Postblogging Technology, March, 1948, II: Necessity is to Invention As . . .

R_. C_.,
Vancouver, Canada

Dear Father:

I hope this finds you well, as I'm personally a bit frazzled, having been up to the city again, this time to look for a place to stay, as it would be a scandal if I moved into with Queenie or the Cs. I've even resorted to the 'Ks.", so if I end  up staying in an (indoor) tipi, you will know why!

Not only to the city but to Oakland, as Mother made a flying visit to her sister's nurses. (Who were a bit mystified by  the origins of her authority, or why she looked like her sister.) My presence was commanded, so that Mother could snub me --although she relented when I asked whether I had had rubella far enough to promise to send me my medical records. A nurse dismissed for the crime of getting too close to Uncle Henry, she was off to Chicago, cool and distant as ever, and me to work.

I have decided that I do not like work. I  hope lawyering is nothing like it.


Yours Sincerely,
Ronnie

Happy Mother's Day!

Time, 15 March 1948

Letters

Ray Lair, I. D. Bonney of San Francisco, and Peter Roberts, of the World Socialist Party, have very different opinions about Time's summary of the Communist Manifesto.Mainly, he's surprisingly non-awful considering how communism is . . . .

 Helen Landreth is upset at the review of her book about Robert Emmett, although since the operative word is "exhaustive," all I can say is that Time is awfully unfair in printing her letter at full, ridiculous length. Alden Hatch reminds Time that the old Wright Flyers were launched with catapults. Hal Croves is upset at the way he is portrayed in the article about Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Maxwell Clayton, of Dallas, Texas, is glad that the New Look is dead, because the Short Look is shorter, and the wolves like that. 

The Letter from the Publisher is devoted to fluffing up Joe Axelrod. So either when we reread this in fifty years we'll be saying, "Look how Joe Axelrod got his start,"  or, "Who is Joe Axelrod?" I won't give you odds, but, of course, Uncle George and I agree to disagree.

National Affairs

The whole first page is devoted to the debate over the ERP in the Senate and the momentum towards the American security guarantee for the five-power Brussels group. In Time's telling, the division is between those who just want the ERP, and those who want the ERP and the security guarantee. Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee heard from George Marshall, who wanted another 300 million for Greece and Turkey. "The situation is serious, but not without hope." Meanwhile, the President relieved Lincoln MacVeagh as  ambassador to Greece, ostensibly on health grounds, but without a successor in place. The Committee also heard from "the usual suspects" on China, with Bill Bullitt arguing for another cool hundred million to New York real estate or the Koumintang, where the dollar goes further. General Wedemeyer, on the other hand, thinks that even two hundred million wasn't enough if we didn't send troops, "blood as well as treasure." In Tokyo, someone pointed a microphone at General MacArthur, so he made a speech about . . . I don't know. Communism and China, I guess. Point is, he mentioned China, so it counts as a story in Time, even if no-one can figure out what he said, besides, "I love talking." Continuing in this vein of not really understanding "news," John Garner gets a separate header for telling an interviewer that Hoover was the "wisest statesman in the Western Hemisphere." 

"How to Win Appropriations" J. Parnall Thomas of the House Un-American Activities Committee dug up confidential testimony before a confidential committee that Edward U. Condon, director of the National Bureau of Standards, had met a communist once, and reported it, saying that Condon he is "one of the weakest links in our atomic security." It being pointed out that this was as irresponsible as it was dumb, Thomas cried all the way to the bank with his new Committee appropriation of $200,000. Also in communism, "Labour's Communist-liners bent under some hard hammering this week." 

"Little Accident" This week's cover story is devoted to the President's counsel and legal advisor, Clark Clifford, who was with the President on vacation in Key West, Florida to relax, because even though the country seems certain to dump Truman in the fall, Clifford doesn't think so. 

In yet more election-related news, Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico won't run in the fall because he isn't expected to beat Patrick Hurley, while Vandenberg is still pretending he doesn't care if he's on the Nebraska primary ballot, and the KKK, led by "Atlanta physician Samuel Green," turned out in force in Wrightsville, Georgia, to prevent Negroes from voting in the Johnson county Democratic primary. A nasty little footnote points out that while the KKK is up in arms against miscegenation these days, "before the Civil War, when mulatto slaves brought high prices, the practice was encouraged." A story about the paternity suit brought by Christine Johnston against Governor Folsom of Alabama follows.

International

"The Chances of World War III"

Everyone agrees that the Marshall Plan is not enough. "'If the Marshall Plan were solely a matter of dollars and cents investment for fair return, we would do well to scrap it now. On its present scale and design Marshall aid cannot ensure the permanent rehabilitation of Europe. It is too little, and it is probably too late, to do more than slow the economic decline which brought it into being," says London bureau chief John Osborne. It is the political commitment that it represents that is crucial, although Osborne talks around that simple sentence so long and so vaguely that I'm not going to guarantee that that is what he means. Anyway, World War III is only likely if we don't stand up to the Russians.

"Brutal Fact" Norway's premier is fed up with Stalin and those darn communists. So is de Gaulle, who dreams of a European nation, 250,000,000 strong, opposing "Russia's docile, patient . . . . 180,000,000, all manipulated by an absolute dictatorship," the numbers emphatically including "[t]he German states, federating as they wished . . . " Also agreeing that there will be no umbrellas this time are Ernest Bevin and Henri Spaarks of Belgium. Not precisely agreeing are the Finns, who are in the treaty with Russia, but emphatically not ready to be Czechoslovakia. 

"Agreement in the West" People are saying that Eisenhower should have gone through the Balkans instead of France, so that "containment would be much further along," forgetting that by going through France, the West got the Ruhr. This isn't news as such, but it sort of secret news, in that some people, somewhere, are cutting down Eisenhower as a war leader; and like one of those Russian dolls, I guess that means that, at the next level, some Republicans are expecting Truman to win in '48, since Eisenhower's reputation only matters in 1952. Politics! Why does it waste my time, so? After that break, it is back to Europe for another story about the Brussels agreement, this one with a coal angle. (Ruhr coal production is up to a postwar high of 291,000 tons thanks to "more sensible occupation policies); and then one about Prince Michael having a reception for the press at Claridges, because he is young and good looking, and marrying a princess; and one about how Germans are appalled at what is going on in Czechoslovakia, where the people being "fired" from the Czech government are now being said to have been sent to labour camps. 

"As the Twig is Bent" Finally tired of the Five Powers uniting against the absorption of Czechoslovakia, Time pops south to Greece, where the communists are said to be abducting Greek children and indoctrinating them with communism, just like the Janissaries of old. Some footnote action quotes "historian Arnold Toynbee" as saying that Turkish policy borrowed from their "steppe custom" of using one kind of domestic animal to control other kinds of domestic animals, in this case, Janissaries being like sheepdogs, and their Christian subjects, sheep. Many pages below, an unrelated(?) story is ecstatic about the islands of the Dodecanese being reunited with Greece at last.

You don't have to like Communists to think that Time needs to take a vacation.

Meanwhile, Britain can't, due to the loan being used up, and the clothing ration probably being cut again before the winter to 42 from 48 coupons. (At current rates, a pair of stockings are 3 coupons, a cotton dress 7 coupons, a pair of shoes, 7 coupons, a woolen dress 11, and a suit 18 coupons.) 

A long and woolly joke that starts with Lord Pakenham getting enthusiastic in the Lords debate on atomic energy on the grounds that "It has thrown light on dark places," specifically Russian minds, which are are now seen to be even darker due to Pravda saying that Russian generals need to study Marx more, which leads to a conversation between Molotov and Bevin about Marx studies, in which Bevin says that the only place in Britain where Marx is read is the House of Lords, because only lords have the time to read him, the rest of the British being so hard at work. Haha!

In much more important (and cheerier) news, it is learned that Princess Elizabeth is pregnant. Then back to discouraging news: Schuman wins his eighteenth vote of non-confidence in the Assembly, but with a diminished majority, a Vienna paper called Der Optimist closing in the midst of food shortages and worries about a Czechoslovak style coup. On the bright side, occupation authorities arrrested the notorious August Heiszmeyer and his wife, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, at a farm belonging to Pauline, Princess of Wuerttemberg, who had been sheltering the former top Nazis since they were declared dead in the fall of Berlin.  

Needs more patriarchy

"Even More Disrupted" Did you know that there is fighting in Palestine between Arabs, Jews and British occupying forces? It's true! Also, Fawzi Bey is back in Syria.

In Peiping (Peking) this week, Yoshiko Kawashima was sentenced to death, while in Latin America, President Videla returned in triumph to Santiago after successfully conquering Antarctica. Two hudnred thousand Chileans greeted him at the airport, while Devonshire and Sheffield arrived in British Honduras with troops of the Gloucestershire Regiment to make a fuss about Guatemala making a fuss, which led to Guatemala making a fuss. President Peron's fuss over the Falkland Islands (which secretly belonged to Argentina the whole time) was so successful that he had to go to hospital for an emergency appendectomy, although I might have the details confused. Everything's coming up roses, so he's going to let the anti-Peronistas be in the election. 

Business

"A Small Thing" The iron and steel industry is in a bit of hot water over their price increase, which undercuts the GOP's belief that relaxing price controls will lead to the restoration of sanity in the market, end of inflation, etc., etc. They do have a point, though, in that their profits, while up 3,9% from 1946 at 11.3%, were still below the average for all industries. 

"The Old Refrain" Tire, radio and electrical appliance companies have cut back production due to regular "seasonal declines," a shocking return to the days before the seemingly irremediable postwar consumer shortages, while furniture warehouses find themselves with full warehouses and department stores are still waiting for their Easter rush, and high-priced, older houses are no longer selling. 

