineer regrets to report the results of an explosion in the boiler
room of the 17,707 ton Pacific Steam Navigation Company’s liner, Reina del Pacifico, while undergoing
trials after reconditioning in Belfast. Three were killed and 32 injured by
burning or the blast. “The death toll has now risen to twenty-six by the
subsequent death of some of the injured men.” Uncle George says that they were
scalded by hot steam. . . It’s just too terrible. At least it makes the death
of twelve of thirteen men working in the affected seam by an explosion at the Wheatley Lime seam of the Thornhill pit at Dewsbury seem less terrible. Mr. J.
Barr, of Kilmarnock, chief engineer of the ship, made heroic efforts to rescue
his staff and the Harland and Wolff men trapped in the engine room of the Reine. Dr. E. Hamilton, a young Belfast
doctor, was lowered into the engine room and “waded knee-deep in oil and debris
to bring aid to the injured.” One of those killed was Leonard S. Brew, who had
charge of the Londonderry Repair Yard during the war. Taking a break from
tragedy for farce, the Short Shetland is reported to have flown for the first
time. Various statistics show that it is very, very big, and if there were only
70 passengers who wanted to fly to Australia at a cruising speed of 184mph,
Short would be able to sell some. Northmet Power Company has released
particulars (as the British say) of the new power plant at Rye House; it’s not
exciting and novel, though, just a giant steam turbine plant for turning coal
into electricity.
“Gas Turbine Propelled ‘MGB 2009’” MGB 2009 is a wooden motor gun boat with a steel frame and a displacement
of 100 tons, built by Camper and Nicholson, who were in charge of fitting it
with a gas turbine and had to solve a tricky problem to get air to the turbine
at 6400 cubic feet per second. The air reaches a speed of 156ft/second in the
intake trunk. That’s something! I think. How fast does air normally move?
There’s a nice picture of the engine controls, but I’ve enough of those in this
letter that I won’t bother you with more. The turbine engine has a slightly
lower weight-to-horsepower than the Packard V-12s of the original set-up. (I’m
sure you remember that they took the middle Packard out and replaced it with a
Metrovick turbine.) So far, the boat has impressed by being very fast to work
up to full speed, and by being perhaps a bit quieter than it was when it had
three V-12s.
 |
| Here's my WWII conspiracy theory: It was a set-up by the hearing aid makers industry council |
“Engineering and Marine Exhibition at Olympia, Part IV”
This time around, we hear about a hydrostatic liquid contents gauge
for a free-venting tank, a rotary action pump for pumping liquids, a portable
petrol filter, a super D hydrator for the glycerine recovery house [pdf] in a soap
factory, amongst other installations that make . . . glycerine recovery. . .
much more fuel and . . . glycerine recovery . . . efficient. I had no idea that this even happened. Craven
Brothers of Manchester have a new 16” high speed lathe. It has a “well
proportioned saddle,” so I am not sure that a young lady is supposed to be
reading this, but no-one’s come in to stop me, so I think I shall! Thos Firth
and John Browns also have lathes, and tungsten-carbide and high-speed tools to
work them. But enough about my fiancé’s friends! Ferguson and Timpson have a
centrifugal separator, I guess for fluids that are ever so much more
industrial than your average kitchen cream separator ever faces.
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| A picture taken at Junchal, Chile. I have no idea what a glycerine recovery house is, and am interested in finding out more, but not tonight! |
Rolt Hammon, “An Engineer Looks at Chile, No IV” I think that this is
the correspondent who rides locomotives around places and countries and writes
about machines and scenery for The
Engineer. Chile is where one train route climbs to 15,000ft, which is very
technically challenging, as is the route over the mountains to Argentina, which
requires an electrified line and “rack” locomotives, engineered by British
Thomson Houston, with a substation at Junchal taking current from the Chilean
state electricity company at 42,000 volts, which is a very big number. Chilean state railways
expects to spend $55 million US dollars re-equipping in the postwar, and
Hammond quotes a Canadian commercial attaché, so you have to know that just everyone is looking at this market. Bolt
Hammond also did shipping, and gives a report on the port facilities at
Valparaiso, where mail liner Arequipafoundered in her moorings in 1904 with almost total loss, leading to S. Pearson
and Son, Ltd., receiving the contract to build a breakwater. British companies
were also involved in various public utilities, and have been experimenting
with earthquake-proof buildings.
“The SBAC Display and Exhibition” Is what The Engineer calls Radlett, and about which you have heard enough,
I think.
“The Avro Tudor II Aircraft Accident Inquiry” This is the same report
that was in Flight.
Leaders
“Export Policy” We get the scoop on Sir Stafford Cripps’ export policy
from The Engineer, and not The Economist! It must be so jealous of
its even more-dowdy cousin! The policy is to cut the current adverse trade
balance of £600 million/year by cutting imports by 228 million and exporting
“143 percent of the 1938 volume by mid-1948,” with a further increase to 164%
by the end of the year finally “raising the standard of living” to the point
where the British can have jam at tea again. The plan unveiled by Sir Stafford
has lots of planning. Iron steel exports are to go up by only 104%, that for
electrical apparatus by 210%, which is less than machinery (224%) and vehicles
(258%). Forget politics, Uncle George says: That’s just a mistake! Expenditure
on the armed forces is to be cut, capital expenditure reviewed, cutting it by
as much as £200 million to use the same materials that would have been consumed
in capital investment to make exports, instead. Comfort and future productivity
must be sacrificed to the needs of the moment, and the Government may have to
intervene to ensure that production and labour is used for exports. In related
news, Lord Hyndley says that, in spite of the strike, 3.9% more coal was raised
in August than in August of last year. This is in part due to re-equipment and
mechanisation. For example, there are now thirteen more “Meco-Martin” machines
in operation than last year. Orders for £9 million in coal face machinery have
been placed, a new coke oven plant is to be built at Nant-Garw, and additional
washing and dry-cleaning plants to address the problem of dirty coal.
‘Developments in the Air” The Engineer
reports that F. R. Banks told the Anglo-American Conference that piston
engines are on the way out in 10 years, due to the superior efficiency of
turboprops and then jets at higher speeds, and their superior streamlining. The Engineer notes the remarkable improvement in ton-miles per gallon from the early years of the war, when 25
was good, to now, when 50 is reached in the latest airliners. This is deemed to
be due to better streamlining, which can’t continue.
“British Association, No. IV” One of the problems the British are
facing with power supply to factories is that even when enough coal is being delivered
to the power plants, the National Grid might not be able to distribute it. So
it is interesting to hear a paper by Mr. J. Henderson, of the AyrshireElectricity Board, on various improvements to the grid, involving higher
voltage main lines with impedance protection against faults, and new
“collecting points.” This will also be important in transmitting hydroelectric
power from the dams in Scotland to the south. Water power, it is pointed out,
is uniquely economical, because once the supply is established, the cost of
producing it will never change, or will, in fact, very gradually decline over
time. “Water is not a wasting asset.” Mr. Henderson was cutting about coal, so
perhaps that is why there “was no discussion” after his paper. The next paper up
was by H. B. Seed, who talked about creep and shrinkage in concrete structures,
and got discussion and a vote of
thanks. Don’t mess around with the boys from coal! In Section B
(chemistry), A. G. E. Robiette of John Miles and Partners talked about the
chemical applications of hydro-electric power way up in Scotland; that is,
using it to make ferro-alloys, calcium carbide, graphite, carborundum and
abrasives, aluminium and electro-chemical products. If all of Britain’s imports
in these categories were made in the Highlands, this would require 2.4 billion kWh. Plus, there is magnesium
and copper-alloy manufacture to consider.
“A Pneumatic Balance and Transmitter” These are being made by
Electroflo Meters Company, of Park Royal, London. [Pneumatic Balance;
non-aviation gadgets] They are used for measuring flows, mainly of fluids in
industry.
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| This is what a pneumatic balance looks like. A readable book on the history of metrology would be something to see. |
“Fifty Years of Sulzer Diesel Engines, 1897—1947” Sulzer has brought
out a pamphlet commemorating fifty years of doing business in England, and its
latest line of reversible two-stroke diesels with built-in oil scavenging, in
which the reader might be interested.
“The British India Steamer Kampala” Is a 10,000-ton displacement
liner, just turned over to the British India Steam Navigation Company by its
builders, Alexander Stephen and Sons, Glasgow.
“Generating Plant Extensions” The Central Energy Board has released
details of its plans to extend existing power generation capacity.
“Ship Welding Research” Ships used to be rivetted, and will
increasingly be welded in the future. Uncle Henry didn’t let old-fashioned
doubts stop him from building all-welded ships, since they are cheaper
because you don’t need to build rivet houses they’re more advanced. His
ships turned out to have many weld failures, I know, I know, what a surprise.
(I’m very, very glad that Uncle Henry went in on the Lake Meade dam with
partners.) The British have taken two ships and been testing their welds for
all they’re worth for two years. The
Engineer tells us the titles of the papers that have been published so far,
but not what they say.
There are also short bits about a new radiant heat unit for workshops,
a “floating exhibition of machine tools” to tour South America in MS St. Merriel, and a new British
Standards Institution Standard for ship side scuttles.
