Postblogging Technology, February 1948, I: The Great Soul

R_. C_.,

Vancouver, Canada

Dear Father:

It has been a wearing week, and not just because I am a working girl, now. I've been invited to give a talk about my senior thesis, I think mainly because I am the only Junior who knows what her senior thesis is going to be! I've had to do some fast footwork over the fact that it is Californian history, and not French literature, but Stanford tends to be easy with these things if you're eager and smart. (And rich, Reggie would say.) And I'm told, with a heavy hint that it's my fault, that my Mother is drinking again, and that Dad is acting as though his ulcer is flaring up. He, of course, won't say anything, in case it makes me feel guilty. He'll just rant on about how Indians, Mexicans, Coloureds, Jews and Communists make  him sick to his stomach. I can't say I find that much better. 

So that's me, so obviously the most important bit; but, you might have heard that Gandhi is dead. I feel a little like I'm supposed to be sad about it. What hits a lot closer is that President Tressider is dead. He was only 53! The rumour around campus is that he was in New York to "manage" President Hoover --One more thing to blame the Wonder Boy for. 

So that's it for me, except to mention that Mrs. Delano called back about my application for a summer job at Magnin's to offer me an interview. It's quite exciting, and makes me wish that I'd thought to apply to Magnin's! 

Thank you, is what I'm trying to say. 

Yours Sincerely,

Ronnie.

Time, 2 February 1948

Letters

Oscar Payne catches a discrepancy about snow removal between Time and Life, which the editor corrects, which I will mention because I didn’t cover that issue, and it is so much: New York had to remove 99 million tons of snow at a cost of $6 million(!) Arthur Lipman[?], of your own city, writes to say that New York City wasn’t as white and vacant as the frozen Yukon on New Years, because the Yukon was crisp and sunny the same week. Howard Peabody writes to say that the “tugboat” Sprague is actually a towboat, and isn’t laid up waiting scrapping, because he can see it going by with a barge in tow. 

Robert McCrudy, Pasadena’s Assistant City Manager, writes to say that the Rose Bowl turf wasn’t dyed green on New Year’s Day, as Time’s LA correspondent wrote. Edythe Bell writes to correct Time on Dale Evans’ age. She can hardly be 29 if she has a twenty-year-old son! Time says that she is 35 (Ronnie makes googly-eyes!), but her “professional age” is 29. The Publisher’s Letter says that Time’s staff really enjoyed doing their profile of Caesar Petrillo, because he’s a swell guy, apart from being a corrupt union boss holding the nation’s music industry hostage. And that’s the last I’ll say about it, even though Petrillo’s grilling by the House Education and Labour Committee gets a full page later on. Apparently, some British companies are flying thousands of records over, and it’s not fair to the American industry? So much for not saying anything more about it . . .

National Affairs

That Earl Long. Blaze Starr.

Only in America would the news that General Eisenhower isn’t running for President in 1948 come before Gandhi’s murder. I’m sure you’ve heard about his letter to Leonard Finder. Time thinks that it was because the RNC was going to make him declare his candidacy rather than accept the nomination; and with that out of the way, it looks like we can enjoy six months of speculation about a Taft-Dewey deadlock, and a “dark horse” candidate. (Vandenberg? Warren?) Speaking of, Harold Stassen’s pursuit of the commodity speculators came up dry this week, as Senator Tydings forced him to admit that he didn’t have any actual evidence of Administration insiders getting inside information. Ed Pauley only looks guilty, but maybe he is a master of the lard and cottonseed futures markets. Also, technically he is guilty, since officials aren’t allowed to speculate on the markets, but that’s only technically. Also, the New Jersey GOP has refused Senator Hawkes their nomination, because his economic views are “B.C.” Hawkes says that he is still going to run against the official candidate, David Van Alstyne. In Louisiana, Huey Long’s brother, Earl, may or may not have won the governorship. We don’t know yet, which gives us a chance to tell funny stories about Huey.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the ERP. Senator Bridges bulleted Marshal about the China aid package that still hasn’t emerged from the State Department, while Ernie Bevin promised to try very hard to make a United States of Europe, if that’s what it takes to get the ERP. On the Republican side, Dulles says that’s A-OK, while my college president can’t resist being wrong again, jumping on the Taft platform that the total aid package shouldn’t be more than $3 billion, as austerity is good for you, that it should only last fifteen months, and if Europe wants aid credits for the other hard currency countries (that is, Latin America), it ought to be up to the Latin republics to extend them. “It was obvious that Elder Statesman Hoover had missed the whole point. . . “also, John Snyder is going to have the American banks do a “census” of foreign holdings, so that their governments can use the money. And that is why our clients sent us Christmas cards! Also, it turns out that America has a record 795 million bushels on hand, enough to make the entire 450-million-bushel commitment through 1 July, of which 260 millions have already been shipped. That will leave America with more than enough: 255 million bushels for processed food, 23 million for seed, up to 177 million for livestock feed, and still with 150 million in reserve.  In fact, the livestock situation might allow some cuts to bring exports up to 500 million bushels.

. . And so much, once again, for “We might not have enough to eat.” Until April, when we get to start panicking about next year. 

Two labour stories. First, the President and Al Whitney made up over the railroad strike, just in case you thought that the rawhiding the President gave Whitney over the ’46 strike was about to turn Truman into Taft. The other one is a tedious bit about the CIO conference.

“Big Freeze” It is cold back east, with Tampa seeing its first snowfall since 1940, and Detroit factories shutting down to save gas and coal for home heating.

“Long Voyage Home” Benjamin Davis thinks that there is a move afoot to intimidate Communists, so as to damage the Wallace campaign. This is because Claudia Jones and Alexander Bittelman have both been arrested on immigration charges recently. Time says it’s silly, because it’s just a bit of arresting, and that’s no big deal. By the way, ( “It is no coincidence that”) Missouri is going have an investigation of the Training School for Boys in Boonville, because it is an awful place where prisoners keep murdering other prisoners. 

Finally in politics, there is a short profile of Cordell Hull for some reason.

“Biggest and Worst” The Long Island Railroad carriers 110,000 people daily from Long Island to Pennsylvania Station. Time hates it at the best of times, because it is dirty, smelly, noisy, crowded and frequently delayed. But when the recent record snowfall trapped 3500 people in day cars, Time must have been one of them, because, boy, is it mad!  

Americana reports that the Anti-Saloon League has changed its name to the Temperance League; Anna Rosenberg is very upset at the New Look; The USAF’s recruitment campaign says that each new cadet will get training worth $35,000, which is up $10,000 since WWII; And the New York State Labour Relations Board has come down on Macy’s promise to pay every employee who crosses the picket line triple time.

International

“The Time is Ripe” Ernie Bevin gave a speech in Parliament about how the United States of Europe would be a good thing, and that communism is a bad thing. Time is very, very excited. 

“Pleasant and Unpleasant” France devalued the franc this week, which threatens Britain, because now its export trade with France will bring in fewer dollars, and their exports will be less competitive. (Also, Time is upset that the French Italian Communists are trying to cozy up to middle class socialists; and, especially, fighting the French wealth tax. Duclos even gave a speech portraying the French Communist party as the defenders of “private property and savings.” Time likes this story so much that it tells it again from Rome in the next piece. Then it tells us that, unlike the excitable Latins, the Germans may be striking and protesting, but they secretly like Americans, at least better than they like Russians.) The same title would cover off the next two stories, about Michael of Romania arriving in Switzerland and taking up with Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma, which is sweet, sordid ex-royals aside; and the State Department publishing the German records of “Stalin’s deals with Hitler,” which is not sweet. Time admits that broadcasting them on Voice of America is propaganda, but it is good propaganda, because it is anti-communist. 

A very busy picture of old Renown, the scrapping of which takes up almost a full page of news. Get over it! 

“A the Lads” Scotland is the only country in Europe where there are more men than women: 162,000 “nubile Scotswomen, between the ages of 25 and 29, to match 176,000 unmarried men in the same age group.” It’s because all the Scotswomen left to work in England during the war, and didn’t come back, because why would you? An equally long piece follows about how Churchill drinks a lot. This is very funny, because who doesn’t have funny stories about their Mother getting drunk and ruining their lives ha-ha. (It has been put to me by a family friend that I’m the reason she’s in hospital right now, and that if I run run back to Chicago and set a date to marry A., she will be out of bed in jig time. Gin time.)

“Heresy” Time has an interesting take on Eugen Varga, who says that there is no economic reason for a struggle between Soviet socialism and Western capitalism; that there will not be a crisis of capitalism before 1955; that capitalist states can, in times of emergency, control profits and regulate  monopolies in the national interest; that, in wartime, the workers’ standard of living in capitalist states rose 20%; that Russia’s eastern European satellites are economically irrelevant. Time is happy to report that he has been disgraced for his heretical views. Also, Stalin is being seen in public again, so he is not paralyzed, deposed or dead. In happier news, a young man who shouted “Long Life to Stalin” during an anti-British riot in Baghdad was promptly beaten to death by the Iraqi mob.

“In the Hills of Hebron” Time prints a gruesome picture of the dead in a massacre of Haganah fighters near Kfar Etzion.

“Unbroken Prayer” Sometimes, it must be hard to run a weekly. A column length story about the latest farcical events outside Gandhi’s compound goes down well. 

Even by the 9th, a stock photo is the best Time can do by way of an illustration of the story about the funeral. At least it's better than they do with Indonesia!

It's okay to shoot communists if they annoy you,
right?