"Here Comes Clint" Commodity prices are starting to increase again, as it is an election year and Clinton Anderson doesn't want to see farm incomes hit. Related is the wheat agreement, which Time thinks might not pass the Senate. 

"Mighty Mites" Robert Geissman and wife Gladys have a line of boys' clothing called Merry Hull, and their Merry Mites collection is in Neiman-Marcus and other high-end department stores and doing well. The idea is that the clothes in the collection are more boyish designs than the "feminine" ruffles and ribbons that were around when Geissman's son was born. Equally importantly, the line  makes "tricky use of seams, suspenders and tabs, which allow them to be let out easily so that the clothes can "grow" with the wearer." 

I couldn't find any online pictures of the Merry Mites line, and I didn't like the ones in Time (though not  as much as I disliked its patronising tone in referring to the husband first), so here's Merry Hull's signature glove line. More at the link. 

Try eight years, Dr. Borst. 

State of Business reports that Hollywood is fighting back against the British import tax by showing trailers for films that they can't send to Britain, that du Pont de Nemours is declaring record profits as a sweetener for a new stock offering, that in spite of a record two billion barrels of oil tapped, the United States discovered 700 million barrels of oil more than it tapped, bringing known reserves to an alltime high of 24.7 billion barrels, that almost all cigarette companies are growing rapidly, that Crosley is cutting the price of its midget sedan by $19 to $869, that Dr. Lyle B. Borst, boss of the atomic lab at Brookhaven, says that atomic energy is twenty years off, that Irish Prime Minister John Costello had cancelled the Irish trans-Atlantic Constellation service because the subsidies were too high for the Irish government, that the Aviation Commission of Columbus, Indiana, made $400 last year from soybeans grown on its airfield.

"Teevee Pains" The studios are trying to figure out television, and are making movies specifically for television. Manufacturers have mastered a flat, instead of convex receiving tube, while Radio Corporation has come up with a steel cathode ray tube to replace the glass one, which will lower the cost on some sets, Arcturus Radio and Television has come up with a tv that doesn't need an aerial, and Electronic Laboratories has one that allows tvs to take direct current, opening up 300,000 customers in Manhattan, alone. The FCC gave out twelve television broadcasting licenses one day last week. ATT will link up the East and Midwest with coaxial cables by December, allowing telecasts to be sent from Buffalo to Cleveland (and other towns, but those are the funniest). The DC-6 has been cleared to fly again.

Science, Medicine, Education

"The Meson Mystery" The University of California recently admitted that its 4000 ton cyclotron had created the first man-made meson. Previously, all mesons known were created by enormously powerful cosmic rays colliding with the atmosphere and detected in cloud chambers. The cyclotron can make mesons, because it can generate alpha particles with just barely enough power, 380 million electron volts. Reggie says that it is actually "energy, ut it's the same thing as mass," and then starts on about Heisenberg and "eigenstates," because, he says, he's so confused by it all that he needs to talk it out. Cloud chamber analysis of the products of cyclotron electrons colliding with targets occasionally show the characteristic tracks of mesons, which end with them being capture by atoms and creating little "stars," or nuclear explosions. In spite of this, Atomic Energy Commissioner Robert Bacher says that this has nothing to do with atomic energy, and wouldn't be in the papers if it did. It is assumed that mesons are formed when energetic particles collide with the "enormously powerful field of force" that holds atomic nucleii together, a force which is currently completely mysterious, so studying mesons may tell us what this force is, and lead to a "vastly better source of atomic energy than the fission of uranium."

"American Made" 

It's only fair to give the Aerobee a bit of press in the hometown papers. No-one in the American press is officially sure what the Aerobee is for. It doesn't go anywhere near as high as the V-2, but, on the other hand, is much smaller. 

Short nature stories tell the naughty story of a pollen trap through which bees have to go to return to the hive, which is naughty because, well, birds and bees, and the introduction of the nutria to the American wild thanks to escapes from pelt farms. 

"Atomic Twelve-Foot Shelf" McGraw Hill will bring out a 100 volume set of books on the wartime research of the Atomic Energy Commission, all screened and vetted of secrets, but revealing the details for which American industry is clammering, since the only way to keep America ahead in atomic research is to bring industry in.

"For Children Only" Psychiatrist William V. Silverberg thinks that if adults start cultivating imaginary friends like Elwood Dowd's invisible pink rabbit friend, Harvey, they might come down with schizophrenia, the "split personality" disease. Only children should be allowed to have imaginary friends. Adults should cut all ties with imaginary friends and refuse to see them except on professional terms, at work.

"Physician, Blame Thyself" Doctor Frank Rodney Drake thinks that some diseases are "iatrogenic," which means that they are all in your  head, only in a less judgmental way. 

"Top Juniors" The Westinghouse Science Talent Search picked 40 junior scientists for a national science contest, won by Barbara Wolff, 17 of New York, and 15-year-old Andrew Kende of Evanston, Illinois. Wolff studies non-hereditary mutations in fruit flies, while Kende has found three less-flammable substitutes for commercial ethyl ether. 

"Little Givers" A story about university fund raisers looking for small donors to fund scientific laboratories, as there aren't enough millionaires around any more due to high income taxes and falling interest rates. 

"New Leaf" Arthur L. Thexton, 46, former $30,000/year man at a Cincinnati manufacturing company, decided to go back to school in November, and is now doing an MA at Columbia, while his wife, who quit medical school to get married, is studying to be a laboratory technician. who was

Press, Radio, Art, People

"A Plug for Leaks" James Forrestal and Vannevar Bush have both had the press in for a stern talking-to about the recent Aviation Week stores about supersonic flight and the Denver Post story about disposing of atomic rubbish. The press has named an eight man committee to think "voluntary censorship" over. 

"Bane of the Bassinet" Author-Critic John Mason Brown recently said that, while everyone needs a certain amount of trash as part of a "healthy literary diet," comic books are just too much, as they are despicable, harmful, unethical trash. "Comics are the marijuana of the nursery, the bane of the bassinet." Al Capp is quoted in reply as sounding like someone you'd want to read. It's hard to be a highbrow!

"Booby Trapped" Time makes fun of the Hearst push for MacArthur, while in Tokyo, the General acquired a new press agent, Marion P. Echolls, who blamed his predecessor, Frayne Baker, for the war between SHAEF and the press.

"Mrs. Parrett's Day"

Omitted: an obituary for Philip Stack, the "nameless mass-producer of saccharine sentiments on millions of greeting cards," who got his start writing epigrams for Walter Winchell's column, who committed suicide at 46.

Mrs. Edgar Parrett lives on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, and won the draw to be "Queen for a Day," which is how she came to win a record $35,000 in prizes from the radio show. 

I like this picture.

"Standard Equipment" Fighting to win business, the television makers and bartenders have together driven the size of the largest television up to an 18ft by 22ft model with the king-sized price tag of $2600. 

The Art page has a feature on sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, responsible for, amongst other things, Boston's Shaw Memorial, and Morris Graves, the New York painter who hates civilisation and spends all his time out in the wilderness, alone except for all the other artists.

Barbara Joe Walker, Miss America 1947, is flying to backwards South Africa to apply American ingenuity to the task of picking a Miss South Africa. Gregory Peck and Leslie Charteris went out in a Miami storm but got home safely. Conchita Cintron is the most famous female bullfighter of all. George Bernard Shaw thinks that kids get too much homework these days. Henry Ford II doesn't want to do business with communist countries, unless he has a plant in one, in which case he's going to get around to selling it one of these days. 

Also dead of suicide, Ross Lockridge, the youthful author of
Raintree County. I think Time has a new editor this month. There's
a great deal more sex, sensation and suicide. 

Georgia Sothern doesn't think that she's one of the bad kind of strippers who do a lot of grinds, as she only bumps. Merle Miller gossipped about Truman Capote in public in New York this week. Bill Tilden has a scandalous play out. John Gunther and Jane Perry Vandercook have married. [Ross Lockridge, 33, author of Raintree County, suicide]. Major General Uzal Girard Ent, the leader of the Ploesti raid, has died at 48 after a long illness. A paraplegic, he set an example for his fellows by learning to walk with braces. Gordon S. Rentschler, chairman of the board of the Natinal City Bank of New York, has died at a more timely age, as has Saul Singer and Dr. Abraham Arden Brill. Louella Parsons threw a party in Hollywood last week that all the stars (except Cary Grant and Clark Gable) had to attend, in case she spelled their name wrong or broadly implied that they practiced nameless perversions. 

The New Pictures

Farrebique is a record of a year in the life of a French farm that is very novel and experimental because it was made by a French director who is very avant garde.

Books

"Upper Class India"

Joseph Hitrec's book, Son of the Moon, is a book about a rich Indian airline pilot who eventually marries the girl his parents have chosen for him. Boo! Boo! Irving Brant's James Madison: The Nationalist, is just another book about James Madison, which we really needed because there hasn't been a book about Madison for ages, except the ones that we've had. Ernst Juenger's On the Marble Cliffs was the most effective anti-Nazi book, even though it was by a Nazi, a fact that will puzzle future historians.  It's allegorical. Dwight Macdonald's Henry Wallace shows that he's awful, because he is secretly an opportunist and disingenuous. 

Flight, 18 March 1948

Leaders

“Naval Air Equipment” Flight is upset that the Naval Estimates didn’t mention all the exciting planes that have flown on or off carriers this year, or that all the planes the Navy has are pretty useless, and, most of all, that the Estimates didn’t throw huge amounts of money at the Firecrest and Wyvern to get them ready now now now now, in case the Navy has to fight a war against a first class opponent like –Atlantis? I don’t know. I’m trying not to be silly, but Smith is supposed to be smart, and he must know that people are going to be a bit baffled by this! I’m sure all those Russian cruisers and submarines will be a real menace in a war, but he’s talking about fleet air operations, and the Russians won’t have aircraft carriers for years and years yet. Am I missing something? 