American
Engineering News
American railroads are still very far short of good locomotives. Of101,000 steam locomotives inspected, an increase of 14,000 over 1945, 11,000
were found defective and 690 were ordered out of service. Of 11,000
other-than-steam locomotives, 499 were found defective, and seventeen ordered
out of service. Accidents attributed to “some part of the boiler numbered 156,”
with ten men killed and 105 injured. There were eighteen boiler explosions, an
increase over ten in 1945, killing ten and injuring twenty-two.
The President held a safety conference in June that discussed
improvements to American highways that could further reduce the death rate on
the roads, which has fallen from 12 deaths per
million vehicle miles in 1939 to 9.8 million in 1946, but could go much lower if road taxes weren't being diverted to other uses.
A commercial facility is being built to recover resin from coal. The United States has £185 million in water and sewage works currently
underway, and is planning another 400 million. Rubber-tired electric shuttle
cars are “finding increasing use” in American mines, especially coal mines. The Engineer read a nice paper report to
the Western Society of Engineers about factory design.
Industrial and
Labour Notes
The total British working population declined by 5000 in July. The
total number working reached 20,153,000 in July, up 403,000 from July 1939.
There were 7 million working in manufacturing, a million more than in 1939,
543,000 for domestic consumption, 528,000 for export. 249,691 were listed as
out of work on August 11, of whom 31000 were married women who will probably
not return to industry, 10,738 ex-service members who have not found employment
since they were demobbed, and 7532 who were “temporarily stopped.” The
Yorkshire coal strike started with 140 men at one mine, and hit 50,000 early
last week, before ending on Thursday. Major improvements are planned for the
Skinnigrove Iron Works. Sweden is also pushing up industrial output in the face
of labour shortages. Coal output last week was 3,354,500 tons, compared with
3,414,200 tons the week before, mainly due to the strike.
French Engineering
Notes
The Government has a plan to renew the French merchant marine. The
first Type 141 locomotives have been delivered as part of an order for 30
3200hp units ordered by the SNCF. Details have been published of the SNCF plan
for a rail connection after the Bort dam, which will flood the
Montlucon-Aurillac valley for 20km, is completed. The Denain-Anzin steelworks
have ordered a continuous sheet rolling mill from the United States and a hot
mill capable of producing 800,000 tons a year.
Notes and Memoranda
Southern Railway has received its first three “Battle of Britain”locomotives. The Great Western is buying 800 motor road un its and over 400
trailers to replace vehicles which must be withdrawn by the end of 1948, at an
estimated cost of £700,000. LMS is receiving twenty highly insulated road-rail
containers to transport domestically produced quick-frozen products. There is
talk of a coal mining industry in Northern Ireland, if they can just find the
coal they know is there.
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| So pretty. By Ben Salter from Wales - WadebridgeUploaded by Oxyman, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22444366 |
Time, 22 September 1947
Letters
George Y. Lesh asks why the American national debt fell so fast last
year, and whether this means that America’s financial troubles are over. Time replies that it is because of a
one-time settlement of the war’s end leading to many cancelled expenditures.
“Nominal Republican” G. A. Cunningham of Ward, Colorado, writes to ask why
Republicans insist on criticising the Administration’s expenditure cuts rather
than launching a crusade against all of that government waste that he just
knows is out there to be cut. Ruby Fogel Levkoff of Miami Beach has strong
opinions about those complaining about long skirts. She thinks that skirts should be longer, because, you know, the
youth these days. (She also has some thoughtful comments about fashion these
days that I won’t go into, but thought I should point out in the interests of
fairness.) Don Eaton promises that he and his fellow members of Theta Chi at
MIT not only won’t date any girls in the old “American Girl” style, but won’t
even wolf-whistle at them! Thanks, guys. Edward Doyle of New York is impressed
that the Japanese are trying to dig themselves out of the war’s ruin by hard
work instead of going all-in for communism like some lazy European countries, I name no names, Italy, France. (It’s
because they’re Latins, you see. Round, Alpine skulls, unshaved armpits, baths
once a week, a taste for reading Das
Kapital. They go together!) Several correspondents have opinions about
children’s literature-writer, literature professor, and all around Oxbridge
flake, C. S. Lewis. (On the bright side, my Rhetoric lecturer says his friends
are even nuttier, with one spending most of his spare time making up imaginary
languages for fairies. Uhn-hunh.) Missouri
being the only state to lose population in the latest census, there is room for jokes on the theme of
the President being from Missouri. I’d show you, but then I’d be doing it, too!
Allan Sholl of Glendale says that David Leneman’s paintings are actually quite nice.
Grady Edney, of Flat Rock, North Carolina, blasts “Jazz ‘purists.’” The
publisher writes to tell us that his reporters use planes to go to exotic
places such as Azerbaijan and Taiyuan. In flights to exotic places, it is
obligatory to have herds of livestock gamboling in the aisles. The march of
progress may sometimes require shepherding.
National Affairs
Indians are killing each other, the President has hitched a ride home
from Rio in the Missouri (which had a
Crossing-the-Line ceremony for new sailors and Administration officials alike,
at the end of which 16 men and officers required medical attention). Prices
are, well, you know. Up, down, whatever. There’s to be a special session of
Congres, mainly on Marshal’s plan, but it will also get into the possibility of
price controls, since otherwise it will be impossible to get Europe the grain
and steel it needed. Walter Lippman has written a reply to “X’s” essay in Foreign Affairs about how Russia and communism
and blah blah blah need more planes. “X” turns out to be someone named George
Kennan, and if your pseudonym is going to come out that quickly, I say, why
even bother? Lippman says, blah blah Russians Ivan the Terrible. The rest is, well, over my head. In
America, Attorney General Tom Clarke has got together with the Department of
Justice and the American Heritage Foundation, which is backed by the Chamber of
Commerce, the CIO, the AFL, the Loyal Order of the Moose and the Girl Scouts to
create a seven-car Freedom Train that will take the original Bill of Rights and
the Constitution from town to town in streamlined, diesel-powered,
air-conditioned comfort. As Langston Hughes points out, the train may be
technology and progress in motion, but the only Negroes allowed on board will
be porters. US Communists, for their part, are blocking the track with boulders
because it is “backed” by “reactionary businessmen.” Ha! Says Time. Ha! We don’t see any “reactionary businessmen.”
Speaking of politics, everyone is down in the Eighth District of Pennsylvania, which is having an off-off-year election, where all the bigwigs and gather and decide whether the election is about Joe Grundy being grumpy, or Taft-Hartley. Taft himself is off to California for some “California barbecue” (what?) and all the California Republican company he can stomach. And General Eisenhower, Harold Stassen and Henry Wallace are all out and about whilst the AFL, CIO and NLRB are having a fight over communists in unions.
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| Is Ronnie that uninterested in politics, or is she playing a ditz for Uncle Reggie? I think it's a bit of both. Otherwise, she'd point out how ridiculous this is. |
Speaking of politics, everyone is down in the Eighth District of Pennsylvania, which is having an off-off-year election, where all the bigwigs and gather and decide whether the election is about Joe Grundy being grumpy, or Taft-Hartley. Taft himself is off to California for some “California barbecue” (what?) and all the California Republican company he can stomach. And General Eisenhower, Harold Stassen and Henry Wallace are all out and about whilst the AFL, CIO and NLRB are having a fight over communists in unions.
Americana Has a bit about
how a Republican husband and Democratic wife in Denver have been advised that
they can save their marriage and kindle some romance by inviting a Wallace man
over for the afternoon and taking time heaping coals on him. In more
Americans-calling-famous-people-overseas-news, this time it is eleven-year-old
Rita Bamford calling the Pope to tell him that the Vatican Choir is very good.
Unlike the farmer who called Andrei Gromyko, she didn’t get through to the man,
since he doesn’t speak American, but an aide did promise to pass a message to
the Holy Father. Not bad for a $35 call! Reverend Powell of All Souls Unitarian
in Washington cut to the heart of the skirt debate; long skirts are immoral
when they deprive the shivering people of Europe of the wool they need in a
coal-less winter.
Very nicely, I think, Time put
news of the fire that wrecked the IslandQueen at Pittsburgh and killed 19 crew; and the hurricane that hit Puerto
Rico after the Americana section, so that I have a nice break after to change my
tone. It’s not intentional –Time follows
up with breaking news of General Lee’s retirement, couldn’t happen to a nicer
guy, etc., etc.
International
Communists! Communists!