“What’s the Difference?” The Chairman of the Communist Party, Mao Tse-Tung, released a statement this week, which is news, because it allows Time to carry on for a page-and-a-half about how awful the Communists are; but it is real news, because at the end there’s an exclusive interview with Confucius’ ghost. (He’s against communism.) At least, I think it’s exclusive. Maybe Confucius’ ghost is doing the round, and he’ll show up in The Economist next week. Just to show even handedness, the Latin America page reveals that Antonio Somoza is awful, and that the Cuban Canadians are still boring. 

army is awful. 

Science, Medicine, Education

“World Shakers” An earthquake in the Philippines prompts Time to point out that earthquakes happen, especially in San Francisco, and so do volcanoes, although not recently. For example, one blew up Pompeii. Maybe another will blow up somewhere else soon! In 1935, the US Army used TNT to try to stop a lava flow outside Hilo, Hawaii, and, in 1881, a priestess used a hank of hair. 

“Waterfall in Connecticut” Professor Richard J. Lougee of Clark University has found a “fossil waterfall, almost as high as Niagara, that roared 20,000 years ago in geographically modest Connecticut.” There is quite a nice little map showing that the Connecticut river used to drain the Canadian glacial icecap into Long Island Sound. Near Middleton, the swollen, glacial river exited primordial Lake Hitchcock and plunged over a massive 150ft dam of glacial debris, creating a massive delta. Then, after perhaps 4000 years, the dam gave way, and Lake Hitchcock drained into the Sound in one cataclysmic flood, leaving boring old 

“Another Step Forward” Dr. Frank Gollan, of the University of Minnesota Medical School, has found a way to isolate 99.96% pure polio virus. He did it by pureeing mouse brains and putting them through a centrifuge and then precipitating the virus with alcohol, which seems like it would be impractical to do with human polio variants, but it’s still progress. In unrelated short news, Dr. Vincent J. O’Conor, a Northwestern University urologist[!], has been able to reverse nine of fourteen Nazi sterilisation operations, while a long story covers off all of the small advances that have made hernia operations so much less horrible over the last twenty years. It’s another of those articles that read personally. I guess Mrs. Time recently went in for a hernia operation, and was amazed at new local anaesthetics like curare, better surgeons, better anesthetists, the way that patients are encouraged to walk as quickly as possible to reduce the various “sick man complexes” that follow extended bed rest, better gadgets such as tilted operating tables and better lights, new sutures, like ones made of tantalum to replace cat-gut, and better blood typing and banking for after-care. If there is a Mrs. Time? I know that Grace thinks that there isn’t, at least, if Clare Booth Luce doesn’t count. Mr. Time? (Also, Time puts in a nice footnote reminding us that cat’s gut isn’t actually named after cats.

A man best known for restoring fatherhood to at least nine men had a son with the same name and career. It's like rain on your wedding day.

“No Escape” Apparently, ulcers aren’t only caused by ungrateful daughters, tipsy wives, that damn Roosevelt, City Hall or that nosy parker young man from the Exchange. Medical missionary Walter E. Strangway reports that stomach and duodenal ulcers are just as common amongst the uncivilised natives of Portuguese West Africa as amongst commodity brokers in Chicago. Dr. Strangway explains that fear of witch doctors replaces the neuroses of modern civilisation.

Sherover managed to get "dormophonics" into the
Modern Language Journal. Now that's grifting.

“Learn While You Sleep” “Stubby, bubbly [Max] Sherover, 59,” has invented a “cerebrograph,” a “combination record-player, electric clock and pillow microphone” that, University of North Carolina psychologist Charles R.Elliott swears, really works. They think that the cerebrograph can teach multiplication tables, chemical formulas, Morse code, logarithms, vocabularies. Eventually, he hopes to market it, but, in the meantime, he has his “Readies,” which are books on long tapes to be scrolled in front of readers, so that they won’t have to bother to turn the page; or, perhaps, be spoken aloud. In other education news, the first “Fullbright scholarships have been opened up: 50 for American scholars to study in China, 6 in Burma. Other countries might follow.

Business

“What’s a Bargain?” Yay, because the whole first page is about stock returns, and none of you old men want to hear me blither on about that!

“Colour Line” The tenth annual National Cotton Council of America convention at the Atlanta Biltmore Hotel was taken up with –margarine. So the “colour line” is the one that says that margarine can’t be dyed butter colour. Why? What else did you think it would reference? It turns out that the cotton oil in margarine is worth $80 million a year to the industry.

“Cold Comfort” The oil industry’s plan to ease the heating oil shortage is to cut back gasoline production for 60 days in oil-short areas and pool supplies so that they can be shared evenly. The plan will require a Sherman Act waiver; but is only a stopgap, with all the oil-burning locomotives, ships, and tractors coming on. America is using up oil four times as fast as it is finding it. If it went to war today, says Secretary of Defence James V. Forrestal, the country would be 2 million barrels a day beneath its minimum requirement, with current production at 5.3 million barrels a day. Forrestal wants a new industry to make oil out of coal, natural gas and oil shale, but Krug says that that would cost $9 billion and take five to ten years, and even then, oil men say, this was far too big a bit for one go. Knowledge is advancing so quickly that plant might become obsolete while it was still being erected. For example,gasoline made from natural gas might be competitive with gas from crude oil,soon. The Texas Co., has a 38% interest in Carthage Hydogl, Inc, in Brownsville, which is building a $20 million plant to do exactly that.  Standard Oil of Indiana is working on the same lines, while Standard of New Jersey remains interested in gas from coal.

State of Business reports that the Federal Reserve is continuing to move cautiously to curb inflation by increasing reserve requirements. Leaf Brands, of Chicago, has its own inflator, a new rainbow coloured bubble gum; Time is scandalously delighted with a lingerie fashion show in New York; Gimbels is shocked that many of the “Stroock” cashmere sweaters it recently displayed were counterfeits; the World Bank is in the black.

“Frood for Lyonch” Time is skeptical about the latest British effort to break in to an American market, “Frood,” by J. Lyons and Co., a pre-cooked frozen food. Which gives it an excuse to explain all about J. Lynch and Co., which is very big in Britain.

“Crown College Days” “Joseph H. Axelrod, 31,” gets a bit, because he has built up a seven textile-mill empire in New England since graduating from University of Pennsylvania. He works fifteen hours a day, drives everywhere, hustles relentlessly, etc., etc. Time ends by offering an apology to posterity. It knows that the textile boom makes men like Axelrod look like business geniuses, so if you’re reading this in fifty years or whenever, and you say, “Axelrod who?” Well, who can tell right now?

Press, Radio, Art, People

“Headline of the Week” PAWLING MAN MAKES KNOWN HIS AVAILABILITY FOR PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION. Because Tom Dewey lives in Pawling.

“Economist On Tour” “[C]hubby Geoffrey Crowther is in New York to explain how Britain has inflation, but it is TOP SECRET because it is only in demand, and that while right now everybody is distracted by the “boominess of the boom,” soon they’ll be upset by the “slumpiness of the slump,” and he reminds everyone, including The Economist’s 4500 American subscribers, (45% of The Economist’s 38,000 subscribers are outside the UK) that the next President needs to be strong on the Marshall Plan. So he’s here to campaign against Taft? Why not, I guess? Everyone’s doing it. Speaking of, American journalists at MacArthur’s headquarters say that it looks as though the staff is cracking down on journalist movements, and perhaps preparing to censor them.

Rationing has been good to Geoff. 

“You’re Another” Jacob M. Lomakin, former Tass man and Soviet delegate to the UN, was asked about the cause of the Cold War the other day. He said it was because the newspapers were completely irresponsible, selling news like tobacco, and should be chastised. The US delegate replied he was wrong, because Soviet-Nazi Nonaggression Pact, and because the Russian press was also irresponsible.

 “Narrowcasting” Many US listeners are dissatisfied with commercial radio, but don’t like the idea of Government-controlled radio, either. The solution might be Subscription Radio, which has a host of bien pensants behind it.

“Happy Hive” The French Ministry of Reconstruction has lifted all rationing on concrete and steel so that Le Corbusier can architectise (this is an Art story, I need to make clear; or as clear as my translation skills make possible. Trust me. It was a hilarious jape in English, and this dictionary is a wonder! “Jape!” Who needs a Chinese translation of “jape”?) a 17-story apartment building in Marseilles that will be a vertical city, instead of the standard vertical prison. Oh, those French.

A reminder that Fourth Republic France actually wasn't a colourful basket case.

“The Busy Air” Henry Morgan, who lost his razor sponsor last fall, is coming back, backed by Rayve shampoo. Frank Sinatra has applied for a license to operate a one-kilowatt radio station from his Palm Springs place. Raymond Swing has finally been dropped by ABC and gave a “chilly valedictory” on the theme of radio being too commercial and not paying enough attention to Very Serious World Matters like the Great Food Shortage of Spring 1948 and the Very Exciting Fact that there will be a Presidential Election in America in only another eight months.

“Space Without Fat” Ordinarily, the story of how Modern Art is stupid ha-ha is just that; this week’s version quotes Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Sun, who usually defends modern art, but thinks that the Alberto Giacometti sculpture exhibition, and, in particular, “The palace at 4 AM,” is just too much.