.

“The Technical Press” Roland Dangerfield (which is a real name) says that the technical press doesn’t take its responsibility to instruct the Government seriously enough. If the Government can’t find out what it is to do about planes by reading Flight, where else can it turn? No, seriously, that’s the point.

“Accident Investigations” There’s been a blowup in Parliament and on Fleet Street over accident investigations, I think because the Chief Inspector is under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, which might compromise his impartiality, but Flight doesn't explain.

Maurice Smith, “Trent Meteor in the Air” This is the airborne testbed for the Rolls Royce Trent, which is the big Rolls-Royce turboprop, and very much a transitional type compared with the smaller Dart, which is on the first Viscount prototype. As the byline suggests, Smith was invited down to fly it and try out Rolls Royce’s approach to single-lever control, which is a problem with turboprops, because the turbines turn so much faster than the props, resulting in all kinds of potential for pitch changes to cause overspeeding and fuel and air feed variations, resulting in uncontrolled and temperature changes in the turbines, possibly leading to overheating  Smith enjoyed the ride and finds turboprops only slightly more uncomfortable than jets, compared with internal combustion types. Noise is no worse, but there is some vibration. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time or space to go into the single-pitch control device, because this article is “purely [a] handling and effect description.”

There’s a short article about the sample case that Ernie Hives is taking to South America. His suitcase is nice. Read about it in Flight!

Casual Commentary, with Robert Carling. “Can We Afford Air Transport: Long-period Over-optimism the Cause of Present Set-backs: A More Realistic Attitude Needed” Part of the problem is that wages and prices have gone up so much, but the shock over the airline deficits in America and in Britain has much to do with the fact that airlines have never been profitable without subsidies, and it has been very difficult to get the airlines up and running on an efficient basis with all the one-time costs of getting into business, while all it takes is coming up a few bookings short to turn a profitable run into an unprofitable one. Beyond that, developing new airliners is too expensive, and needs to be subsidised somehow, given that a full production run is never guaranteed.

“Naval Aviation: Points from the Debate on the Navy Estimates” John Dugdale says that by September, the Royal Navy will have 4 battleships, 17 cruisers, 34 submarines, 52 destroyers and 42 frigates in commission in addition to 3 fleet carriers and 5 light fleet carriers. 3^rd Aircraft Carrier Squadron would probably take part in the Home Fleet cruise to the West Indies. Twelve carriers were under construction, with work proceeding on 8. A fleet carrier would hopefully complete in 1949, and an additional light carrier this year. The new fleet carrier, Ark Royal, would have a displacement of  36,800t compared with 23,000t for the Illustrious. Helicopters and gas turbines had an exciting future with the Royal Navy, and antisubmarine warfare was very important, and not a sideline at all. Between one third and one quarter of the Navy’s 145,000 hands were in naval aviation, although many of them were not at sea due to training and such. Mr. Alexander pointed out that before the war, an aircraft carrier needed 1000 men, but now, what with one thing and another, they needed 1400, and that was why so few wer in service. Captain Marsden accused the Government of padding the Fleet’s numbers with aircraft carriers that didn’t really belong there. Major Vernon pointed out that the Americans were already making making big ships to fire rockets and which would not carry guns at all, and that self-directing missiles were the coming thing, and would affect the structure and composition of the Navy. Commander Noble is very impressed with the Aerobee, and thinks Britain should have one, and Mr. Paget points out that the “surface job” was rapidly becoming an air responsibility, “and a land-based air responsibility at that.” Gasp! Mr. Austin points out that carriers have been in accidents lately.

In shorter news, model aircraft builders have been hard hit by the balsa wood import ban.

CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=311549

Civil Aviation News

De Havilland is buying the Government factory at Broughton, Cheshire, which is currently completing a Ministry of Supply contract for aluminum bungalows. This will allow it to meet its export orders, which are mostly for Vampires, so isn’t this the wrong place for this? Air Commodore H. G. Brackley will replace Bennett at BSAA. The public is invited to visit London Airport on 24 March. Same received 24,948 passengers in the first month of the year and landed 945 aircraft. The second busiest airport in the country, Speke at Liverpool, recieved 3,663 passengers. The first Air India Constellation passed through London last week on its delivery flight from Burbank to Bombay. BSAA will make its thousandth South Atlantic crossing on 6 March. It is discontinuing film showings onboard, as while they are a success, the ARB wants some structural modifications. 123 Constellations operated by 14 airlines have flown 2 billion passenger miles.

“Goodyear Duck: Metal Three-seat Amphibian with Pleasant All-round Handling Characteristics” I think the title says it all. The Duck was in the news last year because it is the first production aircraft with castering wheels. It has forced air cooling on its Franklin engine, which must help with its pusher configuration. The cabin is nice, controls are simple, although there are not many instruments, and it flies well.

“Rotol Turbine Airscrews” Rotol is very pleased with its airscrews for the Mamba, Dart and Naiad, and with the starter arrangements and the Napier ducted spinner to which it is attached.

“Standard Approach Procedure: Design for Safety in Landing Technique at State-owned and Jointe-user Airfields” The Ministry of Civil Aviation has published standard Insturment Approach and Holding Procedures for SBA, ILS, BABS, Radio Range, Ground D/F and Radio Beacon approach aids. For SBA, for example, procedure is to fly over the Main Beacon  or localiser at 1500ft and fly out for one minute beyond the Outer Marker on QDR, descending to 1000ft. A procedure turn on to the QDM Beam at the beam reducing height follows, reaching the Outer Marker at 600ft and the Inner Marker at 100ft. Approach and overshoot allowances specify the necessary clearance in which other aircraft are not allowed. Worst Paths and Best Paths are specified for given airports, giving bearing and altitudes.

Here and There

The United States is giving 12 Invaders to Turkey.  The Bristol Freighter demonstration team has returned to Britain. The USAF recently dropped a 21 ton bomb, just to show that they could do it. Convair 24 deliveries will be flown east from California to Darwin, purely to save dollars, since they would have to pay for gas in dollars if they flew the Pacific. What a world! Along the same lines, HMCS Magnificent will not be handed over to the Canadians provisioned. The Canadians will transfer store from Warrior when it returns from Canada to British service, in order to avoid depleting British stocks of food and clothing.  Sweden is setting up a helicopter ambulance service, and Dunlop is transferring its cotton mill from Rochdale, where there is not the labour to work it, to Fort Dunlop, where it will make the threads that go into its tyres. Fokker will make Sea Furies for the Dutch navy under license. Tube Investments has been able to reduce the cost of electrically welded tubes by 2 ½% through efficiencies.

“Bound for Australia: Co-operative Proving Floight by a Handley Page Hastings” The Hastings is to be the standard long-distance transport for the RAF, so they are sending one to Australia and New Zealand in case they want some, too.

Correspondence

Al Smith writes to let Flight iknow about that one time he and his buddies flew a Meteor 600mph. F. H. Jones has news of progress on the Two-stage Amber filter scheme for night flying training on the Balliol. Robin Hanson writes to explain why grounding the Tudor fleet after the Star Tiger tragedy was the right thing to do. He points out that both the Constellation and the DC-6 were grounded under similar conditions, and he is “disgusted” by the personal and controversial turn the discusisosn has taken. D. G. H. thinks that the London disaster shows the need for better escape exits, parachutes and safety fuel. Flight disagrees about parachutes. G. Hellings seems stung by the recent article about in-flight refuelling, and writes a long letter about why it is a good idea, and why the risks are reasonable. W. Van Leer thinks that “speed before safety” is a terrible way to run an airline. “Ex-RAF” and D. W. Richardson continue the RAFVR controversy (they want better planes) and the Informal Light Aircraft Committee controversies. I’ve long since lost track of where the last one was going, and since it mainly involves people’s feelings being  hurt in the very small plane field, I am not going to ready my way back into it. 

HMS Reclaim

The Engineer,  19 March 1948

Seven-Day Journal

The Road Transport Executive and British Electricity Authority have made some organisational changes. The new submarine salvage ship, HMS Reclaim, has been launched.  Alfred Grunspan, the well-known consultant on reinforced concrete construction, has died at the untimely age of 59. Born in Warsaw, he gained his bachelor's in engineering from London in 1912, joining Edmond Coignet, Ltd, as assistant to Mr. Behar, became chief engineer of the company in 1917, and went into business on his own as a consultant and specialist in 1919, designing many structures over the next thirty years. The United Nations is setting up an intergovernmental maritime consultative organisation. A. R. Cooper's paper to the IEE on load dispatching in the British grid discussed availability and demand issues. Higher pressure and temperature working has led to decreased equipment availability, and so less dispatchable power, and there are  many causes of load fluctuation, with a black cloud over central London, for example, causing a load increase of as much as 500mW. High efficiency generating capacity is generally not flexible, so there are problems with peak loads, and set will probably be designed specifically for that purpose in the future.

"Historic Researches, No. XXX: Conduction of Electricity Through Gases"  The researches of Julius Pluecker and especially William Crookes are discussed at length, leading on but in no way reaching the first vacuum tubes, because what would you put in Part XXXI, otherwise? Or XXXII. or. . . 

David Vine, "the Preparation of Instructional and Servicing Handbooks" This, it turns out, is hard. For example, people keep making the handbooks too cumbersome. They're called "handbooks" for a reason! The type size is often below eight point, paragraphs are too long (is that even possible?), there are two many parenthetical interjections (I made that part up),  and phrases like "Obtain the spanner for me, Joe," appear instead of "Git mah spanner." 