Well. That takes care of four pages or so, plus a whole section about
the Balkans and Greece down near the end. But if you think that that’s all your
Communism dose in this section, you’re mistaken, because there are strikes in
Italy and demonstrations in France. In fairness, there’s a bit about the
Russians trying to recruit Armenians living abroad to fill out the scanty ranks
of Armenians in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, which doesn’t go very
well, as for master international schemers, the Russians are pretty bad at
organising themselves at home. A delegation
from Sudan has arrived at the United Nations to politely explain that, while
they don’t like being oppressed in general, the British used to tip better, but
now that it’s all in Sudanese pounds, they’d like to be independent. There was
also talk of Palestine, Greece, South Africa, disarmament, the veto and the Balkans,
at the end of which the General Assembly was only too happy to vote on their
new flag, since it was a problem they could do something about. Ernie Bevin is still an
idiot. Sir Stafford Cripps is still a Cassandra. “Toil and sweat, but no
glory,” says the Manchester Guardian. Although
Britain is doomed, Labour still took the Edge Hill by-election, which means that
the Tories aren’t back, yet. In France, the government may fall due to Latins
being excitable (there’s even a story about how an Italian furniture maker is
trying to export things to America, but can’t due to incompetent Italian
bureaucrats not being able to organise his export license), communism being on
the march, and because I wrote so fast that I can’t write myself out of this
sentence without a third thing, something about de Gaulle. Italy, same, except
no de Gaulle. In China, the Koumintang has picked a fight with the taxi dancers
of Shanghai. That should go well! In Latin America, the northern countries are
upset about increases in freight rates on American coffee liners. They have to
ship in US bottoms because of an old treaty, you see. In Bolivia, people who
can’t wait to have a Communist revolution are firing tin miners and rehiring
them if they promise not to join unions. Canada did a
good job on collecting up some dollars for the rest of the world, making some
$235 million from American visitors, up from $216 million last year, although
this is not the final tourist trade balance, since Canadians visiting America
probably spent more than last year’s $126 million.
Business
Prices up now, maybe down later? Bad news either way, somehow. The
Senate committee hearing the question of whether the steel shortage is due to a
shortage of steel, heard the unions say that America needs 20 million tons more
of capacity, and the industry telling them that it had too much capacity
already. My sympathies are with the union, but my head is with the companies,
on the basis that Uncle Henry is involved. The owners of Reynolds Pens are
trying to sell their interest. The price of ballpoint pens has fallen from
twelve dollars to 69 cents due to oversupply, but that is not the reason they
want out of the business, of course. They’re far too high minded for that. High
about something (high octane?) is the Boeing XB-47, just now rolled out, and a
wine exhibition in California where the wineries tried to show that California
wine was good for something besides getting high. You can also get high by
huffing and puffing on a Bub-O-Loon too hard, but I think that’s unintentional.
And there is good news for horrible people, as Mexico finally puts money on the
table to make them go away.
State of Business reports that the
auto industry has set new records, producing almost 110,000 cars a week
recently, and aiming for its second-best year after the 5.6 million cars and
trucks sold in 1939. Fur sales are still lagging, Preston Tucker got a $200,000
investment from the UAW to keep his plant open, the Yellow Cab company of
Cincinnati has a license to run a helicopter taxi, and something about shares
and divesting and the Chesapeake and Ohio means that not only is Robert Young
impossibly richer than before, he is also that much closer to owning another
railway. And if that makes sense to you, have at you!
Science, Medicine,
Education
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| Uhm, yeah. |
“Renegade Russian” The “renegade” is a fellow named Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. He thinks that this genetic stuff is all capitalist nonsense, and that
acquired traits can be inherited. Well. As I read this, and think through my
conversations on the subject with some hard-headed men of my acquaintance, I
see that I have done very little justice to Academician Lysenko. However, if my
advisers are agreed on one thing, it is that Lysenko is wrong, and that this
shows that something is going badly astray in Soviet Russian science, and so I
won’t go into the arcane details. I will apologise if Lysenko gets the 1957
Nobel prize. (Or, more likely, lay low and hope no-one remembers me poo-pooing
him.)
“For Better Bees” The Department of Agriculture has found a method for hybridizing bees. Bees breed in mating flights, which are good for bees, bad
for would-be bee breeders, as drones and queens from any old hive can get
together. (Except in states where this is forbidden by law. Good thing for the
bees that the same states allow cousins to marry, and at that, with an eye to
my parents, I shall say no more.) Anyway, the story goes on in a way that is
just too risqué to be believed, involving “virgin queens” being “drugged” with
carbon dioxide in small, plastic boudoirs. I could go on, but the rest is a
little alien to me, since it involves laying rafts of eggs, and parthogenetic
drones, and as little as I know of such things, I am pretty sure that that is
for the bees! The point is, no outside drones are involved, allowing breeders
to breed bees true.
“Too Many Operations?” Doctor Harold L. Foss, surgeon in chief at the
Geiseinger Memorial in Danvill, Pa., says that with 40,000 young medical
officers recently demobilised, America is under threat of a veritable epidemic
of unneeded operations, all because of some fashionable craze for more surgery.
In ulcer news, Karl Meyer of Columbia thinks that ulcers may be caused by an
excess of lysozyme, and that chemicals that neutralise the enzyme might prevent
ulcers, while Russell J. Crider and Shepard M. Walker have found an excuse to
install a window in a Negro girl’s stomach and have given it a thorough
inspection and determined that women get fewer ulcers than men because they
express their emotions more freely. Finally, there is a bit about the
importance of early diagnosis of cancer.
“Just Like Professors” The new president of the University of Louisville,
John W. Taylor, has proposed that college football be reformed into a
professional league; all players will still be enrolled at one or the other of
the universities in his proposed league, but would be treated as professionals,
just like professors.
Art, Press, Radio. People
One hundred and fifty of Gustav Dore’s paintings are going to auction
in New York this week. After last week’s jab at Picasso, you would think that Time, but, no, “Dore’s blown-up,
pretentious oils” are probably not going to command high price, it says. The whole lot
were sold off to an English dealer for $300,000, which is how they ended up in
a batch here in New York, stored away in a warehouse in New York from 1899 to
1927, when the company that warehoused them, expired. Over the next twenty
years, a $10,000 storage charge built up, until the warehouse decided that it
had to get into the art auction business. A Mr. Holzworth, “lawyer and big game
hunter,” per Who’s Who, offered
twelve large ones for the lot. “Sold,” said the warehousemen, eager to be back
to stacking and unstacking crates. But the next day, no-one arrived to pick the
paintings up, and Mr. Holzworth was arrested and charged with passing bad
cheques. So who knows where one goes next for Dore. For Time, what comes next is het another dig at Picasso. Time seems to really enjoy not liking
Picasso.
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| The Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about this odd episode. I assume that the cached paintings don't include any of the gorgeous nudes that I can't really reproduce here. |
US newspapers have struck back against laws that prevent them from
reporting the names of Irish Sweepstake winners. Robert Capa’s memoirs are out.
The Daily Mail and the Daily Worker are having a spat about the
story that the Kemsley papers are pushing about a Yugoslavian International
Brigade being readied to intervene in Greece. The Daily Worker accused the Kemsley press of lying, was taken to court
for libel, and has had to apologise. Time
is pleased about it, but not Operation Exodus, which cannot possibly get
worse, but still manages to do so. The sports press thinks that the current
“sham” will continue, because it is too convenient for all concerned. Elizabeth Gray Vining, the English instructor of the Japanese crown prince, is doing
a fine job. Texas is going to spend $1.5 million on the Texas State University for Negroes in order to have both separate and equal; but it still has no law
school, and the NAACP isn’t dropping its suit, because it doesn’t think that it
is “equal,” either. And in Gary, Indiana, Seattle and in Missouri, there are
cracks in school segregation as well.
In radio news, the BBC has sent a batch of programmes over for
consideration for American broadcast. The problem is that they are not cut to fifteen-minute
segments for commercials, because that is not how the BBC does things, and the
Americans are trying to find a way to fit them into American timeslots because
they are awfully high-foreheaded. Also, Francis Xavier Bushman is the kind of
man who used top make the aunties swoon, and now does thousands of radio soap
opera roles to keep himself in bed and board.
Fred Allen said something very funny. I know you’re imagining me being
all sardonic as I say this, as I share the family flaws, but the “Hollywood
glamour girl” who recently starred in Zombie
in the Oven, Chuck Wagon Clarisse, and She
Couldn’t Say Maybe is kind of
funny. Fred Allen is good at his job! Who knew?
John Rankin promised the people of Mississippi that he would keep on
filibustering to stop the Senate from putting its nose into the fine old state
tradition of white supremacy. Clement Atlee is very worn down. Randolph Churchill thinks that the Nuremberg executions were “cold-blooded murder,” but
he is not afraid of the Russians so much as of the British and Americans, lest
they let the peace slip through their butter-fingers. John Pershing is still
living in the Walter Reed Hospital, and turned 87 this year. Admiral Halsey
made the news by wearing a houndstooth check. Winston Churchill went to see a
kangaroo at the London Zoo, but found that it had thrown itself against the
fence of its cage, and died. General Tojo has joined the Sangha (not that Time understands the complexities of it
–it doesn’t have “Miss Ch" to explain.) Lela Rogers, “busy blonde
mother of Ginger Rogers,” has been sued by playwright Emmet Lavery for saying
that he is a communist, leading nine backers to withdraw from his production, The Gentleman from Athens. Mae West is
sailing to London to put on a production of Diamond
Lil. Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians and Teresa Wright, of Best Years of Our Lives, have had
babies. Harry Hopkin’s late wife has remarried. Bettine Goodall, daughter of
Marshall Field, has divorced her husband, with one child involved. KatherineDos Passos has died in an auto accident that cost her husband his right eye,because no tragedy is complete without irony. Major General Lerch, military
governor of Korea, has died of a heart attack. Alice Keppel, Edward VII’s last
best girl, has died after long illness, as have Richard La Gallienne and
Lieutenant General Robert Lee Bullard.