Avak, the Armenian living saint, departed California for Florida this week, because “wild parties and light-mindedness” was interfering with his faith healing. Sir Thomas Beecham thinks that musicians think too much of themselves and that the world is “drifting into barbarism.” Sir Normann Angell thinks that communism is awful. James Thurber thinks that Truman will lose the election because he gives his radio addresses in prime soap opera hours, and irritates housewives, because ladies are like that. Time still hates Margaret Truman. Lana Turner has made up with MGM. Arthur W. (“One Man Army”) Wermuth is goal tending for a semi-pro hockey team in Wichita. Nancy Oakes de Marigny is suing for annulment of her marriage to Count Alfred (“Blunt Instrument Killer”) de Marigny. Laraine Day is divorced from Ray Hendricks, not yet married to Leo Durocher. John and Nancy Talbot, Arline Judge and Bob Topping are all in a mess over Lana Turner. Charles Chaplin Jr. was fined $150 for drunken driving in Beverley Hills. Elmer Linderman, worldr odeo champion, was fined $25 for fighting in a Denver nightclub. (Time tries for a laugh on the lines of cow-punching to people-punching, but you’d tell me that “cowpunching” isn’t a rodeo event. See? I wasn’t ignoring you that time you took us to the rodeo in Oakland. Actually, I was trying to stay awake, so you wouldn’t guess that we’d snuck out after curfew the night before and gone skinny dipping with A. and B. And by “skinny dipping” I mean, crouched in one end of the hole in the darkness until I was too cold, and then cried until Reggie gave me a blanket and I went and changed. Your son was the sweetest boy. I know that it’s hard to believe when you remember how he acted, but it’s true.) Maureen O’Sullivan and Kay Kyser have made babies. Igor Cassini has married again. Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Dilling has married 70-year-old Mormon elder Jeremiah Stokes, who may know what he’s getting. Tyrone Power is divorced, archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld has died at 68, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari at 72, and Walter Francis Frear, “first Supreme Court Chief Justice of the Hawaiian Islands.” (Uncle George is upset that it finally happened when he was too old to pee on the man’s grave. “More tea,” I asked? And he left a $1 tip, which doesn’t really count as taking family charity, does it? Because I spent it already.)

How did the American right get so crazy suddenly last week? If you want to see the face of the kind of asshole who capitalises on the Dillings of this world, click on the Frear link.

Also, while it’s under Sport, not People, we don’t normally mention that section here, so I have to point out that Barbara Ann Scott is the cover story (of the week that Gandhi died, oops!) here, instead.

New Pictures

Newsweek loved Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and so does Time.  I won’t waste your time with what it said, as I’m not nearly as clever as the big reviewers, and it’s a Must See movie, so there you go. However, the review does wander into a biography of director John Huston, but I’m not sure that you want the Hollywood news, either. So take that as Ronnie-the-social-anthropologist, and not Ronnie-the-girl-who-follows-the-gossip-rags. Point is, trust me, he’s big, will be bigger.

Books

The section leads off with a discussion of Albert E. Sindlinger, a former vice-president at Gallup who uses a “piece” of a book to pretest select audience reactions to determine how the book will sell in advance. His method is electronic, because he uses a gadget called the Teldox to turn the audience surveys into a “composite graph” which “indicates the weak spots in the story.” Then, and good news for those who like these letters brief, the lead off book is a collection of essays by leading poets on poetry things. So if you want an essay by W. H. Auden and somehow have managed to miss all the other ones, well, here’s another. Francis Ambriere’s The Long Holiday is a memoir of a French artillery captain’s prisoner of war camp days, while Monsarrat’s Depends on What You Mean by Love is a collection of short stories, which shows that publishers will print anything.  

Flight, 5 February 1948

Leaders

“The Helicopter Has Arrived” Several famous persons have given talks about how helicopters aren’t just on their way over any more, but have, in fact, arrived, and are taking off their shoes in the foyer. Flight would say more, but if it didn’t use up all the space on the front page with this, someone might wonder why it isn’t talking about Star Tiger.

The New York Times printed obituaries for the passengers of Star Tiger and Gandhi on the 31st.

“Future Development” Other people have said other things about how helicopters are in the foyer now, but will be in the dining room soon. Specifically, the new Hiller stabiliser will permit helicopters to use instrument flying and so cope with low visibility.

The "Hiller Killer." Also, who else can't stop thinking of "Orbur and Wilville"?

“Orville Wright” Orville Wright has died at 76. Their first plane wasn’t very good, but they were good experimenters and had many good ideas.

“Fairey Primary Trainer” People are surprised to hear that there is a Fairey Primary Trainer, but then they learn that it was actually built at the Belgian works of Avions Fairey in 1939, and then put away and forgotten about during WWII. Now, Fairey is making the license available, in case someone else wants to build it, and pay them. Flight also has postcards for sale (Ooh-la-la!) and apologises for saying that the Italian BZ-308 had a top speed of 500mph, instead of 500km/h.

“Bristol Brevities: Power for the M.R.E.: Hercules 630 Overhaul Periods: Free-exit Cowl” The new Centaurus 663 has been developed for the new BristolMedium Range Empire aircraft, designed for use on the BAOC routes. It has an 8:1 compression ratio, operates on 115/145 grade fuel, will have a specific consumption of below 0.4 lb/hp hour in the M gear, will have sea level takeoff power of 2810hp, rising to 2985hp at 8500ft, allowing it to use high altitude airports in the tropics, such as Nairobi. Including torquemeter but no cabin blower, it weighs 3,170lbs, and has a maximum continuous power output of 2,405hp at 7750ft in M gear and 2280 hp at 16,000ft in S gear. Lean mixture maximum power is 1850hp at 15,500ft in M; 1745hp at 23,250ft in S. 

The Hercules 600’s service life between overhauls has been provisionally raised to 600 hours. The new free exit cowl improves cooling in aircraft required to fly at high power output and low forward speed. In even shorter news, there are going to be some air races this year, which will make austerity bearable.

It will, eventually, be ruined by another Bristol engine entirely. By RuthAS - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29471494

“New US Gas Turbine Designs: Jharl 6000-XA Turbo Jet and Flader XT-33 Airscrew Turbine” We’ve heard about the Flader, but now Aviation Week reports that John Hawkins and Associates, North Hollywood, California, have announced their new Jharl 6000-XA, “backed by many thousand man-hours of engineering study.” The engineering studies show that it will give 6000lb thrust. Its main advantage seems to be that the compressor rotor and stator blades can be made from rough forgings cut to length.

“Unauthorised Alaskan Flights” Pan-American is suing various non-scheduled operators for operating scheduled flights to Alaska.

Civil Aviation News

“BEAC Reorganisation” A story explains why people will be losing their jobs, but not who.

“Airline Development” Even though all the airlines are losing money, they are also flying more people and cargo more places.

“Pilot’s Responsibilities” Discussion of when pilots can tell ground control to f—k off, continues. Pardon my French.

In shorter news, Flight reminds us that Hellenic Airlines (40% owned by Scottish Aviation), will be operating soon, because otherwise they wouldn’t have mentioned Scottish Aviation a single time on this page. General Kutter’s nomination has been sent to Congress. De Havilland reminds everyone that the Drover exists, and would make a very good Rapide replacement, apart from the engine in the nose that no-one wants, but should, because the Rapide is nice, and the Drover is like it, except for the engine in the nose.

Here's the Dove. For the Drover, see. 

The Helmore Committee, which is considering certification and navigational equipment, has more members. The recent accident in which Mr. M. J. Conry seriously injured himself by crashing an ultra-light single-seater Drone aircraft was due to Mr. Conry and the Syndicate being really stupid, although the Syndicate says that it was the Ministry’s fault, since if it had licensed Drones, it would have inspected this Drone, and failed it for having a bad engine. There are many new air services here and there, including the first Abyssinian-owned one.

“Skyrocket: Turbo-Jet and Liquid-Rocket Power in Douglas Trans-Sonic Research Aircraft: Precis of a Paper Presented by Ed Heinemann” The Skyrocket is the swept-wing successor to the Skystreak, is made mainly of magnesium, and has some flight instrumentation, including pressure, stress, and strain measuring and recording equipment. It also has the most ridiculous bailing-out system yet. It is hoped that it will fly soon.

No pictures from Flight this week on account of UBC library being closed all weekend for Easter, and libraries are really just a luxury these days.

“Universal Transport: Economy and Strength Characterise the New GAL 60 Freighter” General Aircraft, Ltd, has developed their large glider into a transport plane. Don’t they do that with all the big gliders? For some reason I’m picturing a German one with tank tracks? That really existed? (I know, I know, I can look it up in one of Reggie’s books, but I’d have to drive down to Santa Clara and get them out of storage, and I have to work this afternoon. Gosh, listen to me. I’m a working stiff! Also, Grace would glare at me.) Where was I? Oh, yes, the difference between it and all the other proposals is that it is designed to land on very short runways. Since that involves hauling barn-door sized flaps around, GAL wants you to know that it has power-assisted controls with hydraulic “feel.” It also has hydraulic flaps for operating the landing ramp, and internal partitions so that it can use more of its space. It will use four Hercules 761 engines with two-speed superchargers and torquemeters so that it can achieve 1950hp up to about 5000ft at takeoff on 100/130 grade.

“American Helicopter Development: Amazing Range of Rotor Configurations Tested: Progress with Jet-Driven Blades: Precis of a Lecture by J. C. Siltanen” Major Siltanen is in charge of the Rotary Aircraft Branch at Wright Field, and is in Britain to talk about helicopters, specifically, Doman-Frasier, Kellett and Hiller helicopters which differ in significant ways from the existing Sikorsky models, which have now flown and been used for things, and so are very boring compared with ones with hydraulic motors in the rotor heads, multiple rotors, flaps on the rotors, and very confusing servo arrangements for stability. As Reggie said, the issue with all of these contraptions is whether they are mechanically reliable enough to be worth the effort. He also discussed several ramjet designs, including the Bell one and a Doman-Frasier design.

By Glidden S. Doman - The Estate of Glidden S. Doman / Executor Terry Doman Gibbon, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57831534

“Flight Testing of Helicopters: A Summary of Farnborough Experiments in Test Flying the Sikorsky R-4B: A Precis of a Lecture by Mr. W. Stewart” The RAE has been testing helicopters since 1945, and has developed an interesting technique of flying them through smoke billows to trace air flow around them.