Since I am sure that you are not here to read me making fun of Mr. Vine's worthy work, it is on to The Engineer's visit to the "Aberdare Cable Works," which the magazine hasn't visited since 6 May 1938, when, it will be recalled, they were working on all classes of paper-insulated cables up to 11,000v. Today, the working range has been increased to 33,000V, and dry core telephone cables are produced. The works can stand any number of wires from 3 to 127, and have a variety of special-purpose machine tools for taping, stranding, sheathing (a 2500t press!) and applying insulation. 

"A Railway Precast Concrete Depot" This is actually the LMS precast concrete unit making depot, which is slightly different,  I think. It's a depot, because you can hardly call it a plant, and because the precast pieces are loaded directly onto trains and sent out.

The British Standards Institution has released new standards for the electricity service cables for small houses where demand does not exceed 14.4kW at 240V, or 60A; and for heavy gauge copper tube for general purposes. The Code of Practice Committee has issued a draft of its "Ventilation" for comment. 

C. J. Armstrong and C. T. W. Sutton, "Behaviour of High Voltage Solid-Type Cable Accessories in Service"  Since the replacement of belt type construction with solid, cable failures have been rare, but dismantled cables are showing weaknesses in design, most importantly due to compounds migrating where they don't belong. . . 

A theory of compound migration follows with suggestions for future design. It is quite long, because this is important for some people.

Leaders

"Institute of Metals in 1948" The annual meeting of the Institute of Metals was jam packed with addresses and papers, of which I am sure we will hear more soon.

"Productivity in 1948" The Engineer was underwhelmed by the Economic Survey for 1948 because it had just read the White Paper on "United Kingdom Balance of Payments, 1946 and 1947," and thought the Economic Survey anticlimactic, because the balance of payments told the dire story well enough, and the Survey is "unbelievably rosy" by comparison.  What is to be done? The Engineer makes heavy labour to stretch out the idea that increased production for increased export requires increased productivity --perhaps because Britain can't increase capital investment, either, so we are waiting on a miracle of some kind.

"The Engineers Guild" See "Institute of Metals," above.  A great deal of time was spent on the floor trying to find a new word for "engineer."

"Institution of Naval Architects, No. I" This institution also met, and needs more coverage. The President explains why naval construction is so slow. Carriers need to be adjusted for new aircraft, while most of the other ships are not a priority. The former German supply vessel converted to Fleet replenishment ship, Bulawayo, is an exception, and is discussed at length due to the importance of rigs for the fast transfer of large quantities of fuel onto aircraft carriers, mainly. The Admiralty Ship Target Trials Committee is sinking ships right and left to find out the details of how it is done in the absence of the strenuous resistance that made it so hard to study the sinking of Axis ships on a scientific basis. The Admiralty Ship Welding Committee has just completed a series of structural investigations into the Ocean Vulcan and Clan Alpine, the former welded, the latter riveted, and hopes to have some insights soon. The Admiralty had hoped to use the "Darings" to spread the new methods of marine engineering through the shipbuilding industry, but the cancellation of most of the class has scuttled that plan. Future large fleet units will use higher pressure and temperate steam plants, and further theoretical Investigation is required, but it will not be on "Darings." The trails of MGB 2009 are mentioned, before the President  moves on to the shipbuilding industry, which is capable of meeting a demand of 3 million tons, but producing at 1.25 million tons for lack of steel. British shipbuilders have a backlog of over 4 million tons, but they also have a load of repair and reconversion exceeding 3 million tons, so this shortage of steel particularly unfortunate.

An Ordasign at Pyestock

"A New Blast-Furnace" Clyde Iron Works' new blast furnace can produce 4500 tons of pig iron per week. Built by Ashmore, Benson, Pease and Co., Ltd, with fabrication and steelwork by the Colville Construction Company, Ltd, it has a hearth 20ft in diameter, a bosh 23ft in diameter, and a 91ft high furnace. It is built entirely of firebrick, except the fabricated steel stands, the copper coolers, the tuyeres, and the Meehanite bell and hopper. A Zimmerman dust catcher and a Freyn double-lift gate show that Bizonia is working for Britain. The Metrovick turboblower gives 50,000 cubic feet at 20lb gauge and is governed by an Askania regulator. The cast house has Ordasign signalling equipment and a  Loudaphone system for communicating with the power station. 

"The Power Cartridge and Its Applications" Power cartridges produce gas power from the firing of a charge within the cartridge. They are useful for starting engines mainly, and the Explosives Division of the Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd recently had a show of the various products of its 7000 person Explosives Division Works, founded in 1873 by Arthur Nobel. Besides engine starting, they have also been used as humane cattle killers. 

"A.C. Crane Controls" Igranic Electric Company of Bedford has developed the "Opotor" control system to give ac cranes a controller as efficient as the ones in dc equipment. A circuit diagram shows how the Opotor overcomes the disadvantages of ac with all its wiggle-waggling. 

"The Monarch Automatic Director Exchange" The new Monarch director exchange, which in 1939 housed three automatic telephone exchange with a capacity of 16,500 subscribers lines and 7000 junctions. On 29 December 1940, the building had to be abandoned to an air-raid caused fire, and when it was surveyed on the next Tuesday, only the power plant was found to have escaped damage. Within ten days, service had been restored to Government offices, while local inhabitants were served by 100 telephone booths opened in the vicinity and a manual exchange, although of 16000 lines required before the fire, only 11,000 survived. By the end of March, the building had complete new wires, with 7 miles of street cable and 300 miles of jumper wire, and with the termination of hostilities, the interior of the building could be restored, which happened, the old arrangements being retained. The new exchange is a "2000" type, based on the GPO's two-motion "2000" standardised selector. The director has a divided battery float power scheme with fault alarms, ventilation and lighting arrangements. It is a 10,000 line exchange, with direct dialing to any other automatic exchange within 10 miles, and there are 125 automatic exchanges in the London Directory area. Manual exchange conversions will continue. 

"St. Paul's Survives"

The FBI Report on Prices and Profits is out, showing that voluntary price caps and reductions are possible providing the government takes action to control wage increases. Sir Cyril Hurcomb, speaking to the British Transport Association, described the work done in the first six months of the British Transport Commission, including new livery and the completion of summer schedules. 

Not the Sir Cyril Hurcomb, but a sister. By 70000Uploaded by Oxyman, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24384540

"Tubular Air Heaters of Welded Construction, No. I, "Subject Matter" Air heaters are tubular steel boxes that can be welded. Construction is discussed in some detail. 

Industrial and Labour Notes

"Iron and Steel Production" Steel production in Britain reached a record annual rate of 15 million tons in February, while pig iron production reached 176,300 tons a week. The British Iron and Steel Federation believes that a further ten percent increase is possible through improved productivity, and that the same is true in many industries, even though productivity in coal, cotton, textiles, building,  shipbuilding and engineering is below prewar levels. The Ironfoundry industry, the Ministry of Supply reports, has increased employment by about 10,000 to 138,000 and has maintained productivity in spite of a cut in labour hours from 47 per week to 44. The Conference of Trade Unions and Northeast Engineering Areas held  meetings. The Ministry of Labour gave fifteen Control of Engagement orders in February, while 954,000 people came into contact with employment exchanges and 116,000 were placed in their first choices of vacancies. 

French Engineering Notes 

The French merchant fleet is now 400,000t larger than in 1938. Production capacity continues to increase, and the navy's tonnage has reached 299,000 tons, compared with 580,000 tons in 1939. Access to all ports is clear, and 20,000 square kilometers of coast line have been cleared of mines. the 1948 budget allots 100 million francs for an aircraft carrier. The Dunkirk works are soon to start on France's first postwar liner. Arcieres de la Marine has almost finished 30 141P and thirty diesel electric locomotives, although rolling stock production in 1947 was low. It will continue to rise as more steel becomes available, but in the mean time France is importing large amounts of rolling stock. 

That's a total of fifteen spivs and drones told to get a job in February. You can see why the telling-other-people-what-to-do lobby isn't impressed. CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40386

Notes and Memoranda

HMS Crossbow has been accepted into service. Two new motorships for the southern region of British Rails have just been launched, Southsea and Brading. They replace ships lost in the war. Mr. E. J. Fouracre, director and general sales manager of Westinghouse Brake and Saxby Signal Company, died on the 10th. Hunslett Engine Company has a new 2 3/4 ton flameproof locomotive for pit work, and stainless steel production in Germany has reached 320,000 tons a year. 

Time, 22 March 1948

Letters

Cincinnati correspondents write to say that the Cincinnati Enquirer isn't Democratic at all, but the editor defends himself by saying that Time doesn't need to take benzedrine, and that the paper describes itself as "independent Democrat." J. G.. Buttersworth, a former Gallup pollster himself, is unimpressed by the Kinsey report, while Leo P. Crespi writes to point out that it is very scientific, but, Theodore M. Hesbrugh of Notre Dame, Indiana, adds, immoral. Dudley Haddock responds to an article about Dr. Flesch by suggesting that journalists over-educated and use too many big words these days because they don't use telegraphs. K. L. Vander Voort defends Stan Kenton's crusade against the "despairingly stagnant condition of American music," while Robert O. Schick "jumped salty" all over him. 

The Publisher's letter tells us about his recent 22,000 mile flight inaugurating Pan American's direct route to Johannesburg, where they had a nice visit with Field-Marshal Smuts, who explained about communism, Czechoslovakia, and the epochal fifty-year struggle to come. 