The New Pictures
The Dark Passage is a thriller with
Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. All that and they got a good script, too.
Waste of money, I say. Then, for some reason, Frieda gets another review. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the
header feature, which is about how Hollywood is panicking over the British
excise that might cut very deeply into its profits, even though it turns out
that box office is up over last year, so that if the money gets tight later, it
isn’t yet.
Books
Gus the Great is a novel, which
isn’t usually the sort of thing that leads off this column, much less with two
pictures, but novels by Thomas Duncan
are Important. Like all would-be American novels, it is an intensely realised
picture of some picturesque locale (Iowa!) with grotesque characters and a
naïve protagonist and probably a woman that makes you roll your eyes and think,
“Oh, hey, now, what did we ever do to you?”
Next up is one of those novels that seem to have sold based on the author’s
name. Lion Feuchtwanger? Really? It’s historical, and has Ben Franklin and
Beaumarchais in it. Buried down here is the journals of Andre Gide, the first
volume of which is at last available in English. (Cue the Modern Languages girl
sticking her nose in the air. “If you had to wait for that, are you sure you’re
up to it?” Probably for the best, as, well, I’d make a joke about Uncle George,
except that Uncle actually knows the man. And doesn’t like him, if you were
wondering. Not that that is a very
select club.) Finally, there is a Social Problem book, Olivia Robertson’s St. Malachy’s Court. Dublin has slums,
too.
Flight, 25 September 1947
Leaders
“The New Jet Bombers” The Air Ministry has announced that 2 ½ years
ago, it issued a specification for a twin-engined, straight-jet, medium bomber
with a speed that Flight calculates
to be 600mph. A year later, it issued a specification for a four-engined,
long-ranged heavy bomber. The requirements were then revised to be so ambitious
in terms of speed, range and operating height, that more aircraft, “probably”
with unorthodox wings were ordered. Flight
concludes that two bombers with straight wings, and others with sweptback
wings, are coming. Development contracts for new engines have also been placed.
 |
| So there we go. The V bombers are official. |
“Another Let-down” BEA has over-expanded its ground staff in comparison
to the fleet it needs for the routes that it has, and will probably have to lay
people off. Flight thinks that might
be avoided if the Post Office would just charge less for airmail, on which it
“must” be making a tidy profit.
“Tudors –Immediate Action Called For” An unconfirmed announcement that
the completed Tudor Atlantic Is might be gutted and used as freighters has Avro
up in arms. Avro thinks that the planes are fine, and that BOAC is conspiring
to buy American because it just prefers American planes. BOAC thinks that the
Tudors are awful. Right below that is a picture of a Short Shetland in trials.
It looks like a flying building.
It’s also a black-and-white picture against grey skies, so cold. (Possibly as cold as Fort Rupert in July!) I’m reminded of Grace going on about her San Francisco harbour experience.
 |
| The thinking is that since they need to have two stories worth of height to push the planing hull down low enough to accommodate airscrew length, why not use all that space? Oh. Right. 184mph. That's why. |
It’s also a black-and-white picture against grey skies, so cold. (Possibly as cold as Fort Rupert in July!) I’m reminded of Grace going on about her San Francisco harbour experience.
“Introducing the Bell: Hardy Two-seater Helicopter Demonstrated by New
British Company” Irvin-Bell Helicopter Sales has Bell 47s for sale. It is also
going to offer piloting instruction courses at Prestwick, for £300. Irving-Bell
wants us to know that the ’47 has a two-piece welded fuselage, a two-blade
rotor, by comparison with the three on rival designs, although this means a
larger diameter or higher rotor speed; rotor vibrations are prevented by a
flexible mounting; Bell’s patent stabilising bar is explained.
Here and There
A traveling Atomic Energy Exhibition is to show Britons how atomic
energy works. The US Occupation authorities are going to have air police
patrols over the German Autobahn to catch traffic violators. A new
Metrovick-equipped Meteor is flying. Sir Henry Tizard hinted, in an interview
in Ottawa, that Britain, Canada and the United States might cooperate to defend
the Arctic, and this might be why Canada is completing surveys for V-2 rocket
testing ranges in northern Canada. Kelvin, Bottomley and Baird is amalgamating
with Henry Hughes and Sons, with whom they have been living in sin since the
war. Flight doesn’t say where they’re
registered, so you can’t get them china.
 |
| Yes, that Kelvin |
“A Dynamic Static Show” A static show is when the companies put up
exhibits in a hall instead of flying a plane overhead. It’s dynamic because it
was exciting, I guess. I’m probably not the audience for automatic
lamp-changers, directional-gyros, and artificial horizons, but someone is!
Uncle George will want to know about the Miles Aircraft exhibit of a
control-surface trimming system that uses electric actuators governed by a
three-motion switch and linked to the Miles Co-Pilot “in main-component form.”
Messier showed off a three-disc brake used on the Meteor that operates at 4000
lb/sq. inch, which is apparently the highest pressure of any aircraft hydraulic
system yet. They are foreign-designed, but British manufactured.
Hordern-Richmond showed off its new line of Hydulignum airscrews and fan
blades, and Sangamo-Weston a navigational air based on the orbital-radius meter
used with Rebecca. It also has a glide-path indicator to be used with the
SCS-51. RFD Ltd showed off rubberized-fabric folding chairs that weigh 4 1/2lbs
that Flight found a real relief to
sit in for a while. Martin Baker showed off its ejector seat for fast-flying
aircraft, a patent lubrication system for contra-rotating airscrews, and a new
feed for 20mm cannons. Decca Navigator had a Decca Navigator with its latest
accessory, Lane Identification. Gravinier showed its new jet turbine fuel
combustion unit, and George Godfrey and Partners its Marshal cold-air unit (a
compressor-turbine pair with cooling by expansion) for cabin air conditioning.
At 21lb, the one for the Vickers Viscount pushes 54lb of air per minute
delivered at 37 F from an inlet temperature of 90 F. James Booth showed off the
hand-forged centre section spar for the Saunders-Roe SR/45 flying boat. Done on
a 12,000lb forging press, it is “by far the largest unit of its kind ever
attempted.” Dowty showed off another giant part, this one an undercarriage unit
for the Brabazon. Triplex had its latest electrically-heated, optically flat
windshield for fighters, and Kelvin, Bottomley and Baird showed various
instruments, including a low-range air speed indicator, going from 10 to 150mph
and making it easy to see a 10mph difference.
 |
| Again, we've heard about all of this technology, so I'm not linking! By MilborneOne - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2870242 |
“British Jet Bombers: Long-Range Aircraft Ordered: Many New Problemswith Increased Speeds” The new jet bombers must be a new design to take full
advantage of the potential of jet power, and since they are most efficient at
very high altitudes, they have to . . . fly at high altitudes! A more
conventional jet bomber with twin engines will introduce the jet age to Bomber
Command, before the new types, which will require extensive wind tunnel testing
before the Air Staff places orders. Because many design features will be
revolutionary, weight growth is expected. The Air Staff hopes that improved
engines will compensate for that, which is why new engine orders are part of
the jet bomber programme.
“National Gas Turbine Establishment: Increased Activity and Expanding
Facilities” NGTE is not to develop new engines, but to develop parts and
applications, especially for rail, power generation and marine engine
applications. It is currently spread over four facilities, but will be
concentrated on a 100 acre site at Pyestock, where its work will centre around
an already-built test facility, a test-house powered by a 6000hp steam turbine
to run compressors at up to 18000rpm for turbine tests at altitude conditions
up to 35,000ft. It is currently working on “afterburning” and thrust spoilers.
It is also testing a water-cooled turbine, invented by Ernest Schmidt, of Brunswick, in which water flows through to cool the jet turbine, is turned into
steam, and used in a steam turbine that provides 5-10% of total thrust. The
workshop is making special tools to forging special blades for this engine. The
researchers are very young, and Britain is the tops at everything!
“Power Plants: Good Progress with Development but Few New Designs” Flight went to look at engines, and
didn’t see any new designs. Unless the Napier Naiad, Menasco engine, and
helicopter engine version of the Leonides count.
“The Anglo-American Conference: Summaries of Further Lectures: Hazen
on Development of Piston Engines and Hafner on Helicopters” R. M. Hazen, who is
director of engineering at Allison, says that the future of the reciprocating
engine in aircraft is that it has no future. But, currently, a reciprocating engine aircraft has five to six times
the range of a jet with the same configuration, so it does have a future.
Looking at the V-1710, he concludes that a turbocompound V-1710 with a geared
turbine is actually a pretty good bet. Raoul Hafner, chief engineer for Bristol
Aeroplane’s helicopter division, talks about rotor systems and control
problems. He talks about air flow problems, and then mentions how he used to be
involved with the gyroplane, and then, bang! He’s on to how the freely-flapping
blade solves these problems better than any of these new-fangled helicopters.
The autogiro will never die!