Here and There

SBAC, the Royal Aero Club, and the Air Transport Section of the London Chamber of Commerce send a delegation around to the Ministry of Civil Aviation to ask for the removal of the petrol (gas) tax, because it is bad for business. Vickers-Armstrong wants everyone to know that it has bought the world manufacturing and selling rights of the Kelly Letter Press from American Type Founders, of Elizabeth, New Jersey. They also have an arrangement with Walter Scott and Company and have bought the share capital of George Mann and Co. (1932). So if you want to buy a high-speed press with anything other than US dollars, you have to buy them from Vickers-Armstrong.

A Vickers press, made at Elswick. Source: Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

 The MGB2009 trials seem to have gone well, and the Navy will now install a gas turbine in the HMS Grey Goose. 

I still like the Gay Viking better.

A price war has broken out between South African airlines. Herbert Charles Macleod Stevens, managing director of Avimo, Ltd, has died at 65. He used to be in aeronautics. The Meteorological Office Is going to distribute weather information to railway control officers, just as it does to other offices that need to know about the weather. Of 7 million tyres made in Britain for export last year, 11,000 were aircraft tyres. The United States Navy wants to build new aircraft carriers of 60,000 to 80,000 tons displacement, capable of launching 25-to 50-ton long-range bombers. Ernst Heinkel, 62, will be tried before a de-Nazification court in February. 

Correspondence

H. Mason writes that Mr. Keith-Jopp also got lost once, so all pilots can get lost, and no-one should be throwing stones. H. Mason doesn’t say anything about whether you’re allowed to throw stones at women pilots, which was Keith-Jopps’ point. T. W. Evans makes fun of a flying boat person. R. Lewcock is upset that the RAF’s new pilot recruiting drive isn’t recruiting him, because he is too old. F. W. Winterbotham, of BOAC, points out that they can’t get ex-RAF groundcrew to maintain their Tudors, because they already  have jobs. “EX-FHE on BOAC Staff” writes that ex-RAF personnel could keep all the Tudors flying but BOAC is standing over all the ex-RAF fitters, rapping them on the knuckles whenever they try to fix the Tudors, so it is all BOAC’s fault, and ex-RAF groundcrew are wonderful, and Tudors are probably wonderful, too. R. R. Hayter thinks that, in spite of the cancellation of the CW23, the need for a long-range freighter on Empire routes is obvious, and someone should start working on a longer version of the Bristol MRE, soonest.  

The Engineer, 6 February 1948

A Seven-Day Journal

The Committee of Lloyd’s Register of Shipbuilding has issued Tentative Requirements for the Quality and testing of Aluminum Alloys for Shipbuilding Purposes, the first regulations to be published. The report on the derailment at Polesworth, which killed five of 800 passengers on the 8:30am express passenger train from Euston to Liverpool on 21 July 1947 is out. Colonel G. R. S. Wilson finds that the track was not fit for the prevailing speed and weight. It had been condemned in 1946 and scheduled for replacement in 1948, but the extent of deterioration over the next year had not been appreciated. He blamed the District Engineer and Permanent Way Inspector.

O. S. Nock, “Present Day Locomotive Working in Great Britain, No. III: The GWR Oil-Fired 4-6-0s: Part I” America is short of oil, Britain is short of coal. These are steam locomotives done up with oil-fired boilers instead of coal, and the article is in the way of a car-reviewer-style ride along. Nock is in the cab, watching the instruments as they go, and ain't he got fun!

(These Nock articles are so joyful, it's almost a pity that I don't need to talk about them.)

T. A. Crowe, “The Gas Turbine as Applied to Marine Propulsion, No. II” As well as open-cycle gas turbines, Sulzer and Escher Wyss, of the Swiss Institute of Technology, have been fiddling with closed and semi-closed cycles, in which the combustion gas is passed over a heat exchanger, which carries the air compressed by the compressor blade. Thus, only hot-air passes through the turbine, or, I suppose, mostly hot air in the semi-closed cycle. Unlike steam turbines, where very high superheat (to achieve higher efficiencies) has all sorts of unwelcome consequences, the “hot air turbine” can achieve these very high operating temperatures. Also, since pressure ratios and temperature can be kept constant at varying power, high efficiency is maintained under varying loads.

“The Gauge and Tool Exhibition, No. II” The exhibition has been on all week, long enough for The Engineer to find some real favourites in the field of tools and gauges. Moore and Wright have a protractor for use by blind technicians, while Clarkson (Engineers) have a wide selection of cutters and end millers, and A. C. Wickman has a Cornelius electronic comparator, which is for comparatoring, and has six applications. Coventry Gauge and Tool Company has an optical circular table and an inclinable table, for the use of, while Reman Tools and Products does a Unicrop and a Unipierce. (If the first sounds like a haircut, I shudder to think what a Unipierce might be.)

The first recorded use of "unisex" is in 1966, but they were very advanced in the Bay Area in 1948.

K. Brook and W. E. W. Nicolls, “Petrol Injection Equipment Development” The article begins with a sub-heading, “Possible Advantages of Petrol Injection,” which is just odd. Carburetors are very elegant pieces of work, but I thought we’d pretty much settled that injection worked better? Nevertheless, the article hashes it all out, all over again, with pictures and diagrams, none of which would seem to justify the sampling shears.

“Experimental Third-class Sleeping Cars” The LNER has taken delivery of six third-class sleeping cars to experiment with youth hostels on wheels. There are eight single and four double berth compartments in each car, each with full bedding and a wash-basin. They have “excellent heating and ventilating,” with a louvre for each booth, combination steam and “alternative arrangements” heating, and an electric water-heating tank.

“Diesel-Electric Main Line Locomotive Trials” The LMR’s experimental 1600hp “No. 10,000” diesel electric continues to do dynamometer trials in service.

Leaders

“Oil-fired Steam Locomotives” Oil-firing eliminates ash and clinker, and, naturally, bad coal. The question is utilisation rates. The Engineer remembers Sir Nigel Gresley’s celebrated 2-8-2 express engine, Cock o’ the North, which proved very efficient in the works and on the Orleans road, but was a disappointment in regular service in Scotland due to poor utilisation (long turnarounds in Dundee and Edinburgh) leading to excessive coal consumption. Diesels, which have minimal standby losses, are very attractive. American diesel-electrics are very expensive and are longer and heavier than steam locomotives of equivalent power, and must justify these costs by higher utilisation rates that cannot always be achieved on short runs. Oil-fired steam locomotives might work better on short runs with long standby times.

“Fine Limits” The old-time journeyman mechanic, who could turn a shaft or bore a hole to within a few thousandths of an inch by the use of rule calipers alone, or fit one part to another accurately with chisel, file and scraper, is passing away as more precise machine tools allow shops to work to higher tolerances. This is where the Tool and Gauge Exhibit comes in, because these are the things that replace the old-time mechanic. Nevertheless, higher tolerances are often achieved by more working, and inviting higher tolerances, and so more working, may lead to unnecessarily expensive designs. Higher tolerances should only be specified when they are required.

I suspect that lasers made the old optical tables, since apart from the used-tables-for-sale page I linked to above, I can't find many images; but Thorlabs has some interesting stuff up. Here's one. 

Obituary

Orville Wright, of course, with more detail on the brothers’ early work with gliders than the other obituaries. Also, dead this week is Edward Ernest Russell Tratman, the Wheaton, Illinois, correspondent on many American mechanical and civil engineering works for The Engineer and American Engineering News for more than fifty years. Born in Bristol in 1863, Tratman studied engineering under Edward Wilson, went to the United States to take up an appointment on the Long Island line, joined the Engineering News Record in 1886, and was its Western Editor, inChicago, from 1896 until his 1932 retirement.

Letters

G. W. Tripp, author of the series on “The Survival of the Paddle Boat,” writes to apologise for saying that one paddle boat was faster than another.

“Planned Assembly of Hydraulic Brake Components” Lockheed Hydraulic Brake Company has noticed that there is no article for p. 141 of the 6 February number, and writes to tell The Engineer that is has made a film and demonstration to show the methods it is suing to improve output at its Leamington Spa plant. Process planning allows 50% savings of bench and floor space in the assembly of tandem hydraulic master cylinders for Lockheed brakes, and one-third time saving. 

“A Large Canadian Aluminum Plant” The Aluminum Company of Canada aluminum plant at Kingston, Ontario, was erected at the outbreak of war, and now turns out 4 million lb of metal a month, a 1 million lb increase on war records. It is turned out in sheet, tubing, extrusion, and “structural steel shapes.” The plant is on 300 acres, serves 600 Canadian factories, has a total value of 20 million dollars, employed as many as 3700 workers during the war, and uses 18,300hp of electricity, because Canada is too backward to have invented watts, yet.

“Safety Device for AC Welding Equipment” Murex Welding Processes, of Waltham Cross, Herts., has a Murex safety device. It is a circuit breaker on a timed relay arrangement so that the welder shuts off when it passes over the end of the piece being welded, with further improvements.

“Naval Development of the Gas Turbine” Unlike the last article, this one describes gas turbines that have actually met salt water, specifically MGB 2009, with the Grey Goose to go next. The Engineer Vice-Admiral himself, D. C. Ford (boo! You have the Admiral’s job! Boo!) appeared in person at the conference to tell the press that the Gatric worked well, that a “Captain-class” frigate and the Grey Goose will be next, with the latter getting a Rolls-Royce turbine substantially bigger than the Gatric, while the “Captaiin” installation will be designed for marine work from the beginning.

(Check out the repeated Rule Britannia themes in the background. That's some neat composing-guy-stuff-doing.) Also, shame on the MoD for letting the Internet go without a list of the Engineers Vice-Admiral.

Check out the link for private-sector-killing-free-
hearing-aids-related-depression.