National Affairs

"Flashes of Light" The President is to give a major speech in Congress this week in which he'll talk about communism, Czechoslovakia, and the epochal fifty year struggle to come. In the mean time, he gave a press conference where he called Drew Pearson a liar, thought about his Vice-Presidential running mate (there was a thought balloon over his head, but you couldn't make out what was in in it, but it looked like Warren Douglas), and entertained a visitor from Alabama who told him that she wasn't going to take back any message about anti-segregation, notwithstanding the fact that the President is very nice and it's in the Constitution. The Southern Governor's Conference won't have no truck with that!

"Announcement from Tokyo" MacArthur's in, while Time is on the verge of giving up on Stassen for Vandenberg. In labour news, Federal judge Ben Hartley found against the Taft-Hartley ban on labour unions spending funds for political purposes as an "unconstitutional abridgement of civil rights," and sent it up to the Supreme Court. John Lewis is talking coal strike, while the Briggs Manufacturing Company's local of the UAW went out on wildcat strike to protest the continuing employment of three communist members. 

"No Defence" General Meyers is going to jail after declining to testify in his own defence on charges of procuring perjury. He will thus serve time for his funny stock company, and not for diverting Hughes money to higher ups. (General Arnold.) Who needs to hear about that?In other defence news, the Secretary of Defence is knocking heads together at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Army wants to know why the Navy has an army; the Air Force wants to know why the Navy has an Air Force; the Navy wants to know when it can have more 80,0000 ton aircraft carriers. Forrestal just wants them to stop fighting. 

"Nightmare on Pine Mountain"Three Columbus Ledger reporters who staked out a KKK meeting 37 miles from town were caught, tortured, and turned over to the police, who jailed them for drunkenness. Bailed out next morning by their city editor, they had their story, which got better when it turned out that the paper's circulation manager had been at the meeting. A strange story rounds off domestic news: Patrick Hurley's brother, a drifter thought dead since 1911, has recently turned up and given his brother a call. It turns out that they're very similar: They both drink too much, talk with a Choctaw draw, are morons, and call Chiang, "Mr. Shek." Actually, to be fair, only General Ambassador Secretary Hurley does that.  President Hoover really is the gift that keeps on giving.

International

Masaryk's alleged suicide is the real lead story.

"Vital Moment" Some people aren't sick of being told about all the conferences being conferenced in Europe right now. So, here, have a page, followed by more pages about Czechoslovakia.

"The Top of the Pot" The Greeks are trying a compound full of Communist prisoners in Salonika, while in Austria the Ministry of the Interior has banned "action committees" of Communists within Austrian labour unions lest they try something Czechoslovakian. 

So the abducted children are all boys, while the prominent captured guerillas are women. Hunh.

"Painless Transition" A Communist-led coal miners' strike in the Pas-de-Calais is sure to bring de Gaulle to power by the spring.

"Fateful Day" American observers now think that the left Socialist-Communist coalition may win the Italian elections. 

Meanwhile, two Vatican officials have been caught up in separate corruption scandals, which pleases the Communists. 

Stories from Britain include a despairing account of the Economic Survey for 1948, the thumping defeat of the Labour candidate in the Croydon byelection, and some fellow who wants British lawyers and counsel to not wear wigs any more. 

"Tears for the Valiant" Labour may be retreating, but the Chinese Communists are advancing, with Peng Teh-huai defeating a Nationalist army and taking Shensi Province, while Kirin and Szepingkai fell in Manchuria, and a colourful story of a mechanical draftsman and his wife, in Japan who issued fake yen notes with the serial numbers altered to send messages to their son, dead in the war, who was arrested for his $50 take over ten months, but who has received a sympathy fund of twice that, while the Imam Yahya of Yemen is feuding with King Sa'ud, which I understand to be a common thing, not that you can tell from Time's  awful coverage, which is about the King sending a "comely bondmaiden" to each delegate to the Arab League meeting, which is irrelevant, because the Imam wasn't even invited in the first place.  In Latin America, Communists are not impressed by President Videla conquering Antarctica. 

There's actually three Sheikh Yahyas involved. This one is "Big Turban," called the "Djinn" for his ability to escape assassination plots. 

Business

"Price Advice" Jay D. Runkle, chairman of the National Retail Dry Goods Association, thinks that it is time for  manufacturers to cut prices. In related news, rounding up the story, Time reports that the Administration has decided that the steel industry has made its case for their price rise.

"Welcome to Bizonia" The Joint Export-Import Agency of Bizonia has increased the period that foreign businessmen are allowed to stay from 15 to 30 days in any six month period, and will help them deal with the locals. In other stirrings, Opel is starting to export cars to Belgium again. 

 "Fast Colour" Time profiles Technicolour, the colour company to Hollywood, which rents out 24 Technicolour cameras to movie productions around the world and also runs its own colour laboratory. The story is in the news because of antitrust action against the company, which is alleged to have colluded with Eastman Kodak to monopolise the industry. Dr. Kalmus, the inventor of Technicolouor along with his now-divorced wife, isn't worried. "The only secret knowledge we have is know-how, and you can't break up know-how with a court order."

The marriage and the professional relationship disintegrated in 1948. I find no mention of the SEC action. This earns a (suspicion of) Patent Troll label.

In labour news, the United Shoe Workers have signed a contract with no pay increase at all due to the slump in sales, while in circus(!) news the Barnum and Bailey show at Madison Square Gardens was quite something. 

We're missing some rare Hazlitt columns about how high taxes are stifling investment.

Facts and Figures reports that the FTC has ordered Willys-Overland to stop advertising that it invented the Jeep, since it didn't, the Army did. Iron Age reports that the steel grey market is "on the ropes," even though steel on the regular market is as short as ever. GE says that it can afford to cut prices given record profits. 

US tourists spent $37 million in the United Kingdom last year, the country's biggest single source of US dollar revenue, just ahead of textiles and beverages. Pyrene advertised that it would replace 500,000 potentially defective small fire extinguishers, no charge. GM, like GE, had record profits this year. San Francisco has set up a duty-free "free trade zone" on its wharfs in a bid to draw trade from Los Angeles.

Medicine, Education [No Science] 

"Continuing War" The American Association for Cancer Research expects continuing slow porgress in the battle against cancer, basically at the rate of one generation of experimental mice at  time, although since that is only 20 days, wouldn't that be quite quick? At the conference, Drs. John Sibley and Albert Lehninger of the University of Chicago reported that zymohexase detection is  promising way of finding tumours by chemical signatures, while Dr. Frank H. J. Figge thinks that porphyrins might be used to carry radioactive isotopes directly to a tumour without damaging the rest of the body on the way. Drs. P. C. Zamechnik, I. D. Frantz, Jr., and R. B. Loftfield of Boston's Huntington Hospital have found that a protein called L-alamine is absorbed much more quickly by cancerous tumours than by healthy cells, while Dr. Hugh J. Creech of Lankenau Hospital has found that polysaccharides are somewhat toxic to cancer cells. 

Sounds like an asshole, looks like one. I bet he was
embarrassed when gastric ulcers turned out to be
bacterial!

"At the Social Seams" Scottish psychiatrist James L. Halliday has a book out, Psychosocial Medicine: A Study of the Sick Society, which uses his scientific acumen to diagnose society as coming down with a mass case of neurosis. The birthrate is declining, not for health reasons, but because of neurotic anxieties, which are also shown by the rise in psychosomatic complaints such as peptic ulcers, while men are becoming more feminine and women more masculine, as can be shown in changes in the sexual distribution of ulcers and diabetes. This is probably due to decline in religious belief, although too-early toilet training and the use of baby carriages contributes. 

"Sex in the Schoolroom" The State of Oregon is going to teach sex education next year in an attempt to cut down on venereal disease. 

"Are Bardae Dotters?" This nonsense phrase appears in a logic puzzle on the Educational Testing Service's standard entrance exam for the nation's top law schools. The average grade was 60%, and the high scorer was James Clark Flint, a Michigan senior, who scored 90%. 

Press, Radio, Art, People

"Nude But Not Lewd" In the first formal obscenity hearing since Esquire was cleared on the questin of the Vargas girls in 1946, Post Office Solicitor Frank J. Delaney argued that the post office could carry nudist magazines because the pictures are "small, inoffensive, and not posed for salacious effect."

"PM for Post-Mortem" Marshall Field is closing PM magazine, although Clinton McKinnon has offered to take it on for $300,000, all assets included, if the union abandoned its collective agreement, while from Italy, Times correspondent Ann McCormick reports that the communists might or might not win in April, and back home, Harry Martin was nearly kicked out of a US press freedom delegation to the United Nations because he had Communist friends back in 1938, which even Time thinks is a bit much. 

Several new television stations have opened up, and the US Golf Association will let tv carry its big tournaments for the next five years. Golf? A recent survey shows that radio, while popular, is less popular than it  used to be.

Leonora Carrington is an actually alive painter who is getting an exhibition in Manhattan this week, but art lovers can cheer up, because she is so depressed that will probably die of consumption soon, like a proper artist. Honore Daumier, who has had the good grace to die in advance of being famous in spite of being a cartoonist rather than a painter, also has a show, but the worst of the lot is Raphael Soyer, who is not only alive, but healthy. Meanwhile, Dr. Frances Tomlinson Gardner of the University of California Medical School has diagnosed William the Conqueror with peritonitis, which was a man's disease for manly men. 

The Custom Tailors Guild has added General Eisenhower to its Ten Best Dressed List, while the International Artist Committee has put Truman, Lucius Beebe and Henry Wallace on a much less flattering "best head-geared men in the United States" list. Madam Tussaud's is kicking out Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey, King Peter of Yugoslavia, George Arliss, John Metaxas and Lord Beaverbrook in favour of Danny Kaye and Greer Garson. 

Governor Folsom's visit to New York City took a detour by way of the "publicity conscious Barbizon Studio of Fashion Modeling[?]," which went as might be expected of a "kissing tour" of New York. 