“Handley Page Hastings: Britain’s Largest and Fastest Military
Transport: New Standards of Comfort and Safety” Mr. Handley Page is another of
those aviation people that the wise heads of my elders do not much like, and I
guess for them it isn’t surprising that Handley Page hasn’t been able to sell
its modified Halifaxes as airliners; and that leaves the RAF to buy the
“typical Handley Page junk.” On the other hand, Avro hasn’t had much success, either! It is very roomy and comfortable.
“A New Autopilot: General Survey of Smith’s Electric Pilot: Entirely New
Basis of Control: Maintenance Eliminated” “Under the leadership of F. W.
Meredith, who has been connected with British automatic pilot development since
1925,” Smith’s Research Organisation has met the Air Staff requirement for an
all-electric autopilot. It uses a rate-rate gyro instead of a rate-displacement
design (that is, the rate of gyro motion is controlled by the rate of
displacement at aircraft control surfaces, rather than the amount of
displacement), giving high response with less time lag and thus less hunting.
Three gyros, all miniature hysteresis motors running at 12000rpm, make up the
detecting and control-reference component. Though there are also “pendulum
style monitors” that police gyro wandering, and do send signals to the servos.
Electric supply and stable mounting are both tricky engineering problems, which
Smith’s is very pleased to report it has solved. The electrics are said to be
complex, and “mysterious,” and Flight isn’t
going to bother our silly little heads with details of signals going through
junctions to amplifiers to be “boosted.” (Just to put emphasis where it is due,
yes, there is an electric amplifier in the circuit, which is a very big deal
for Uncle George, because now we must think about a more complicated circuit to
“clean up” the boosted signal, which is already hashed, as my fiancé would say,
by the difference between what theory says the gyros should say, and what
reality makes them say. Uncle George is convinced that with all the talk of
electrical automation, it’s in the details of the “unhashing” that there is
money to be made.
I can't find anything about the Smith's Electric pilot, which seems like it might be the first approach to fly-by-wire. We've got a lot to learn about the history of IT, I say, for the millionth time.
Anyway, enough of a girl’s speculations about what an article might
say if it said it, and if she read it properly! It’s fascinating to go on and
see that Smith’s thinks of the autopilot as not only a substitute for pilot control, but a means of control, and there is a control stick by which the pilot
can “artificially perturb” the gyros and drive the plane! You can dive up to 40
degrees, climb up to 20, turn up to 45 degrees of bank with this control,
without ever taking the plane off autopilot. [Smith’s fly by wire gadget;
gadgets] The servo-motors have a motor, magnetic clutch, reduction gear and
torque shaft that can output a 60lb ft. torque to the controls. I suppose that
that is why there must be an amplifier in the circuit, as you are not going to
get anywhere near that much power through a gyro, says Uncle George. (I spent
two hours talking to him about this article. It was very interesting!)
Civil Aviation News
The BEA is upset at the currency ban cutting into its business.
The Ministry of Supply points out that thanks to interim types, it could develop the WT1900 and STR.12 radiotelecommunication system in the Hermes before it goes into the DH 106 and Apollo. The Apollo will also use the Tudor’s cabin pressurisation system, and it is hoped that “the new British auto-pilot (Mark IX)) will be tested on these types before going into the 106. I think that’s the Smith’s auto-pilot in this issue. BOAC’s Speedbird Constellation service carried 33.1 passengers per Atlantic run compared with its closest rival’s 31.6 in June. Mr. P. R. Dickinson will be the new liaison officer for the new, Pan-American run, all-weather radar landing system being installed at Gander for use by all the other airlines and for making profits for Pan-American. The new unit, with a range of 130 miles, should eliminate bad weather stacking at Gander. BEA has withdrawn its night mail and freight service to Prague due to the lack of necessary radar and radio aids in central Europe. BOAC is trying to sell its Boeing 314s to Uruguay, since it doesn’t need them in Bermuda, any more.
The Ministry of Supply points out that thanks to interim types, it could develop the WT1900 and STR.12 radiotelecommunication system in the Hermes before it goes into the DH 106 and Apollo. The Apollo will also use the Tudor’s cabin pressurisation system, and it is hoped that “the new British auto-pilot (Mark IX)) will be tested on these types before going into the 106. I think that’s the Smith’s auto-pilot in this issue. BOAC’s Speedbird Constellation service carried 33.1 passengers per Atlantic run compared with its closest rival’s 31.6 in June. Mr. P. R. Dickinson will be the new liaison officer for the new, Pan-American run, all-weather radar landing system being installed at Gander for use by all the other airlines and for making profits for Pan-American. The new unit, with a range of 130 miles, should eliminate bad weather stacking at Gander. BEA has withdrawn its night mail and freight service to Prague due to the lack of necessary radar and radio aids in central Europe. BOAC is trying to sell its Boeing 314s to Uruguay, since it doesn’t need them in Bermuda, any more.
Correspondence
G. H. Cumberbatch Willins writes to point out that Juan de Cierva
wasn’t moving towards a helicopter design before his death, but remained
committed to the autogiro, and would have worked out all its problems and
created the perfect airplane had he not died in an air accident. S. H.
Handasyde writes to point out that a commercial executive aircraft must be the
right size, or no-one will buy it, and he is not persuaded that Roy Fedden has
the right idea. C. C. Allinson is upset that no-one will hire him as an air
traffic control officer because he is 48.
The Engineer, 26 September 1947
Seven-Day Journal
“Pilotless Atlantic Flight” The Air Force flew a Skymaster across the
Atlantic under automatic control in September. It used three pre-set course
changes to bring it from Stephenville, Newfoundland, into range of a localiser
frequency at Brize Norton, where it put down its undercarriage and landed
automatically.
“The Late Dr. B. C. Laws” This week’s obituary has Uncle George heartbroken, although he says you didn’t know him.
“LMS Lambridge Collision Report” The accident report concludes that
the accident was caused solely by driver negligence, and that automatic
warnings would have prevented it. A report follows about the electrification of
the LNER’s Liverpool Street-Shenfield line. Despite having electricity in the
name, it is about building retaining walls and platforms and stuff like that.
“Production Costs and the Export Drive” The Engineering Industries
Association says that only reduction of production costs could make the export
drive successful, due to the high cost of “coal, steel, transport and labour.”
One of the largest factor is all the forms that industry must fill out. You
know, all that wasteful bureaucracy that crops up whenever you just say that
your production costs are too high due to “steel, coal and labour,” and has
nothing to do with the Director’s new yacht? The Institute of Navigation had a
nice meeting where everyone agreed that there should be an Institute of
Navigation.
H. E. Merritt, “The Closed Gear Train” I’m told that this is the man
who designed the transmission in the new British tanks. I don’t know if Flight talks about tank transmissions,
but if it did, I’m sure it would tell me that it is the best transmission in
the world, but modesty prevents it from saying so. A closed gear train is where
every gear meshes with two neighbours, and if the meshing is to be good, you
have to do some math. {Merritt closed gear train; non-aviation gadgets].The math follows, and makes me feel awfully inadequate, since I would never have finished my school geometry without Reggie’s constant encouragement.
“Electric Power Supply” The Electricity Supply Commission of South
Africa has sold a record amount of electricity, and is buying new plant,
abroad, but suppliers are so backed up that they cannot guarantee a delivery
even in two-and-a-half years.
 |
| Since I think I've done all the other Merritt-Brown tanks, here's the Conqueror! |
“Engineering and Marine Exhibition at Olympia, No. V” We learn about Gwynne Pumps’ new crude oil
pump, which pushes out crude oil at 1834 “g.p.m.,” operating at 100lb/sq. inch
at a speed of 1200rpm. It also has an “ejector excavator,” which digs hole with
jets of water, notably the silt filling sunk ships –that is, in salvaging. The
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research’s exhibition featured examples
of its work, go figure that! The British Shipbuilding Research Association,
just the same, while the National Physical Laboratory had to narrow down its
exhibit to the Ship, Metrology and Engineering Divisions. The first had a
cavitation tunnel, the second some nice photographs of surface finishes, the
third a “proposed unification of screw threads in the UK, US and Canada.” The
Boiler Availability Committee was also stuck down in this veritable ghetto of demonstrations
of investigative methods, as was the Production Engineering Research
Association and the British Iron and Steel Research Association, although it
managed to scrounge up a model blast furnace and a blast converter with a
window in the side so that you can see the blast being converted. Fearing that
was too much excitement for one corner of the hall, they then ended up with a
wire drawing tension-measuring demonstration, which sounds like much more fun
than the joint demonstration of progress in welding. Also,
the British Non-Ferrous metals Research Association showed off rusting. Or is
it “tarnishing” when it’s not iron? Dobbie McInnes, Ltd., showed off a new ship
radar to Ministry of Transport specifications.