“Sub-miniature Valves for Hearing Aids” The Ministry of Supply has placed an order with Mullard Wireless Service Company for 400,000 sae, to be used in the State-sponsored Medresco hearing aid, which is 2 ½” by 3 ¾” by 1”. This compact case uses two amplifier pentodes, the DF 70, and either a DL 71 or a 72, which have greatly reduced power consumption compared with American types. The Mullard amplifier valves are only 10mm and 30mm respectively, while the output valves are 38mm long. The filaments have been drawn extremely thin, and only require 50mA, instead of 70, as in American pentodes. The Medresco will be made available to all persons suffering hearing loss under the National Health Service.

“Direct Filling of Locomotive Sand-boxes” The LNER has replaced hand-filling with an automatic bucket brigade –actually, pipes--, which hasn’t been done before because filling sand boxes is surprisingly complicated. (Mainly, you don’t want wet sand, or to spill it on moving parts.)

More catalogue news covers a fabricated, automatic hot water boiler from Trianco, Ltd., and a pneumatic drill jig from E. H. Jones (Machine Tools).

This is why your shower is hot. Or not.

Continental Engineering News

The claimed tallest concrete tower in Europe has been built in Stockholm to carry a radio antenna, at 236ft high. It might be used for television and FM later, and has a “laboratory” at the top. Professor Luigi Greco has given a paper to the Transport Congress in Italy on the reconstruction of Italian sea harbours after German demolitions. The Italian government has budgeted 22 billion lire, including for new dry docks at Naples and Genoa, and has already spent 3.6 billion lire on completed projects, and 7.2 billion on ongoing ones. Work will be completed by the end of 1948, a year in advance of the original plan. Work has begun on the old scheme of a Mont Blanc tunnel linking Burgundy and French Switzerland with Piedmont and Lombardy. It has already been driven 1650ft on the Italian side, although French work has not begun yet. The final tunnel will be about 6 miles long, driven in a straight line. One portal will be above Chamonix, near the Dard Falls, the other at the foot of Mont Frety in the Aosta Vale. Traffic is expected to be 100,000vehicles and 200,000 pedestrians yearly.  A rail track and electric transmission lines will be added later. Germans are pleased as punch to have built a timber railway bridge between Karlsruhe and Heilbronn with spans 100ft long.

Industrial and Labour Notes

The Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories says that accidents are down and that everyone loves the five-day week, although The Engineer is still not convinced. The report on coal costs is also out. They’re up, which means that the coal board’s losses have increased. Trade disputes are down, and the Minister of Labour has slapped hands all around on the question of the National Union of Colliery Winding Engineers, which might not have been necessary if the NUM had just asked some winding engineer operators what was what before negotiating on their behalf.

French Engineering News

Prospects for French coal mining are improving, and the Monnet Plan goal of 59 million tons may be achieved. The flooding in eastern France has been very damaging. Steel prices are up substantially.

Notes and Memoranda

Leyland Motors has come up with a new way of glazing bus windows that mainly seems to involve those rubber seals that guide the glass pieces, which I guess is what is meant by “glazing.” Fairey’s four-blade airscrew gets a mention, as do the new pumps at the Wilmington Pumping Station

Time, 9 February 1948

Letters

Time doesn’t seem to like Eric Sevareid very much. Dore Schary writes that the filming of The Boy with Green Hair has not been cancelled, just delayed. (Because it is anti-Red-scare.) Stanley Erle Brown is upset that HUAAC effectively gets censorship rights over American movies. A story about misbehaving morticians has America upset. Very upset.  

Alex Farquharson was impressed by a recent article showing comparative purchasing power of American and Soviet workers, wonders what it would look like for British workers, and submits his best attempt, which Time obligingly prints.

	Britain	United States	USSR
Minutes
Wheat bread, 1lb	5	7 ½	70
Veal, 1 lb	37 ½	34 ½	315
Butter, 1 lb	30	48 ½	642
Beer, 1 pt draught, mild	22 ½	6 ¼	171
Cotton dress	450	142	1,911
Woolen suit (man’s)	2700	1684	34,815

The Publisher’s Letter lets everyone know that Time’s latest survey of educational experiences (they mail out a questionnaire to every college graduate in American with a last name starting with Fa) is coming out soon.

National Affairs

“What Kind of America?” Time must have planned for an article on the fight over the Marshall Plan, and now there’s not going to be one, so it hems and haws for half a page before moving on to the next story, which is about Universal Military Training. Albert Einstein has come out against it, because of its “creeping military influence,” which may soon lead to Boy Scouts wearing uniforms. Also, all that training will probably be expensive; and General MacArthur thinks that even then it will be far too short to be worthwhile. Many other people are for it, however, thinking that the voluntary system is ruinously expensive. The problem is that Taft and other GOP leaders won’t let it get onto the floor for debate.

“No Cheers Yet” The House has passed the Knutson $6.5 billion tax-cutbill by 297 to 120, the GOP majority buttressed by 63 Democrats, enough to override the Presidential veto. By increasing the personal exemption, the Knutson bill will take 7.4 million low-income taxpayers off the rolls, among other things. The Senate is expected to whittle it down.

In other news, there is going to be a Presidential election in eight months, so Truman has ordered that thermostats in Federal buildings heated by oil be turned down to 68 degrees (the White house is on coal, and is kept at a snug 74); had Mayor Humphrey of Minneapolis over to talk about various things, such as the Vice-Presidency; and demoted Marriner Eccles for being irritating to the banks. Which gives Time an excuse to profile Eccles. Did you know that he is a Mormon and inheritor of the Eccles fortune of sugar, lumber, construction and banks in Utah and Idaho? He was also against easy money, as is his replacement, Tom McCabe, who is not as irritating. Meanwhile, Harold Stassen has broken with Bob Taft and is clinging to Arthur Vandenberg as he prepares to contest the Ohio primary, hoping to damage Taft by taking more delegates than expected. Who expects? Time? Tom Dewey’s 1948 New York budget is a preview of how he’ll run America, blah blah. That is, more money for everyone, and no tax cut.

“A Dim, Religious World” Now that the war has been over for three years, Henry Stimson can tell the Ladies Home Journal that the Battle of the Atlantic only got so bad because the Navy was a “dim, religious etc.,” and didn’t know how to use planes to fight submarines properly. It's because of someone named Mahan, who wrote books. And they say literature has no effect on the real world!

On the labour front, Petrillo has climbed down on his radio music strike and dropped his ban on standard music on FM radio and live music on television. The AFL executive conclave in Miami was very boring, because John Lewis didn’t show up.

“Ordeal by Cold” Oh, boy is it cold back east, and with oil supplies running low, “thousands” of New Yorkers are heatless. Citizens have bought out ear muffs, mittens and long underwear, are using electric toasters for heat, have hauled wood stoves out of the barn. Worse, locomotives can’t keep steam up, the Ohio river has frozen shore to shore for the first time in twelve years, storms at sea  have delayed Queen Mary’s arrival for two days, water-intake systems have had to be unclogged with dynamite, and a heavy frost has destroyed the California coastal squash crop and put icicles on the citrus and avocado groves, making a situation already clouded by drought, even worse.

Oh, no, not the squash crop!

“No More Cream Cheese” The wartime boom in Miami Beach is over. The $35 ties are under the counter, people aren’t paying $15 a night to sleep on floors, case lots of Old Crow are down from $83.88 to $75.49, and betting at the horse tracks was only $9.5 million over eleven days, down $2.6 million from last year.

“Begetter of an Age” Orville Wright gets a very, very long obituary.

“No Roman Holiday” The Secretary of Agriculture has published a list of 738 commodity market players with past or present connections with the Government. Amongst the new names are Oklahoma’s Senator Elmer Thomas, who is not going to testify before the Ferguson subcommittee, on grounds of senatorial immunity, and because he doesn’t want to have a Roman holiday made of him.

“Carnival” Mardi Gras in New Orleans is very exciting. 

Americana reports that the American Library Association reports that self-help books were the most popular category in 1948, followed by books on housing and business. “The average American betrayed no interest at all in World War II, atomic energy or international affairs.” Illinois Representative Robert J. Twyman thinks that the word “billion” should be banned, because it just leads to carelessness. Dr.Hyman Appelman, “the little Jew with a big Jesus” is attracting crowds to his Detroit Baptist revival.

International

“Of Truth and Shame” Gandhi’s funeral cart took five hours to pass through the streets of Delhi, with Vallabhai Patel crouched on the cart, and Jawaharlal Nehru following it, barefoot. Nehru said that he was “shamed” by Gandhi’s death. The story can’t be on the cover, because that had already been chosen, but at least it isn’t Jinx Falkenberg, and the inside story does the Mahatma justice.

Gandhi's favourite hymn, because the important thing about Gandhiji is to make him about me.

“In Darkest England” Loretta Young gave an interview to Gene Handsaker about her recent trip to Britain. Things did not go well.

“Labour Loses One” For the first time in 23 tries, a Tory has taken a Labour-held seat in a byelection in the slums of Glasgow. Perhaps not unrelated, the Minister of Food was booed by Scottish housewives in Dundee this week. Also, Ireland is having an election, and French Socialists are upset that Rene Mayer’s devaluation plan also included a free market in gold, since the 25% fine to be levied on hoarders who disgorge their hidden assets (and so stimulate the economy, hopefully) is inadequate punishment of unpatriotic speculators. And in Germany, the US and British occupation commanders dismissed Johannes Semmler as executive director of Bizonia for ridiculing Allied imports as “chicken feed.”

A roundup of news from east of the Iron Curtain features the Poland-Russia trade deal, which is being talked up in Moscow as the first of a wave of such agreements that will be ever so much better than Marshall Plan aid; Russian delegates applauding Comrade Stalin; and Russian intelligentsia prostituting themselves, etc., etc. (In this case, the author of And Quiet Flows the Don said some pro-Soviet, anti-capitalist things.)