Can you be a patent troll if you "invent" a shorthand system?
Asking for a guy who otherwise seems pretty nice.

Will Irwin and John R. Gregg's wills were probated this week. The onetime muckraker left less than $5000, while the inventor of shorthand left more than $2 million. Field-Marshal Smuts took time out from his busy week to fly up to Johannesburg to crown Miss South Africa. Gertrude Voronoff is in the news for shady reasons, quel surprise. Fannie Hurst is appalled that a "generation of daughters of career women is retrogressing into . . . that thing known as The Home." Among those trying to retrogress are Gypsy Rose Lee, who hopes she has found a quieter sort of husband third time around, while Carole Landis is going the other way by getting divorced. Senators Taft and Brewster are in fine form after their single engine plane was forced down by engine failure onto the frozen kennebec River. Barbara Hutton, Betty Grable, Lana Turner, Tommy Harmon and King Gustaf V are all in hospital or out, and are either trailed by rumour or are not rumoured about at all, notwithstanding rumours to the contrary. 

Andre Malraux has married, Zelda Fitzgerald has died, along with Louis Ezekiel Stoddard, Princess Helena Victoria, Major General George Glas Sandeman Carey, Emily Perkins Bissell and George Noble. 

The New Pictures

The Naked City is a semi-documentary and "the last, and in some ways the best, of the late Mark Hellsinger's pictures." It is a semi-documentary in the sense that it has a story but it's not really fiction?

A fairly long and strong review of a French import, The Raven, is for some reason buried down in the "Continuing" section, perhaps because it was made with German money during the occupation as a "ruthless exposure of French decadence," and Director Clouzot was forbidden to work for two years as a collaborator. Time thinks that that is rubbish, because it's been four years since Liberation, and well past time to defend Vichy. At least the trains ran on time!

Books

A. L. Barker, Sze Mai Mai and John Moore are out to earn dollars with literary exports. Barker won the Somerset Maugham prize for young writers with her collection of short stories, while Sze's book is an allegory set in a camp for displaced children. John Moore's Bensham Village is about an English village where eccentrics live, so, really, all of them.

Flight, 25 March 1948

Leaders

“Stemming the Red Tide” Flight hopes that America will guarantee the European powers by an extension of the five power pact just signed in Brussels.

“Air Power” The Brewster Board has laid a Plan before Congress. It involves 70 groups of aircraft, for a total of 20,451 USAf planes, plus 14,500 navy planes. After 1953, the year when the Board estimates that America “will cease to have a monopoly on atomic weapons,” America will need 111 million pounds of airframe annually. A second, smaller paln that reduces the reserves also reduces the requirement in airframes to 63 million lbs. Aviation Week said this February, in the latest issue that I skipped for reasons that seemed perfectly good at the time, that the United States currently has 11,705 planes in service with 12,194 in storage. The Air Co-ordinatiing Committee has set a production rate of 3000 military aircraft per year consuming 30.7 million pounds of airframe, the minimum required to maintain a “halthy aircraft industry,” capable of rapid emergency wartime exppansion.

“The European Scene” Compared to that, hardly anyone in Europe is building planes at all, and the RAF has no men to fly them. The Navy has the men, but not the planes, as its planes are all broken.

“Channel Exercises” The Home Fleet, Naval Aviation and Coastal Command had an exercise. HMS Superb, flagship of the Second Cruiser Squadron, Rear-Admiral the Honorable Guy Russell commanding, headed up-channel with destroyers Agincourt, Aisne, Dunkirk and Jutland, which doesn’t seem much like a cruiser squadron until you realise from the names that the destroyers are all those enormous “Battles.” They were, strictly, coming home from the spring cruise, but this was an excellent chance to lay on an air interception. Firefly IVs of 736 Squadron were to search for and shadow the squadron, but were clamped in by fog at Culdrose. So the RAF cheated and asked the squadron’s escorting fighters where they were, and then laid in an attack by the Sea Furies of 807 Squadron, escorted by Seafire 47s of 804 Squadron, with the Firefly IVs of 812 and 810 Squadron to maintain the honour of Stockport. Firebrand Vs of 813 Squadron did a simulated torpedo attack. It was all very smart, although there weren’t many planes, only 80, due to maintenance issues. Two Sunderlands circled the field to observe, one carrying a Flight correspondent, and Admirals McGrigor and Lambe were at the  operations centre at Culdrose observing and practicing ASW operations. (Maybe they were on the surface navy’s side?) Whoever is in charge of maintenance is in hot water.

Cornish countryside with helicopters By Rod Allday, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19493873

“Cold Facts: Canadian NRC Report on Icing in Turbines” Icing in gas turbines is a problem. The NRC study demonstrated that it can lead to a drop in trust and compresosr performance and an increase in exhaust gas temperature and fuel consumption, but not what precise conditions would cause it, nor how inlet geometry might alleviate it.

Civil Aviation News

Air India has ordered two more Vickers Vikings.  Ministry statistics show that air traffic about doubled in 1947 compared with 1946. Pakistan is in ICAO now. Vickers is sending a Viking tour to the subcontinent in hopes of getting sales to Pakistan. Quarantine rules for air travellers who come down with communicable diseases are being developed. ICAO wants further improvements of the aids to air navigation in Iceland, and wants the air traffic control centre at Reykjavik moved to Keflavik. Various airports are being expanded, and summer schedules published. The accident report on the BSAA Lancastrian lost in the Andes last August is out. The actual cause is unknown due to the wreckage not being found, but severe icing cannot be ruled out, and the report concludes that the captain should not have taken the route he chose, given the weather report, as he would have had to have made the crossing at 23,000ft to avoid icing. The North Sea Air Transport, Ltd., Miles Aerovan that crashed at Croydon on 14 June killing the pilot and injuring the radio operator and single passenger, and presumably the load of racing pigeons, was overloaded 440lbs and was unable to climb above tree level, probably because the pilot tried to climb too steeply and semi-stalled into tail-down flight, from which he was unable to recover before running into a tree in a back garden. The Ministry reminds pilots to call in if they land somewhere unexpected, to prevent unnecessary search and rescue operations.

“Planned Service: Spectacular Results from RAF Manpower Economy Scheme” The RAF’s latest scientific and fully technically efficient planned manpower scheme uses chalkboards and index cards and such to do much more work than anyone would have thought possible.

“Thoughts on Training: Inadequate Incentive: Loose Ends and Lack of Information” Flight thinks that pilots are being recruited, and trainers are being procured wrong. Specifically, pilots shouldn’t have the option of washing out after completing flight training, and ought to have some kind of career track after 35; the trainer complaint is far too arcane to get into.

“High-Speed Flight Research: Its Value in Determing Compressibilityi Effects on Drag, Lift, Stability and Control: Precis of a Paper Given to the Royal Aeronautical Society by H. Davies” Farnborough flies planes very fast, often in dives, and correlates the results with wind tunnel testing in hopes of eventually understanding all the odd compressibility effects on the wings.

Here and There

Various Air Worthies want the tax on aviation gas dropped. A private pilot charged with infringing air navigation regulations by the MCA had his case dismissed with costs because the facts were uncertain. I am not sure what the problem is. He was headed for Croydon when weather came in, and diverted to Lympne because it was the only airfield he was familiar with, and landed with the aid of some carsshowing their headlights. Otherwise, no-one at Lympne showed up to help, which seems strange. The latest air refuelling proving flight devolved into BOAC’s first night refuelling when the Liberator and Lancastrian involved were overtaken by dusk off Gander. The Lancashire Airccraft Corpporation is flying the Cambridge University soccer team to Zurich for a match against the Swiss international side.

“Four-Seat Auster: Introduction and Demonstration of the Avis: Gipsy Major X Engine” The Avis is Auster’s new four seater cabin plane, with an overhead, half-strut wing, and with that I’ve already given it more attention than a million other light planes.

Roy Pearl, “A Visitor’s Impressions: Canada’s Current Production and Plans for the Future” This might sound like a travelogue, but it is actually a continuation of the endless saga of Canadair’s efforts to pressure BOAC into buying an improved version of the North Star. To be fair, though, he did pop over to Toronto, where he saw the Avro Canada works, and was told that Avro considers the turboprop to be strictly an interim measure, and that its C.102, four jet-engined airliner will be just the thing. Also, Canada needs a better small freighter.

Correspondence

George Sandy-Lumsdaine thinks that Britain could have more planes if only the government were not “afraid to demand sacrifice.” J. R. Bushby thinks that it is fine to land flying boats in the Medway, because even though there is all sorts of driftwood, empty barrels, oil drums and dead dogs floating by his office all the time, no plane has ever struck them. J. de L. asks if anyone has thought of a flying-wing-flying-boat. Flight points out that Roxbee cox porposed a 12 engine, 380,000lb flying-wing-flying-boat back in 1940. 

697 is quite pleased by how quickly and efficiently he was inducted into the RAFVR. “474” remains concerned. “Fact-Facer”writes to remind everyone of what the air correspondent of The Daily Telegraph has said, which is that two large factories could produce every large airliner in service today, and it makes little sense for Britain to try to  force itself into this overstuffed market when military needs would sustain the industry. He points out that denying the Tudor’s weaknesses (slow cruise, worrying range, an overly high stalling speed) isn’t sabotaging its sales prospects, because it is not going to sell. The Constellation is better in every way, and the Stratocruiser will be better still. Then he wanders into slightly iffier territory, proposing that no large British airliner shows the “marks of class” that grace the Constellation, which shows that the British are just not up to snuff. To say that the Ambassador is the only British plane as pretty as the Constellation is all very well, but the question is whether the Constellation is as good an airliner as it looks, and it seems a little much to say that the proposed MRE is just a Constellation four years late. Anyway, that aside, he has some good points, and we’ll have to see how the MRE turns out.