Uncle George says that it is a Big Thing that a traditional instrument maker is branching out into radar. There might not be room in the industry for all the companies that want to make gas turbines and radars, but it might be that companies like Dobie McInnes will turn their expertise to putting even more electronics into the things they already make, like instruments. And, on cue, the next paragraph talks about the company’s new telemagnetic compass, which is like the remote compasses they already have on planes, but for ships. Barlow Whitney exhibits “various industrial heating processes,” mostly deep fat fryers for industrial parts. (Okay, okay, electrically actuated hot oil circulators or whatever.) Easton and Johnson have a compact marine steam turbine, Arc Manufacturing Company has a welding transformer; Lincoln Electric a welding machine; G. D. Peters a dust and fume extractor for same; Fusarc, Ltd., a marine welder; Cyc-Arc Steel Welding a stud-welding demonstration. Dowding and Doll showed off its Matterson bevel gear generating attachment for shaping machines [Dowding and Doll bevel shaper; non-aviation]. Associated Equipment Company was afraid that just having the most boring name in business wouldn’t be competitive against a Research Association’s progress in welding, so it put forward some very boring 100hp “oil engines,” because in The Engineer you are only allowed to say “diesel” on every alternate page, unless you have called “London Airport” “Heathrow” in the last two pages.
Uncle George says that it is a Big Thing that a traditional instrument maker is branching out into radar. There might not be room in the industry for all the companies that want to make gas turbines and radars, but it might be that companies like Dobie McInnes will turn their expertise to putting even more electronics into the things they already make, like instruments. And, on cue, the next paragraph talks about the company’s new telemagnetic compass, which is like the remote compasses they already have on planes, but for ships. Barlow Whitney exhibits “various industrial heating processes,” mostly deep fat fryers for industrial parts. (Okay, okay, electrically actuated hot oil circulators or whatever.) Easton and Johnson have a compact marine steam turbine, Arc Manufacturing Company has a welding transformer; Lincoln Electric a welding machine; G. D. Peters a dust and fume extractor for same; Fusarc, Ltd., a marine welder; Cyc-Arc Steel Welding a stud-welding demonstration. Dowding and Doll showed off its Matterson bevel gear generating attachment for shaping machines [Dowding and Doll bevel shaper; non-aviation]. Associated Equipment Company was afraid that just having the most boring name in business wouldn’t be competitive against a Research Association’s progress in welding, so it put forward some very boring 100hp “oil engines,” because in The Engineer you are only allowed to say “diesel” on every alternate page, unless you have called “London Airport” “Heathrow” in the last two pages.
“The National Gas Turbine Establishment” Even though it makes gas, it
still isn’t allowed to lecture undergraduates –not even in French literature!
Blech Baudelaire blech. No, it doesn’t make gas, because then the gas-making
industry would be upset that someone was invading its turf of pretending that
Voltaire is great literature. Ahem. Can you tell that I wrote during a lecture?
Oh, details, as might not be in Flight.
Well, they have a turbine on a “mobile test bed” that looks like a cannon. The
boys will love that!
“Bradford Power Station Extensions and Jubilee” An “interesting event”
happened recently at the Bradford Power Station, when it celebrated its 50th
birthday, which was actually in 1939, but, you know, the war and everything. It
is much bigger and nicer than it was in 1889.
Metallurgical
Topics
“Sub-Zero Treatment of Tool Steel” Professor Morris Cohen, of MIT,
treats tool steel cold. So cold, it’s frigid. Oh, the tool steel so wants to
know what it ever did to offend Professor Cohen, but he doesn’t say, just keeps
throwing these high-tungsten, chromium and vanadium steel alloys into freezers
until their austenite turns into martensite and not bainite instead of carbide
and pearlite! Details follow about when temperatures must be lowered, and to
what, to get the best results. It is apparently possible to make better tool
steel, or, at least, better steel than most being used now. So that’s the
significance of this article.
 |
| All you could ever want to know about steel allotropes, at the link above. Now, with added alloys, things do start to get complicated. . . . |
“Rate of Propagation of Cracks in Steel” What with Uncle Henry’s ships
exploding here and there, it would be interesting to know just how cracks
propagate in steel, which is what G. Hudson and M. Greenfield researched, and
then told the Journal of Applied Physics about.
They used high speed cameras and an electrical setup to measure very high
propagation speeds.
“Inflammability of Magnesium Alloys” Everyone says that making things
of magnesium is dumb, because they remember high school and Sister Alicia (or
possibly someone who wasn’t a nun who was somehow allowed to teach in trousers
because she knew science and geometry) setting magnesium coils on fire. Is it
fair to say that all magnesium-alloy fans are just con artists? (Ahem, Uncle
Henry, ahem?) C. B. Willmore and W. S. Peterson, writing in Materials and Methods, say that, at the
very least, when the con artists say that there is nothing to worry about, they
are exaggerating. [pdf]
Leaders
“The Anglo-American Aeronautical Conference” The parts that The Engineer liked the best are where
Professor Karman explained why it was hard to push airplanes through the speed
of sound; the part where all the people listening to Mr. Owner’s discussion of
the weird Bristol turbofans, said that all the weird parts were unnecessary,
and that it would be the ducted fan that won out in the end. The Engineer hopes that people are right
that the icing problem in turbines won’t be such a big deal. It also reports
that everyone agrees that they can’t agree on whether airliners will keep on
getting bigger, or not, but everyone agrees that safety is the most important
thing.
 |
| Perhaps sometimes don't put weird things in turbines? By Brian Burnell, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9616928 |
“Security” The Engineer agrees
with The Economist that unemployment
is needed to keep that rascally working class on their toes; but in an ideal
world we would somehow have “security” and “incentives.” I’ve heard of that!
It’s called “money”!
Letters
A recent letter suggested that, what with chromium lining, steel
engine cylinders would be preferred to cast iron, as chromium adheres to steel
better than to cast iron. The sales manager of the Sheepbridge StokesCentrifugal Castings Company writes to say that their chromium-plated, cast
iron cylinders are top drawer!
“British Association, No. V, continued: Engineering” Mr. Forrest G.
Anderson, of Anderson, Boyes and Co., reminds everyone that when we speak of
the mechanisation of mines, “with special reference to coal-cutting machinery,”
that American machinery is of limited use over here, as it is best suited to
more shallow mines with less gas, which means that they need to take fewer
precautions against sparking. It is also important that longwall mining is used
more in Britain than in America. The much-publicised A. B. Meco-Moore machine,
invented by the late M. S. Moore, is a good example of a longwall coal cutting
machine. Power loading, although said to have great potential, still hasn’t
shown it. There was also a paper on the x-ray examination of butt welds in
pressure vessels, and on the ‘Size Effect’ in ‘normalised mild steel.’ The
first summary is very short, and concludes that x-rays are good; the second
summary is quite long, and would be interesting if I had any idea what the
“size factor” or even “normalised” steel is. (It’s not when your friends tell
you that just everyone is going to be
wearing princess coats this winter.)
 |
| I haven't been able to find anything about Meco-Moore machines, but the attribution to a British inventor is interesting given my last trawl through the literature. I can attribute this princess coat, though. I also think I know what normalised steel is, but don't want to test myself by trying to explain. |
“Stratosphere Chamber”
The Engineer says that the gigantic new stratosphere chamber at Vickers Weybrdge will do up conditions up to 70,000ft, to test pressure cabins, aircraft structures, controls and engines under “a variety of conditions.” It is very enormous, with airlocks on either end to give access, manholes that can be removed to put in glass observation panels and other special plates, and enormously powerful compressors and refrigerators.
 |
| Built by a submarine maker! |
The Engineer says that the gigantic new stratosphere chamber at Vickers Weybrdge will do up conditions up to 70,000ft, to test pressure cabins, aircraft structures, controls and engines under “a variety of conditions.” It is very enormous, with airlocks on either end to give access, manholes that can be removed to put in glass observation panels and other special plates, and enormously powerful compressors and refrigerators.
Short articles describe Alfred Herbert, Ltd.’s new tipped tool lappingmachine, Murex Welding Processes’ Lightweight arc welding set, R. W. Knowles’
variable speed gear unit, the new British welding electrode classification
scheme, the locomotive shed at Avignon, and the high intensity contact lighting
being installed at London Airport by the Ministry, in preference to the
elevated lights with higher intensity preferred in the United States. E. H.
Jones has a new offset boring head in its range of tools, but I think that’s
just The Engineer handing us recappers
an easy one.
Vice-Admiral L. V. Morgan (not
Engineer Vice-Admiral) has “An Historical Review of Portsmouth Dockyard” up
next. Portsmouth Harbour is a very large “sea water lake” guarded by a 250 yard
opening, and is close to the New Forest and the Forest of Bree, so in the old
days it had plenty of wood for ships. In spite of that, it wasn’t of much
consequence in the old days, when everyone crossed the Channel to the east,
around the island of Britain’s cute little corner facing France. Eventually, the part where Admiral Morgan must
give a historical sketch of Portsmouth without mentioning Portsmouth comes to
an end, and this seems like a good place to stop the article.
South African
Engineering Notes
Port Elizabeth will have fifty new factories in the future, making
railway cars, electric lamps, shoes, sheet metal, electric cables, wire
netting, barbed wire, electrical implements, and so on, are built. Rhodesia is
buying thirty locomotives from Brittan and twelve from Canada, fifty covered
wagons from Sudan, 300 steel bogie wagons from Britain, forty-six refrigerated
and petrol wagons from someone and 120 coach wagons of various kinds, while
doing all sorts of reorganising to which I frankly paid no attention. Did you
know that the southern African railways have a special “Native” class below
third class? Sounds lovely! The South African steel industry continues toexist. South African Railway is receiving the first two locomotives made entirely in South Africa soon. Twelve have been ordered, and will be no more
expensive than imported ones, presumably after taking shipping into account. A
new rail line into the gold fields is being built. Northern Rhodesia is
spending £138,000 on airfields to put itself on the aviation map. The Zambesi
will become a flying boat stage to support Livingstone’s tourist trade. The
Livingstone airport is undergoing various improvements for the same reason.