“Nothing We Can Do” As the war in Manchuria goes against the Koumintang, the elections for the Legislative Yuan descend into farce in Nanking.

A round up of news from Japan features a story on Tokyo radio about the fine art of gathering cigarette butts, and a bank robber who disabled the staff of a local bank by dressing as a city health inspector and persuading them to drink cyanide under the guise of an anti-dysentery medicine. The moral of the story is that the Japanese are too deferential.

Latin America is short of gas, long on political lunacy.  Canadians are still boring. [Canadian housewives; Battle damage] You will be glad to hear that the industry gets a mention, as its protest against the provincial government’s attemptto enforce the ban on Japanese labour in the woods, at the expense of 800 trained workers, is heard in Victoria.

BC Liberal MPs said that the Feds shouldn't liberalise anti-Japanese legislation because they'd lose two byelections, in Vancouver Centre (my riding!) and Yale.  Then they lost them to the left, which suggests that when BC Liberals said that they were responding to public opinion, what they meant was that they were trying to drive it in an anti-Japanese direction. Which is what my Grandfather, that old CCFer, used to say. "Boss" Byron Johnson, by the way.

Business

“Too Much?” Profits and earnings are turning out much too high for some people. For example, Proctor and Gamble, which benefitted from wartime fat drives, has passed on all costs from rising prices for fats and oils to the consumer. This has led to profits that the World-Telegram’s financial editor, Ralph Hendershot, thinks are “ a little difficult to understand.” It is not just soap manufacturers, either. US Steel is probably a bit more important, and the excuse that the companies have to set aside gobs and gobs of money in case of a repeat of 1920—1 is getting thin.

“Whiskey Rebellion” Distillers are fit to be tied over their limited grain supplies, especially since the price of grain has been tumbling of late, thanks to the Government completing its European relief buys.

“The Big Experiment” We are going to see if the voluntary steel and oil pools are going to work in a big old experiment.

“Brother’s Turn” Henry Ford II has made the Lincoln-Mercury Division an equal partner in the Ford Motor Company, in the hope that this will allow Ford to draw even with GM and Chrysler in the small car market. His brother, Benson Ford, 28, will head the division. The first Ford grandson to buck old Henry’s prohibition on smoking, Benson flunked out of Princeton, married the daughter of a GM salesmanager (Edith McNaughton), and has “chafed at . . tutelage.” I’m not sure that he’s the man I’d choose for the job, but what do I know? I think Uncle Henry isn’t the right man to run a motor company!

“Baby Boom” This week, the National Industrial Conference Board told businessmen that it is time to take the population boom seriously. Thanks to the rise in marriages during the war and general prosperity, the US added 2.8 million new consumers in 1947. With a population estimated at 144 million today, the US totals have reached levels not expected to be attained until the 1950s, and the Census’ old peak population projection of 155—165 million by the end of the century will be 10—25 million higher, with the population peak pushed past the end of the century. The US economy is not “mature,” and is going to grow significantly.

Hmm. Grace and the Admiral are convinced that the birth surge is Depression-era couples making up for their "lost" children. Even the new marriages can be fit into this theory. But what’s this about “general prosperity?” Couldn’t that affect new couples? What if the elevated birth rates continue as long as the “general prosperity?” What will the numbers look like, then?

State of Business reports that the index of industrial production has fallen off slightly from its November postwar peak to December, from 192 to 191, with durable goods continuing to advance against general decline. Standard Oil of New Jersey has changed its name to Esso, since no-one can tell the Standard Oils apart by address. Kaiser-Frazer have cancelled their stock offering. The War Assets Administration is going to auction off three plants, in Toledo, Harrisburg and Rochester to the highest bidder; depending on how that goes, they may get rid of the rest of their inventory the same way.

Science, Medicine, Education

The cashier is not impressed with how much money you have, man.

“Look Upward” The Science page climbs to the head of the back matter with a cover story about astronomer EdwinHubble. He is the man who discovered that space is expanding, somehow, and also the man most associated with the new 200” telescope at the Palomar Observatory, which sits in a revolving dome 137ft in diameter, weighs 500 tons, and is so exquisitely mounted in its bearings that a motor the size of an orange, turns it. It gathers four times as much light as the 100” telescope at Mount Wilson and will see twice as far (a billion light years!). It was the Mount Wilson observatory that allowed Hubble to do the measurements that showed that other galaxies (themselves something of a revelation that movie science fiction has trouble getting its head around) are receding from Earth in proportion to their distance. Which is how we know that space is expanding, like the surface of a balloon, only in three or four or however many dimensions that the bright young astronomer has, these days. 

“The Solution Was Clear” Dr. Albert Harris, who devised the hyaluronidase test for cancer (if you have the enzyme in your urine in large quantities, the test sample will be clear, and you may have cancer) died last week of brain cancer.

“Planned Fertility” It is news that the Planned Parenthood Federation has given one of its Lasker Foundation awards to a Catholic doctor, John Rock, for work in planned fertility. 

"Heart disease should get all the money!" 

“Killer No. 1” Is heart disease. Cardiologists are upset that America spends $525 for every death from infantile paralysis, $2.13 for every death from cancer, and a mere 17 cents for every death from heart disease. I hope that cardiologists are better at treating rheumatic fever, hypertension, coronary heart disease and hardening of the arteries than they are at making fair comparisons!

“The Healing Onion” Food chemist Edward F. Kohman thinks that sliced, raw onions have powerful antiseptic powers.

“The One Best Way” The courts continue to take a hint from the Sipuel case, with the University of Delaware agreeing to admit Negroes to all programmes not offered by the Delaware State College for Negroes. University of Arkansas will let Negro law students enroll and use the law library and take courses from regular faculty –but in separate classrooms. Oklahoma was going to build a law school just for Ada Sipuel, but now that it has received seven more applicants, the state regent is urging the legislature to admit them to the University of Oklahoma law school, just to save money. In Missouri, where “separate but equal” has had the longest test, the Post-Dispatch says that it has failed. It costs the state just $228/year to educate white law students, but $807 to educate Negro ones. Meanwhile, the University of Maryland, which has been admitting Negro students for 13 years, now has 23 Negro law students. Johns Hopkins has admitted “a few” Negro graduate students. (As a private college, it can admit whoever it pleases.)

“Boom on Fraternity Row” Veteran college students are joining fraternities but have no time for “Greek life.” Hell Week has been banned on some campuses, and chairman no longer care if pledges date “barbs.”

The problem with young people is they're so immature.

Press, Radio, Art, People

“Juno, From Olympus” Time reviews the Manchester Guardian reviewing Mae West’s Diamond Lil. This is some very, very strange newspapering.

“Sundown in Chicago” The Chicago Sun has merged with the Chicago Times, with Marshall Field spending $10 million to win the victory, the cost being paid mainly by Sun employees, as a third of 360 editorial staff are let go, comforted only by double severance. Field hopes that the Sun and Times will keep 650,000 of the combined circulation of the two newspapers and make a decent challenge to the Tribune. 

“Where is the Tra-La-La” The press war between France Dimanche and Samedi Soir is over, so occasion for Time to profile Max Corre, who allegedly slugs guys out cold for interrupting him.

“The Squeeze” Time runs yet another story on MacArthur “cooping” journalists up.

“The Flirtation” Rumours and talk that Paramount, 20^th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers are all about to make big moves in television.

“Ahead of His Time” If you, like me, have a vague sense that Frank Lloyd Wright is a very modern architect, then it is a surprise to hear that he is 78, and having morbid thoughts about designing a mortuary.

Barbara Jo Walker has turned down a movie role because she is getting married. Chico, the piano-playing Marx Brother, is suing Warner Brothers for $200,000 for misrepresenting his views on certain pianistic techniques. Max Baer is being sued for $120,000 by a motorist that he punched in the face for honking at him. Eugene O’Neill, John S. D. Eisenhower, Babe Ruth, Mickey Rooney, Chester Nimitz, Judith Anderson and J. Parnell Thomas have all had hospital encounters for one or another reason. Nora Martin, daughter of the Brazilian ambassador, is Miss United Nations. Ernest Hemingway has done some ad endorsements, Eddie Rickenbacker got an honorary degree, John Rockefeller’s offer of six paintings and two busts to the Frick collection were refused by two trustees, accepted by the others, leading to a court fight. A collection of Sherwood Anderson’s letters is coming out. Shirley Temple and Ted Williams have had babies. Herb Pennock (53), Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (70), John Avery Lomax (80), and Thomas Theodor Heine (80)  have died. So have Gandhi and Wright, as heard in the news, and President Tresidder, as I mentioned.

Time credits Lomax with recovering Home on the Range and Old Paint. Here's something more interesting.

The New Pictures

“An Ideal Husband” Alexander Korda might have been the wrong man to direct an Oscar Wilde adaptation.

“A Woman’s Vengeance” I hear “screenplay by Aldous Huxley,” and I think to myself, “I’m in for a woman hater’s views, thanks to yet another Korda. I know that we’re supposed to find misogyny an amusing concession to the reality that women secretly rule the world; but, you know what? I don’t think that that last part is true, which makes misogyny a little too much like bullying for my tastes. Oh. Yes, and there’s a movie. With Jessica Tandy. It’s probably pretty good, once you get over all the man-hating women. If Winter Comes is a “dishonest tearjerker.”