Unfortunately, the Britannia is going to be years late due to turbine icing problems. By RuthAS - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29471494

   

The Engineer, 26 March 1948

Seven-Day Journal

The Royal Society, CIGRE, Water Transport Executive Committee, and Conference on Stress Analysis have all either met this week, or made plans for future meetings this week. Except CIGRE, which is holding a convention in Paris on 24 June. The report on the Durham colliery explosion on 22 August 1947 that killed twenty-one miners finds that it was due to firedamp collecting near where someone lit a match for a cigarette, although the main fuel was coal dust on the conveyor roadways in the seams. The Chief Inspector recommends that friable coal be wetted down more regularly. 

"Historic Researches, No. XXXI: Conduction of Electricity Through Gases" This installment deals with J. J. Thomson's work with cathode ray tubes and x-rays and is mainly interested in his electron acceleration experiments, which reached 80% of the speed of light, quite a lot of energy for collisions to illuminate the atomic world. 

"The Institute of Metals, No. I" Dr. Maurice Cook's paper on "The Calculation of Loads Involved in Metal Strip Rolling" is abstracted briefly, and the discussion presented at much more length. 

"A Railway Track-Laying Machine" I could swear we hear about one of these just the other month. I suppose someone will be interested in the fact that it is an American Warflat equipment.

"Armstrong Siddeley Mamba Gas Turbine Propeller Engine" I suppose that there might be some benefit to teasing out what The Engineer thinks and comparing it with what Flight thinks, but not nearly enough to be worth the time.

Metallurgical Topics

This week, the feature looks at "German Experience of Lead-Bearing Steels," from Lieutenant-Colonel W. Ivory, R.A.'s BIOS Report No. 47. Two wartime German workers investigated the purported advantages of machine tool steels containing lead, but found no advantages over conventional high-sulphur and phosphorus steels to compensate for the difficulties of dealing with the poisonous fumes of the lead. In the discussion, several workers disagreed with the general tenor of the work, pointing out that the addition of lead increased the machinability of chrome-vanadium steels, while yet another worker objected to that on the grounds that it reduced their heat-treatibility. Shorter pieces cover non-electrolytic methods of depositing nickel, the influence of deformation on the "thermo-electric power of metals," which Uncle George says sounds like gibberish to him, but probably means something in electrical engineering, and the nimonic metals, in vogue for turbine manufacture. 

Leaders

"Locomotive Exchanges" British Railways is going to --gasp-- start trials of exchanging locomotives between regions, instead of sending them home once decoupled. Did you know that this was a hard thing to accomplish? It is, and I didn't know that.

"Aims and Objects" People say that engineers don't have enough appreciation of things like literature and the humanities, but they are wrong, and that is why The Engineer is going to go on a way that is as cloudy as the worst German philosopher for a page or so to no object as far as I can tell. 

"Institution of Naval Architects, Part II: Annual Dinner" Brandy was served, and the President, Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham, talked about boy stuff, mainly antisubmarine warfare and the need for more welded ships, fast tankers and preparations for war mobilisation in the shipbuilding industry. The first paper heard in the morning was  W. MacGillivray, "Speed at Sea and Dispatch at Port," which was very briefly abstracted, since most of the presentation consisted of a film. The discussion was much longer. R. C. Thompson led off with comments on derricks, while Amos Ayre talked about the extent to which faster merchant ships were not more expensive because they were faster, but because the shipowners want all modern conveniences. For example, the Maltese Princess, built for the Burntisland Steam Company to carry Palestine oranges, was given a refrigerated hold, not previously seen in the trade, which reduced wastage from 10--20% to 1%, and was a better bet than the 15 knot unrefrigerated ships being used by the Scandinavians. 

"The Institution of Mechanical Engineers" Held their annual meeting, of which more will be heard soon.

The obituary of Ralph Frederick Hindmarsh (which is a real name) follows. Hindmarsh (b. 1877) retired as chief engineer of the Tyne Improvement Commission after fifty years of service in 1947. He built many harbour and river improvements and gave a number of papers to the Institution of Civil Engineers and other bodies over the years. 

"Central Electricity Board" The last report of the Board illuminated its war service, for which it, and the National Grid, were never intended, and the load shedding necessary in the coal crisis, and the very credible improvement in economy achieved by the Board.

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Sir Edward Appleton, "The Scientist in Industry" This is the abstract of a paper Appleton gave to the Royal Institution. It is still a full page long, so I can only imagine how self-indulgent the original was. 

"A Laboratory Heat Pump" The British Electrical and Allied Industries Research Association has recently installed a heat pump in its laboratory so that it can get a sense of  the potential of this refrigerating/(heating?) unit in action. 

"Tubular Air Heaters of Welded Construction, No. II" This one doesn't have a subtitle, and just dives right into the work of welding the connections between separate heaters. 

"FBI Tribute to Nobel Prize Winners" The Federation of British Industries threw a party for Appleton and Robinson. 

Industrial and Labour Notes

"Employment and Unemployment" The working population in Britain declined by 7000 men and 7000 women during January to 20,409,000, compared with a working population of 19,750,000 in the middle of 1939. Total civilian employment was estimated at 18,891,000, and foreign and ex-POW employment increased by 10,500. Estimated unemployment was 315,000 insured persons. 

Vauxhall has a pamphlet out about industrial relations in the motor industry. 

"The Coal Situation" Lord Hyndley says that the year's output target of 200 million tons will require producing 14 million tons more than in 1947. At present, the mines are on track for 205 million tons on a 52 week working base, but this does not take into account the miner's new right week paid holiday and six statutory holidays, which means that every miner works 50 weeks instead of 52, requiring a 4 million ton/week output vice the 3,948,500 now being lifted, to produce the target 200 million tons. This requires the miners continuing to work extra hours. Lord Hyndley is pleased that accidents are down, not pleased that stoppages are up. The industry requires 102,000 new workers this year, of which 30,000 will be Europeans. Ex-miners are still returning to the industry at astonishing rates, but this cannot continue; the number of new entrants is also higher than might be expected, and they are younger. 

A pamphlet on British Overseas Trade, "Accounts Relating to the Trade and Navigation of the United Kingdom" show exports mainly up.

French Engineering News

Electricite de France reports that its re-equipment programme has had to be drastically curtailed, perhaps by about 30%, and 9000 workers dismissed due to the cut in the credit from 45 milliard francs to 25, and urges that the cuts be restored. The Marseilles Chamber of Commerce is installing seven 6 ton Wellman cranes at its banana depot, and a 20 ton crane at its dry docks. Good weather, and, perversely, fog that disrupted service on electrified lines in the north, reduced electricity consumption. A short circuit destroyed the 8000kW alternator that services the St. Etienne mining group. 

Notes and Memoranda

Poland will build about 700 locomotives and 14,000 cars this year. Railway Age reports that radio-assisted operations were a great help after the January sleet storm knocked down telegraph poles through the Midwest in January. British machine tools are going to the Argentine State Railways. The Engineer is pleased by some Valvespout oilers sent to it by Muller and Co. (England), which were convenient and "cleanly" in use. The Ministry of Fuel and Power reminds everyone that although staggering of hours ends on 25 March, conservation of electric power remains the watchword. The Birmingham Aluminum Casting Company has a nice brochure on pressure diecasting out. 

  Letters

Mrs. Charles Burgess agrees with Norman Rockwell that men should wear more colour. A whole series of letters try to sort out an article about the Smith Sisters Sextette that is wrong somehow. S. S. Gray asks about Dr. Nelson Glueck's "racial methods of archaeology." all that Newsweek can say is that Dr. Glueck's methods are "radical."  E. H. Newcomb, of Smyrna, Delaware, is upset at Thomas Hogges for putting his feet up on the table and slouching. That is no way for a young person to act, even if he is a promising playwright.

Besides hyping this issue's contents for the newstand browser, For Your Information reports that Southern governors were very pleased by Raymond Moley's explanation of their reaction to "President Truman's civil rights message." 

The Periscope reports that more people are about to leave the State Department, that another Greenbelt experiment might be launched in Ohio, that various senators are in the running to give the GOP convention keynote speech (Ooh! News!), that the Wallace campaign is trying to hush up the fact that Harold Young has quit, that Wallace's running mate, Senator Glen Taylor, might be barred from the Democratic caucus, that Senator O'Mahoney is attacking the GOP's attempt to cut the estate tax, that various members of the Soviet hierarchy are up, or out, or nearly out. (Bulganin and Malenkov up, Molotov and Zhdanov down, Kuznetsov out. Bulganin is believed to advocate striking against the western powers now, rather than waiting for them to collapse on their own. Also, communists continue to attempt to infiltrate Bizonia, and the British are withdrawing their troops in Palestine to Cyrenaica and Cyprus, while word is that Washington looks with favour on recent appointments made by Chiang Kai-shek. Washington also believes that Russia may attempt further expansion while the "Atlantic community" is weakened by the dollar crisis and the American election preoccupation. Norway and Sweden expect pressure in the wake of the Finland treaty.

German rations are improving. The GOP is trying to develop its own farm programme. The next target of Walter Reuther's anti-communist purge in the Detroit area is the county CIO council. There are further signs of a downturn in the economy. Bette Davis is taking her first role in four years, there are three anti-communist movies coming out from the  major stuidos, Selznick's latest is teh movie version of "Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House," Al Capp may be the summer replacement for Drew Pearson, movie stars who go on radio are commanding $2000 or less per appearance, a far cry from the $5000 of a few years ago. A biography of Henry Fields is coming out, while Charles Beard has another volume in his critical analysis of President Roosevelt's administration coming. A documentary training film on the  unification of the armed forces has been scuttled because the services can't agree on its script. The Julius Rosenwald Fund will terminate in June, because its $22 million bequest will have been spent,  largely to aid Negroes. 