Industrial and Labour Notes
Industrial and Labour Notes
The Control of Engagements Order will come into force on 6 October,
requiring all hiring to be done through labour exchanges so that beady-eyed
bureaucrats can ascertain whether needful work is being done. The month’s
export figures are published, and since I can’t easily compare them to other
numbers, I’ll leave them to The
Economist, although it seems more in The
Engineer’s back yard to report that a record 57,000 tons of machinery were
exported in July. The Survey of Scientific Manpower is going ahead, as is the
Steel Allocation Scheme, and the Steel Company of Wales is continuing with its
modernisation of the tinplate and sheet steel industry. French Engineering
Notes reports that the Peugeot Works have reached 80% of their 1939 production,
and that the amount of French hydroelectric power continues to advance, to 6.13
million kWh from 5.5 last year, to rise to 6.48 next year.
Notes and Memoranda
Various new bridges have been built here and there to take increasing
numbers of steel wagons. Canada is planning further upgrades of the St.
Lawrence ship canal. Various exhibitions, publications and courses are
announced. Canada now has 2 million telephones. The Institute of Heating and
Ventilation Engineers are cancelling their Jubilee Banquet and Dance, planned
for 7 October due to national conditions.
Time, 29 September 1947
Letters
Helen Kilbourne Hayslette, of my own alma mater, gets in a dig at San
Francisco public transport. Correspondents differ on whether Britain should get
American money. Time apologises for
calling Ralph Ingersoll a Communist agent. Six different correspondents noticed
that a picture of Iranian Princess Ashraf in a fashionable hat looked just like
the famous bust of Nefertiti.
The publisher’s letter apologises for sending men to the Gimbel show, since, obviously, they had no place investigating the fashion industry.
 |
| They had some pretty good artists in the Late Bronze Age. By Philip Pikart - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8433730 |
The publisher’s letter apologises for sending men to the Gimbel show, since, obviously, they had no place investigating the fashion industry.
National Affairs
Communism! And General Marshal, and the General Assembly and Korea.
Also, we now have a Department of Defence. Three pages done already! Like me,
the President missed it all, as he was off at sea. In other “news,” Time extracts Henry Morgenthau’s
opinions of Ickes, Hopkins and Henry Wallace from his recently published
papers. And since this week’s hurricanes didn’t decently confine themselves toPuerto Rico, but insisted on making land in Florida, which is sort of in America, Emma and Kathleen are up next.
Twelve dead, seven missing, and a Negro shot dead because a white man said he caught him looting a liquor store. Radio towers were toppled in Fort Lauderdale, beach cabanas were blown away, the palm trees on Miami Beach’s millionaire’s row were toppled, and the rain caught up with the fleeing caravan of evacuees north in Apalachicola. Senator Taft’s tour of the west also blew tepid and humid air. Dewey, meanwhile, milked cows in Massachusetts.
Elma Wickenden got a medal for running the Red Cross’s auxiliary nurses programme.
Twelve dead, seven missing, and a Negro shot dead because a white man said he caught him looting a liquor store. Radio towers were toppled in Fort Lauderdale, beach cabanas were blown away, the palm trees on Miami Beach’s millionaire’s row were toppled, and the rain caught up with the fleeing caravan of evacuees north in Apalachicola. Senator Taft’s tour of the west also blew tepid and humid air. Dewey, meanwhile, milked cows in Massachusetts.
 |
| As with Harding, at some point you have to think that we're intended to read something into Dewey's complexion. |
Elma Wickenden got a medal for running the Red Cross’s auxiliary nurses programme.
“Communists” That’s the actual headline. Turns out that there’s
communists in American unions, and some might be deported for being in America
illegally for years and years. Mayor LaGuardia is dead. I’m a little surprised
that he is not the cover story. The St. Louis Catholic School District has
ended segregation, and Bishop Ritter is threatening parishioners who dissent
with excommunication. Good on him.
Americana
The number of American private households has increased 12% in the
last seven years to 39 million, although the number of doubled-up households
has increased too, and now stands at 2,764,000. Billy Sunday celebrated the
seventieth anniversary of his crusade at the place it started. Next century in
Jerusalem!
International
Mayor LaGuardia isn’t the cover story because Andrei Vishinski is.
He’s a communist, you see. And he’s at the United Nations. What more do you
need to say? In more communism news, things are hot in Trieste. Then, sensing
my impatience, Time does a good job
of summarising the state of the world with a one-page photo montage that I’ll
just clip and add at this point.
You cannot, Thank God, take a picture of communism. In England, talk of Atlee being unseated continues, and the “Tory weekly Recorder” offers a new definition of socialism. It is,” I miss coal.”
Also all too socialist is British agriculture, where a farmer is up in arms about being told when to plough his field. The story is that Farmer Dennis had a bad crop of wheat last year, which he ploughed under. The County Agricultural Committee ordered him to sow a catch crop of mustard, which would be ploughed under green to enrich the soil. Dennis decided that since his field was already infested with wild mustard, he would sow buckwheat instead; the problem is that you cannot sow buckwheat in Britain without a license right now, because it is off the ration and fetches a high price as a scarce feed for poultry, pigs and cattle, fetching 80 shillings for a 56lb sack, because the British hate arithmetic. The Committee stepped in and forbade Farmer Dennis from having anything to do with the field, lest he harvest it and collect £3000. Instead, it would act to plough while the crop was green, using it as a catch crop. Then . . .it didn’t. Leaving the crop until it was ripe, and only then ploughing it in, instead of harvesting it.
In Germany, the black market in American watches and cars is noticed, not buckwheat, and Germans in the east are making an honour-grove for Stalin. Time then moves on to China, where it is still apoplectic over General Wedemayer’s report –so angry that it makes nice with T. V. Soong, who is applauded for giving some money to a veterans’ fund. Well, shares in state-directed corporations, but the principal is the same. In the Yangtze valley, General Liu Po-chang is leading a Communist offensive in the direction of Nanking, and in Manchuria, Chen Cheng is leading a purge of Koumintang generals and officials. Also, Communism! In the Solomon Islands, where the natives are flying the yellow and black flag of “Martin Lo,” pidgin for “Marxian law.” Planter Heinrich Kuper is the source of this interesting information, and of ample encouragement for the breaking of communist heads amongst the copra workers, who believe that America is a communist state, and would soon send a Liberty ship carrying a mosquito-proof hut and a kerosene refrigerator for every Martin Lo-ist. They also elected their own Marching Rule government, which collapsed when the British sent some cruisers to the island of Guadalcanal to see what was up.
You cannot, Thank God, take a picture of communism. In England, talk of Atlee being unseated continues, and the “Tory weekly Recorder” offers a new definition of socialism. It is,” I miss coal.”
Also all too socialist is British agriculture, where a farmer is up in arms about being told when to plough his field. The story is that Farmer Dennis had a bad crop of wheat last year, which he ploughed under. The County Agricultural Committee ordered him to sow a catch crop of mustard, which would be ploughed under green to enrich the soil. Dennis decided that since his field was already infested with wild mustard, he would sow buckwheat instead; the problem is that you cannot sow buckwheat in Britain without a license right now, because it is off the ration and fetches a high price as a scarce feed for poultry, pigs and cattle, fetching 80 shillings for a 56lb sack, because the British hate arithmetic. The Committee stepped in and forbade Farmer Dennis from having anything to do with the field, lest he harvest it and collect £3000. Instead, it would act to plough while the crop was green, using it as a catch crop. Then . . .it didn’t. Leaving the crop until it was ripe, and only then ploughing it in, instead of harvesting it.
 |
| Not desperate enough to eat the stuff, yet. |
In Germany, the black market in American watches and cars is noticed, not buckwheat, and Germans in the east are making an honour-grove for Stalin. Time then moves on to China, where it is still apoplectic over General Wedemayer’s report –so angry that it makes nice with T. V. Soong, who is applauded for giving some money to a veterans’ fund. Well, shares in state-directed corporations, but the principal is the same. In the Yangtze valley, General Liu Po-chang is leading a Communist offensive in the direction of Nanking, and in Manchuria, Chen Cheng is leading a purge of Koumintang generals and officials. Also, Communism! In the Solomon Islands, where the natives are flying the yellow and black flag of “Martin Lo,” pidgin for “Marxian law.” Planter Heinrich Kuper is the source of this interesting information, and of ample encouragement for the breaking of communist heads amongst the copra workers, who believe that America is a communist state, and would soon send a Liberty ship carrying a mosquito-proof hut and a kerosene refrigerator for every Martin Lo-ist. They also elected their own Marching Rule government, which collapsed when the British sent some cruisers to the island of Guadalcanal to see what was up.
 |
| Hunh. Cargo cultists as Marxist agitators. You hear something new every day. |
The Latin American section isn’t all patronising for a change.