Books

John Cobb’s The Gesture is another WWII book, of the kind that the American public supposedly has no interest in, but which the publishers (in this case, Harper) won’t stop pumping out. It seems to be an allegory about how Henry Wallace is awful? With B-17s and segregated Coloured troops? Victoria Case and Robert Ormond have a book about the chautauquas out, titled We Called it Culture. I’d explain, but it is so strange that I assume it’s fiction, misfiled. Memoirs of a Secret Agent of Free Franceis by Gilbert Renault, who went by “Remy” in the war, when he had adventures. Now he is on the Executive Committee of de Gaulle’s RPF, so he has given up adventuring to be an adventurer.

Flight, 12 February 1948

Leaders

“Aviation Spirit” Flight doesn’t like the petrol (gas) tax, either. They don’t have one like it in Canada or Australia!

“The Light Plane Market” If the Ministry doesn’t give money to flying clubs, they won’t be able to buy light planes, and there will be no market, and the industry will collapse, and “a flourishing and healthy light aircraft industry is of the greatest value to a country.”

 “High, Fast and Stationary” Several British planes set or almost set records or did something remarkable such as taking supplies to the keepers of the Wolf lighthouse in a helicopter, which everyone should remember when there is occasion to discuss things that are wrong in British aviation.

Bear in mind this was built in the 1860s. By Alvaro - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4752101

Wing-Cdr Maurice A. Smith, “Fairey Trainer in the Air: Four-Blade Airscrew: Cartridge Starter: Good Low-Speed Characteristics” The Fairey Avions Primary Trainer is garbage, although you can’t say that, so instead you say something along the lines of, “This was very nice, although . . . etc.”

“A 1943 Project: Test of a Huge Supersonic Engineless Missile” Back in 1943, G. Geoffrey Smith proposed a giant, supersonic missile that would be launched by a rocket and fly at supersonic speeds on a “ramjet or athodyd principle.” Anyway, it was to be a thirty-ton missile, and G. Geoffrey did his scientific best in the proposal by suggesting automatic or radio control, or something like that, and a tail for stabilising. “Subsequently, it was not thought possible to develop the weapon to be of value during the war.” Then, in 1944, he showed the design to various Americans, and now the Naval Ordnance Station at Inyokern, California, is testing a trial model, developed by theApplied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins.

“Aiming High: Ghost-Vampire Attains 56,000ft on Development Flight” I think I remember an article a month ago about how this trial flight of a Vampire fitted with the Ghost engine would make an attack on the altitude record. This article admits that de Havilland chief test pilot John Cunningham missed the record by a few hundred feet. It’s a very smart little bit of flying considering that it was a stock Vampire as delivered to the Canadians and the Swedes, with no special high-altitude arrangements at all, but it could have been so much better, and the next story down is. . .

“Sir Arthur Coningham” The first acknowledgement of the Star Tiger disaster in the pages of Flight takes the form of an obituary for Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, who was on board.

Civil Aviation News

“Loss of Star Tiger” Star Tiger left London on Tuesday, 27 January, was held up at the Azores by very severe weather, and ultimately left there at 1533 hours on 29 January to fly to Bermuda. At 0315h, 30 January, the last signal was received, giving a position of 34 35 N, 57 40 W, dead reckoning, inferred to be taken shortly after a fix had been obtained. At the time, the Tudor IV was in visual flight below cloud at 2000ft to avoid strong headwinds at higher altitudes, flying at 150 knots, with ETA Bermuda 500h. The cause of the accident will probably never be known, and it is “dangerous to suggest what might have been the cause,” but the moon was visible, and the Tudor IV carried a radio altimeter, but at that height, it is extremely unlikely that the pilot would have been able to recover from a loss of control.

“BOAC and the Tudor I” BOAC is working with Avro to make the Tudor I suitable for Empire routes, perhaps by upgrading it to Tudor IV standards.

Now if we can just lose a second plane in the exact same route, maybe we'll have to concede that there's a problem.

“International Aeradio Report” International Aeradio now operates air traffic at five overseas airports, signals stations at 20 locations, and telecommunications and navigational facilities in cooperation with the Greek and Burmese governments at five locations. Its American equivalent is working with it to establish similar facilities in Siam.

“North Atlantic Refuelling Tests” There are going to be more.

There are also going to be more GCA facilities, as the Ministry is transferring 18 full Federal GCA equipment sets from the RAF to civil airfields, of which eight are to be used for operations, one for training, and the rest for spare parts and replacements. There are also to be more BEA freight services, as it has added a fleet of seven Dakotas for that purpose. There are also to be more Indian airports. A European air traffic conference met in Cairo on 10 February to talk about regional arrangements. US railways have revived the Railwayair issue again, focussing on air freight. PAWA is expanding its freight services. The accident report on the Percival Proctor accident on 16 April 1947off Jouin-sur-Mer, in which the pilot, Mr. R. A. Payne, and two passengers, Mrs. B. Bevan and “Imogen Stafford-Allen, aged 2 ½,” were killed, while Mrs. Stafford-Allen survived, being picked up several hours later by a French fishing boat, after supporting her baby in the sea for several hours, is in. It was probably caused by the pilot switching the fuel petcock to the wrong tank, leading to air being sucked into the engine. The pilot did not have a B license, or a navigator’s license.

In shorter news, of 625,000 persons who crossed the Atlantic in 1947, 100,000 went by air. Scandinavian Air Lines made 800 Atlantic crossings to North and Latin America in 1947, among other very large numbers showing that many airlines flew many more flights in 1947, and some made money. Northwestern will receive its first Boeing Stratocruiser in March. A Notice to Airmen reports that elevations in aeronautical charts of Spain may be “considerably in error,” so fly safely until revised charts are available.

“Internal Airlines System: Ringway and Ronaldsway, two Airports of undisputed Future Prominence, have been visited by Roy Pearl, and by John Yoxall with his camera, in a further survey of British air communications” Pardon the translation with all its interjections, but I wanted to make the terrible capitalisation and lack of authorial credit clear. I just don’t understand how these bits get into Flight. If the copy is being provided to the magazine, why is it by two of its correspondents?

So, the story is about two important airports, Ringway in Manchester, and Ronaldsway on the Island of Man. Hundreds, if not a few thousands, of passengers fly out of Ringway every day in the peak summer season, when there are 24 scheduled flights a day, and twenty people can pass through the passenger handling facilities at one time, comfortably. The Isle of Man has a Butlins, which the British continue to treat as holiday locations, and not concentration camps for clammy people. This means that there are 58 scheduled BEA flights per day. KLM, Aer Lingus and Air France all fly into Ringway, which has a pre-war Lorenz system, an interim G lighting system with omnidirectional contact lights at 300ft intervals on the E-W runways and 100ft intervals on the NE-SW runways. There is sodium lighting on all approaches, an airport identification beacon, and an RAF identification beacon flash. Communications include MF D/F W/T on two frequencies and VHF with two frequencies for communication only. There is HFR/T and cathode ray VHF DF RT is in the process of calibration. The Corporation of Manchester is thinking of buying more land to bring the airport up to 600 acres, allowing the runways to be extended. Assume that most of the same letters appear in the description of the radio equipment at Ronaldsway.

D. W. Weaver, “Congo Capers: Experiences of a Free-land Pilot in West Africa” It’s all very exciting. Hearing that the Belgians issued Weaver a multi-engine B license on the strength of a log book showing 200 hours of RAF experience, no test needed, and that anyone who was a Fitter II is given a ground engineer license, ditto, helps explain why. But it’s the “black help” that doesn’t know what it is doing!

Time for a plane picture. Here's an earlier generation of Sikorsky. 

“Flight-Testing of Helicopters: A Summery of Farnborough Experiments in Test-Flying the Sikorsky R-4B, Part II” I am so very tempted to make a facetious comment. The amazing thing is how little Farnborough actually knows about the things that people are flying about in, dropping sacks of food on lighthouses and the like.

“Marconi Lightweightst: Post-War Progress in British Airborne Equipment” It’s a slow news week, Star Tiger apart, so Marconi sends in its catalogue of new offerings for 1948.

Here and There

The Institute of Physics is holding a summer course on the theoretical physics of creep. 

No creeps in physics! (If the Wiki doesn't make it clear,
he's been using tenure to peddle HIV denialism for years.

Decca Navigator test flights have been very successful north of Iceland and as far out as five hundred miles west of the Azores. All engines for the Brabazon I have now been bench tested and delivered, including the coupled Centaurus. Several USN land-based patrol aircraft have been fitted with a new NACA hydrofoil flap that keeps the nose out of the water in forced landings at sea. Russia has sent a note of protest over the American reopening of the Mellaha Air Base in Libya, claiming it violates the Italian peace treaty.

“Survival in the Air Age: Further Details of the Report of the Air Policy Commission to the President of the United States” The Commission believes that the United Nations is not likely to be able to prevent future wars. America will need 7000 first line aircraft by 1952, as well as an Air National Guard of 3000 machines and this will need to be supported by a reserve pool of 8000 machines. As you have been hearing, the Commission recommends the unification of the Army and Navy transport commands under the Air Force, which has already been done. Aircraft manufacturing capacity should be increased from the current 21 million pounds of airframe per year to 30 and then 40 million, not just to support the air forces, but because military procurement is the essential basis of the industry. They also want more money for research and development, and increased mail rates, so that civil aviation doesn’t depend entirely on crumbs from the military table. It wants the Government to assume the costs of air traffic control. It opposes the chosen instrument policy, wants to open the door to railwayair, and approves of non-scheduled airlines and feeder airlines. In shorter news, a note from Fairey says that they have found a local partner to set up a Fairey Aviation branch in Australia, and that  their new four-bladed airscrew has been passing tests right and left.