Mexico’s Yucatan state isn’t just worried about hurricanes. It produces much of
the world’s supply of binder twine, and after the last war, American buyers
used war surplus to push the price down to a tenth of the wartime level. The
story emphasises the hardships of the millionaires who owned the henequin plantations, but surely the
peasants suffered, too. The coming of a new war, and new war prices, was the
salvation of the province, but now the Yucatan is watching and wary, lest the
same thing happen again. Canada is still boring. It has a columnist who is
funny! To be honest, I’ll give Bruce Hutchison’s “Mrs. Noggin” credit for
once. She agrees with me that there’s way too many crises these days.
 |
| Another industrial crop heard from. By Michiel1972 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18081792 |
Science, Education
“Synthetic A” Distillation Products, of Rochester, New York, has
announced that it has discovered a way of making synthetic Vitamin A, which
might help the millions of people who cannot afford cod liver oil.
“Criticism” For twenty years, Dirac’s theory that predicts that
hydrogen can exist in two different states (stable and unstable), with the same
amount of energy, has held sway amongst the sort of physicist who worries about
such things. This week, it is reported that Professor Willis Lamb (34), and Robert Retherford, a late bloomer who is not a professor in spite of being a
near-retirement 35, used ultra-shortwave radio waves to shoot hydrogen, showing
that they had to add energy to raise hydrogen from the stable to unstable
state, and therefore the states have different energies. This is exciting,
because hydrogen is a very simple atom consisting of one proton and one
neutron, and as far as we know, these are homogenous and irreducible particles,
so it is not obvious how the combination could store different amounts of
energy in two states. Is how I read this. The implications may be as
far-reaching as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Meaning a newer and better
bomb in forty years. Hey, I didn’t say it, Time
did. In other atomically unstable news, the American Chemical Society
officially gave Element 96, Curium, a seat at the Periodic Table. Element
hunters believe that they have isolated two other unstable elements from the
devil’s brew of decay products produced in uranium reactors or by shooting high
energy neutrons at regular elements. Element 61, which might be christened
Promethium, is one.
Bayard Dodge is the President of American University in Beirut, and a
prince of a fellow. He even discontinued mandatory chapel attendance for Muslim
students in 1913! In New Mexico, pressure continues to prevent nuns from
teaching in public schools, because Protestant children might get Catholic
germs. The University of Chicago is still on about Great Books.
Business
It turns out that the rising price of corn due to fears of a poor
harvest might be just a bubble, after all. A very long story about Cyrus Stephen Eaton’s iron ore play at Steep Rock gets a long story. Eaton holds
74.4% of Steep Rock and is very rich on paper, but has no plans on cashing in,
since he thinks that Steep Rock will only get more valuable as the Mesabi Range
plays out. In autos, it looks as though Ford’s offer of a pension plan and a
lower raise is going down to defeat, in spite of union support, although the
largest Ford local, No. 600 in Detroit, hasn’t voted yet, and may carry the
day. [pdf] It is thought that the communists and Walter Reuther have been carrying on
a quiet campaign against the plan. Besides, since most of Ford’s workers are
under 40, and have at least 25 years to go before they are eligible, they may
just not think that it is a worthwhile alternative to as much as 17 cents an
hour more. Tucker Col just lost Harry Toulmin, of the machinery makers, from
its board, because, as Toulmin explains in a letter to the SEC, Tucker is a
two-bit crook. (My words, and, of course, I may just be seeing Uncle Henry
everywhere. What can I say? I must go see Auntie –no-one else will, and, to be
fair, I’m not sure that she wants them to, and that includes me—and he is just
so hard to bear!) Also, there is a desperate shortage of rayon.
State of Business reports that livestock
producers now get 71 cents of every consumer dollar spent on meat, up from 51
cents in 1939. Hudson Motors is hoping to start making its revolutionary newmodel with full head room despite being only five feet high, in the next
several weeks, which is why it is selling them now. A grey market in steel,
like the one in rayon, is yielding premiums of between $60 and 160 per ton.
Jukebox operators on the West Coast have raised a “hepcat hurdle,” as they
increase the price to 10 cents a song.
 |
| Time for an ad! |
“Continuing Battle” Infantile paralysis specialists had their own
convention at Warm Springs, Georgia, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of
the war against polio that Franklin Roosevelt launched in 1927. We still don’t
know how polio spreads although it’s obviously by fecal-oral contact, only
we’re not allowed to say that, because even though it is mainly a disease of
children, and come on now, it’s too disgusting to even think about. It
doesn’t help that meningitis is often mistaken for polio, and experts now
believe that a 1934 epidemic in Los Angeles that has confused attempts to
understand the disease, may have been meningitis.
“The Queen’s Secret” Queen bees live longer than other bees, and eat
royal jelly. That’s why quacks have been saying that it is health food since forever, but now a biochemist is saying it, Thomas S. Gardner, so it is
Science! Also making news is a new, longer lasting insulin,
“ammono-choline-citrate-hemochromogen” that is a once-a-day dosage, that,unlike other touted one-a-day insulins, might not cause protein reactions.
 |
| Time has Dutch tilt issues, too! |
Press, Radio, People
L’il Abner was cut from the Pittsburgh Press last week for a story
that made fun of the US Senate, which Press
editor, Edward Towner Leech, deemed disrespectful of that august
institution. This leads off into several stories about newspapers censoring
comics, or readers complaining about them. Since Foreign Affairs was in the news last week, this week Time explains what it is: A magazine
no-one reads, but only the best sort of no-one.
Jack Paar is still on the radio, despite coming on as a summer
replacement. Time suggests a reason
why when it quotes his made-up political commentator who “has great difficulty
predicting that Friday will follow Thursday.” My kind of man!
The Outlaws is banned in
Baltimore because Jane Russell is too up front.
King Gustav, who recently lost his son, looks like he recently lost his son in a picture. Hamid Reza Pahlavi, the brother of the Shah of Iran, also looks down in a picture, in his case because he is a barfly in New York City. Mrs. Edward L. Doheny, whose grandfather-in-law was the Dohenny of the Teapot Dome scandal, has lost a bracelet with 41 diamonds and 113 pearls. Franklin Roosevelt, Jr, and his wife, Ethel du Pont, finally showed up for their speeding tickets. Ex-Governor and ambassador George Howard Earle, 56, has just had a daughter with his 25-year-old Belgian wife, Marthe Jermine Sacre Earle. Francisco Segura, the tennis player, has also married, as has Amon G. Carter, while lgor Cassini and Ann Cooper Hewitt Gay Bradstreet Whittaker have divorced. Mary Blair, notorious for kissing Paul Robeson’s hand, has died, as has Howard Myers, world-famous publisher of Architectural Forum, Harry Carey, and, of course, Mayor LaGuardia.
King Gustav, who recently lost his son, looks like he recently lost his son in a picture. Hamid Reza Pahlavi, the brother of the Shah of Iran, also looks down in a picture, in his case because he is a barfly in New York City. Mrs. Edward L. Doheny, whose grandfather-in-law was the Dohenny of the Teapot Dome scandal, has lost a bracelet with 41 diamonds and 113 pearls. Franklin Roosevelt, Jr, and his wife, Ethel du Pont, finally showed up for their speeding tickets. Ex-Governor and ambassador George Howard Earle, 56, has just had a daughter with his 25-year-old Belgian wife, Marthe Jermine Sacre Earle. Francisco Segura, the tennis player, has also married, as has Amon G. Carter, while lgor Cassini and Ann Cooper Hewitt Gay Bradstreet Whittaker have divorced. Mary Blair, notorious for kissing Paul Robeson’s hand, has died, as has Howard Myers, world-famous publisher of Architectural Forum, Harry Carey, and, of course, Mayor LaGuardia.
If you’re looking for Art news, it is this: Honest to God, Time hates Pablo Picasso.
The New Pictures
The Devil’s Envoys is an “odd” French
movie, “a classical medieval romance.” It is pretty, so is the cast, but slow. The Romance of Rosy Ridge is also a
romance about a stranger with a secret who gets the girl, who is also good
looking (Janet Leigh), and is also somewhat lacking, although not slow. Something in the Wind “tries, without
success, to make a hepcat of Deanna Durbin.” By that I think that she sings and
dances? But it’s not a musical! She’s just a hepcat! Maybe. I’m confused. Maybe
I’ll go see it and find out. Oh, who am I kidding. Of course I’ll go see it. Deanna’s
wearing shoes that –Sorry, having a girl moment. Also, it's absolutely a musical.
Books
Time returns to normal
with a Serious book in the head, about General Patton in the head, by Robert S.
Allen, called Lucky Forward. It will
“Only please those who want to make a legend out of Patton.” There is also a
portable edition of Conrad, with a title that, of course, references Heart of Darkness, which is kind of like
slipping a clever reference to Superman into a bit about Nietzsche, or a subtle
mention of Dublin while talking about Joyce. Whatever, I’m sure it will be
perfect if you want to dip into Conrad on the train. Benjamin Thomas has a book about biographies
of Lincoln, which seems more like the kind of thing that student historians
should read than the general public, and Robert C. Ruark tries to make fun of
the Forever Amber-type book with Grenadine Etchings. It isn’t funny.
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