Correspondence

David G. Thorpe thinks that the Informal Light Aircraft Committee should talk to the Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers. Gurney Smeed, which is a real name, points out that while jets are quiet, they do produce high frequency noise that is very annoying, and not easy to detect, as it may “skip” fifteen or twenty miles. Dennis Powell points out that the Americans have air conditioners that will do in British flying boats. I’m sure that the Admiral will have a trenchant comment about how the British do so know what they’re doing. R. L. Porter points out that club planes do not carry parachutes because club planes are hardly ever in the kind of accident where it is possible to bale out. They don’t get that high, and don’t have the kind of structural or collision damage that leads to bailing out, when they do.

The Engineer, 13 February 1948

A Seven-Day Journal

At the end of the Tool and Gauge Show, there was a nice lunch. Oliver Lyttleton was there, and gave a talk about government planning, in which he said the trouble with planning was all the planning. Controls on tool and gauge steel should be removed, just as they have been from high speed steel.

The British India Steam Navigation Company has ordered four more cargo ships and a small passenger ship, bringing the total now building on its account to 21. Combined with the 33 built for it during and since the war, this will make up for its 51 hostilities losses within the next two years. They include motor cargo liners of the “C” class, oil-burning steamers of the Ormara class, and a smaller motorship to serve the small ports of the East African coast. Dr. F. H. Todd is leaving his post as Principal Scientific Officer of the Ship Division of the NPL to be chief naval architect to the Hydrodynamics Division of the David Taylor Model Basin in Washington, DC. The Board of Trade has announced that its investigations into German wartime industry have been completed, that 2720 reports have already been completed, that 6000 investigators were involved, that over a million copies have been sold or distributed to universities, learned societies, trade and research associations, and other public libraries, that  fifty summaries, called “BIOS Overall Reports” will now be prepared. It hopes that they will have a decisive influence on research and development in the coming years.

O. S. Nock’s road reports on the working of oil-fired locomotives in Britain continue. Don’t get me wrong. This sounds like as much fun as an overgrown boy can have and is worthwhile reading for anyone who loves trains. As technology news? Nah.

T. A. Crowe, “The Gas Turbine as Applied to Marine Propulsion, No. III” Swiss engineers were among the first to try gas turbines, but no-one cares because they don’t have a navy or an air force, but here they are anyway, saying, “Look at me, look at me! I’m ever so clever!” This number is mainly interested in the various ways that turbine blade tricks can fix the old problems of no-reverse-gear and no-braking. Combined with Crowe’s enthusiasm for the semi-closed cycle, which alleviates problems with low load working, and you have a plant that could replace steam turbines, which have never really made the splash in commercial shipping that they were expected to do. Uncle George is dismissive. Let the Swiss focus on electrical power plants, he says, and see what happens.

“A Radiator Core Assembling Plant” Ford Motor Company, Dagenham, has built a machine that allows three men to assemble 330 radiator cores in nine and a half hours, at a reduction in scrap wastage and costs. A Ford core consists of several copper fins between vertical water tubes spaced in three rows. Prior to the machine, the tubes were inserted through the fins with great care to avoid damage, which involved the use of much hand labour and expensive equipment. There’s an elaborate description of the machine, but you can probably imagine how it might work, and that is probably good enough, even if it works in an entirely different way, because it’s just not that hard from a technical standpoint. 

T. W. Ross and R. M. A. Smith, “Centralised Ripple Control on High-Voltage Networks” [Download] Praise the Lord! It’s an article that opens by explaining what it is about! Ripple control is remote control “by alternating currents of audio frequency which are superimposed on power networks.” They differ from other systems that use superimposed remote control on either DC or AC at radio frequency, the so-called carrier current. Audio frequencies are easy to distinguish from the AC frequency of the main voltage and can be transmitted across transformers without excessive losses. “Injection” of the control current is difficult, because for practical reasons it should be parallel to the whole network,  while due to overlap with neighbouring networks within the National Grid, there is as risk of “spillover,” which means that the equipment needs to be able to produce signals in a very precise frequency band, so that one ripple control current can be told from another. Ripple control greatly facilitates the management of off-peak loads in domestic consumption, for example by lowering the voltage when demand is high, since a 20% reduction in heating load can be achieved without serious inconvenience. In conclusion, ripple control is a jolly good idea, and everyelectrical utility should go all in on it.

J. M. Kirkby, “Some Mechanical Features in Anti-Submarine Weapons” This is probably the beginning of a longer presentation, since it is entirely about depth charges and depth charge throwers, which are practically in the Stone Age of antisubmarine weapons, until for some reason the “Hedgehog” shows up at the end for a while. If you’ve ever wanted to know how a depth charge is fired (by a pressure gauge!), here’s your article.

“Submarine Gravity Survey in the English Channel” The Admiralty, along with the Department of Geodesy and Geophysics at Cambridge University, is going to do a gravity survey of the English Channel from the submarine Talent next may, to learn about the relationship between the geology of southern England and the Continent, and not for any other submarine-detecting-related reasons.

Leaders

“Wages and Economics” Because Britain is importing too much and exporting too little, real living standards are falling, and higher wages just mean more inflation.

“Engineers and Wartime Achievements” The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has been hearing papers on gas turbines and tank transmissions and rockets and the fine work of the REME. Last Friday, it heard two more papers, one on naval mining by Dr. Wadlow, the other on anti-submarine weapons by Mr. Kirkby. The Engineer cannot print the whole of them, so it is doing abstracts, instead, which is why they’re so odd, I guess. More papers will come, although not that many, as engineers are men of peace, but perhaps some, because hopefully engineers will continue to work on weapons of war, so that the country does not end up short of weapons, as it was in 1939.

Obituary

Mr. Charles Davis Taite (84), a prominent figure in electrical supply circles, who retired in 1946 after fifty years in the industry, was with the Lancashire Electric Power Company until his retirement, when he was  managing director. At 82! Bertram Horn, who died suddenly at his home, “Sideways,” in Manor Road, Barton, near Luton, at the age of 66, was the representative of Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day, and the Mirrless Watson Company, in the south of England, for 33 years prior to his death. He wasn’t much of an engineer, but everyone liked him.

Letters

R. B. Rowson writes that Mr. Parr shouldn’t have given the Germans credit for inventing the magnetic amplifier, when work on the transductor began in America and Sweden, and the British were working on it by 1939. It was not invented by the Germans for the V-2. Two correspondents recognise “Tonsor’s” letter as  a call for manly competition in the field of stinginess. They both make their razor blades last even longer than “Tonsor,” who is  a piker. Z. Friedberg, of the Iraq PetroleumCompany, at Haifa, writes about detecting breaks in semi-flexible multi-core submarine cables, which does not need special designs, but can be achieved with a simple megger. 

G. Tilghman Richards, an engineer of Hove, Sussex,  is moved by the spirit of the age to recall his reading of Green’s Short History of the English People, which describes how, after the Black Death, the shortage of labourers led to the passing of the Statute of Labourers, which tried to force everyone to work for a living at the wages that prevailed before the Plague, and which, in stead, lead to the Peasant’s Revolt.

“Naval Mining and Anti-Submarine Weapons: Discussion of Papers by Dr. E.C. Wadlow and J, M. Kirkby” O. Thorneycroft discusses the use of models in connection with mines and weapons. Mr. Stuart Miall remembers mines with floating antennae, intended to be “used against shallow draught vessels at all states of the tide.” Wires tend to tangle, and he had the idea of a self-straightening wire, which sounds like a miracle, but turns out to be the expanding curtain rod, as purchased at Woolworths, and then manufactured for the Admiralty instead of clothes closets, although eventually the curtain-rod company had to go into five-stranded wire cores to reduce resistance, something that they had never tried before, but found very easy when they tried. The mines were ready for the expected invasion of spring 1941 that never happened due to Germany’s prior engagement with Communism. H. E. Sharp had fun with depth charge throwers, Mr. Lightbody with designing depth charge caps for better ballistics, Mr. Stuart Watts with mooring, Captain R. Oliver-Bellasis with the history of magnetic mines.

“Battery-Powered Dump Truck” Crompton Parkinson, Ltd., has developed a 15cwt, side tipping hopper mounted on the 1-ton flat deck of their “Electricar” industrial truck. 

“Modernisation of Toton Marshalling Yards” The traffic yard at Toton sidings receives and marshals some 2700 coal wagons daily. The down side of the yard was modernised in 1939, and now the up sided is to be modernised as well. It needs arrival lines of suitable (longer) length, power brakes on the lines, electric lights for night work, and loudspeakers.

E. T. Norris, “the Lightning Strength of Power Transformers” Current methods for estimating the effects of lightning strikes on transformers are inadequate. Norris can do better.

“Tractors for Wagon Shunting” David Brown Tractors has them! 

South African Engineering Notes

South Africa has many new factories, has begun building its own locomotives, is going into the production of vermiculite, and is pushing forward with rural electrification.

Industrial and Labour Notes

The TUC and the National Joint Advisory Committee are talking and consulting about wages, because wages are up, and hours are down. The Government wants to keep the Royal Ordnance Factories going, because they are a vital national resource. The problem is that there isn’t a great deal of work to keep 39,600 workers employed, and the Ministry is pushing ahead with the policy of alternative work with all possible vigour.

French Engineering News

There is not enough steel. Modernisation of the nationalised mines in the Nord and Pas de Calais regions continue. Compressors comprising 50,000hp have been ordered in America. The SNCF has ordered sixty locomotives and 1710 wagons; 16,000 tractors will be delivered in 1948. 5000 might be bought in Britain before June to help with the ploughing.

Notes and Memoranda

The CPR has ordered 44 locomotives and 2200 wagons, bringing unfulfilled orders to a value of $63 million. A viaduct in Leicestershire is being strengthened, and the Ministry of Supply’s Metal Recovery Depot is closing, because there is no more metal to recover.  Harold Russell Brett, who has been The Engineer’s ad man for twenty-one years, is retiring. The Institute of Navigation’s Journal is very interesting, and you should subscribe.