Bench Grass has been on the "Mr. Blandings" story from the beginning!

Washington Trends reports that some kind of conscription law will pass Congress, depending on foreign events, but it will be a far cry from Universal Military Training. An appropriation for increased aircraft production will be somewhere between Taft's one, and the services' two billion dollars. Atom bomb production is also being stepped up, and detailed plans to mobilise industries are being laid down. Truman is said to be resigned to defeat in the fall(!) and will spend the rest of his term seeking cooperation with the GOP on foreign affairs and the passage of his civil rights programme, even if it smashes the Solid South. He will also ignore minority groups, as he ignore the Zionists over Palestine. Demands that Truman withdraw in favour of another Democratic candidate such as Eisenhower (oh, come on!) will mount as the election goes on. Dewey's campaign is regaining its confidence, while foreign tensions are hurting Taft, and MacArthur is not taken seriously, even if he does do well in Wisconsin. A  housing bill will probably get through Congress, and sponsors claim that it will "assure a ten-year construction boom." Insiders think that Russian interference in the ERP will be short of war. 

National Affairs

"Truman Doctrine at the Crossroads" Highlights of the speech include Truman endorsing UN trusteeship for Palestine, an accommodation over Trieste, and an inching towards a security guarantee. He didn't ask for a larger armed forces at this time, because this would give Contress an easy out on Universal Military Training. Something, however, will be done to make up the 350,000 man shortfall below the armed forces' authorised strength of 1.73 million men. A long article explains why the Congressional GOP won't go for the UMT, and a short one describes the version of the speech he gave at the Astor in which he ad-libbed that, rather than accept the support of Wallace and the Communists, he was resigned to defeat in November. 

Henry Wallace reminds everyone that not all his supporters are Communists, so there. It's just his platform is Communist, which is why the "political and fraternal leaders" of Cowlitz County, Washington, are so upset that Wallace is leading their straw Presidential poll. Meanwhile, the Pentagon had a little joke on the press by releasing Haile Selassie's 1935 conscription order that all men and boys able to carry a spear go to Addis Ababa, with every married man bringing his wife to cook and wash for the army, and every unmarried man to bring any woman he could find."

"Great Blow" Newsweek covers the terrific number of twisters that struck last week from Texas all the way to New York.

The Wisconsin primary gets a full page of coverage of all the big names campaigning there. a slice of Americana covers Rose Lewner's fund-raising drive to build a new school for Pearl Grove, Georgia, before it gets into the latest GOP effort to build a veto-proof majority for a tax cut bill, and the labour walkouts last week, which Newsweek deems the height of irresponsibility given what is going on in Europe, especially Lewis' strike for a pension fund for soft coal miners. 

Washington Tides with Ernest K. Lindley asks "Unanswerable Questions" this week.The question seems to be whether WWIII will happen next week and whether the Administration has secret sources of information that let it know for sure.

The United Nations gets its own section, devoted to Palestine, because of the reversal of American policy from support of partition to a UN Mandate. Exactly how that would work, and whether it could even be done by the British withdrawal that starts on 15 May is unclear, and the Soviets still support partition. 

Foreign Affairs

"The Power Behind Red Diplomacy" Newsweek answers the question that it asked on the cover. The answer is "yes." The Russians have 75 divisions in Eastern Europe, and there is practically no army facing them at all. Alarmists think that the Russians have rebuilt their army for offensive operations, in the atomic age, while the British are said to think that war is at least four years off, giving the Air Council time to reequip with jet bombers. "One authority" believes that only Spain is likely to be left unoccupied, and since it will be the bridgehead for the reconquest of Europe, the Anglo-Americans should let bygones be bygone and make up with Franco. The French are less pessimistic, because they think that the Russians will suffer communications breakdowns as they push towards the Channel. Other authorities expect the Russians to make surprise attacks on vital points such as Gibraltar rather than attempt something so old-fashioned as a "breakthrough."

Now that we know that the Russians can do it, we want to know what people are doing about it. The answer is that Newsweek is telling anti-Tito jokes, that Bevin is giving a strong speech, and that the Western Allies are moving to put Trieste back under Italian rule, and purging perhaps 900 Communists from the British civil service, particularly the "Ministry of Supply, which deals with top secret weapons and atomic energy." Hint hint. "Presumably MI5, the Army's supersecret service, was already in a position to put the finger on the suspects." Also, a member of the Daily Worker's staff is quitting, renouncing communism, and joining the Catholic church. That'll teach 'em! And what are the Russians doing about what the Western Allies are doing? Putting pressure on the Allies in Berlin, where they are going to dissolve the Central Commission that governs the city as a joint occupied zone. 

After covering silly news from England, it is possible to move on to document the formation of a united, pro-business conservative party in Japan, and the comeuppance of Prime Minister Ashida at the hands of the socialist minister of agriculture, he appointed. The latter has been breaking up the landed estates and selling them off at "low, fixed prices" to the tenants. This week, the Ministry overruled a village commune that was allowing the prime minister to retain his 7 acre ancestral estate. Five acres will be sold to tenants, although the family gets to keep the farmhouse and the 2 acres it works personally. 

Foreign Tides by Joseph B. Phillips tells "Tales From Czechoslovakia" covers two main issues. which are about what you'd expect. 

In Canada, well, you've heard how the Quebec government is upset that heavy English immigratiuon is swamping the "French fact," that the Canadians are also moving to get Communists out of the civil service even as the Canadian socialist party fights to remove restrictions on Japanese Canadians. 

Notwithstanding its reputation as being to the left of Time, Newsweek has been pretty damn wet on civil rights the last few weeks. And the fact that BC is still trying to keep Japanese Canadians off the coast would upset me even more if I didn't have a feeling that I  knew what was actually behind it. 

Business

Oops on California weather last week!

California's drought continues, two days of foggy rain in San Francisco not making much of a dint in the low snow pack on the Sierra Madre, and we're back to sunshine here; the point of the weather report being that Pacific Gas and Electric is under fire for not spending enough on public power and water development, and has announced a ten-million dollar expansion programme that still can't create rain. 

"A Quota Rejected" The Commerce Department has been looking into a quota system for steel allocations between industries. Steel is against it, of course, but the farm equipment industry just rejected it, while oil and gas has embraced it and demanded 13 million tons of steel a month for the next eighteen months. Either against, or too much for, either way, the quota is in trouble.

"Margarine Loses Again" A Congressional committee loaded with Farm Belt representatives has upheld the punitive sales tax on coloured margarine again. A related story reveals that butter farmers who are served margarine can't tell the difference. (Pardon me for being a rich girl snob turned broke waitress, but you certainly can, but only sometimes.)

"G. W. Hill, Jr." Until his death eighteen months ago, George Washington Hill ran the American Tobacco Company "with a hard hand," and his son was being groomed to replace him. Eighteen months later, junior is out on his ear. 

Trends and Changes reports that Joseph J. O'Connell is in as head of CAB, thee months after Truman fired James Landis "without explanation." See, that is not the way that the aviation press phrased it! Judge Moore's decision holding the Taft-Hartley ban on union political contributions unconstitutional, is reported again, as is the Wright Turbo-Compound engine. Philadelphia Glass Company is selling the all-glass store of the future. Continental Airlines has signed a contract with its union weathermen that says that it can fire them if they fail to forecast nine storms in a year. 

What's New reports that Greyhound is testing a new, 300 horsepower coach that can carry 50 passengers instead of 37. It will have radio speakers, seat headrests, a drinking fountain, refrigerated cabinet, washroom and toilet. Headring Engineering of Long Island has a hand welding device that will deposit strips of rough metal on new surfaces to prevent slip and falls. Fairchild Aircraft has an Air Force contract for a plane with a detachable fuselage that can be dropped as an eight ton section, by parachute if necessary.

If you get the joke, let me know in the comments. 

Business Tides by Henry Hazlitt has "Steel as a Scapegoat" He summarises the Department of Commerce report that costs have risen higher than prices, that the return on investment has fallen in steel since 1929, while it has risen in all manufacturing, that retained earnings are too low to cover net plant and equipment expenditures. He then quotes the Council of Economic Advisors as saying that steel shouldn't invest, anyway, because that would just promote inflation, and sneers that they're not being allowed to build up financial reserves to invest later, either, and, he infers, the CEA has also given the steel workers a green light to demand higher wages, even though wages have risen faster than prices, which isn't fair because one number is higher than the other. All the politicians who seem to think that higher wages and farm prices are good, but that higher profits are bad, are demagogues, and they are just using steel as a scapegoat. "The report of the Economic Advisors does not even mention the basic cause of inflation, which is the tripling of the money supply since the outbreak of war and the government's cheap money policy."

A special report on market research follows. 

Science, Medicine

"Minnesota's Vikings" A long article discusses the various artefacts and remains left around Minnesota by Medieval Viking explorers. 

Yeah. Sure they did. Of course, when it comes to a real mystery of America's past, like the sudden appearance of a volume of John McLouglin's letters in the hands of a Michigan shepherd, scholarship is too lazy to even track the man down. (Uncle George says: Because Dr. McLoughlin made babies with Indians who went on to found famous Oregon families, while on the other hand medieval Minnesota Vikings prove that famous Minnesota families that come from Indian babies are really descended from Vikings. Uncle George is always cynical, but he's far more funny-cynical when he talks about Hollywood stars than when he's on about the "touch of the sagebrush.")

"Tamer of the Shrew" Ernest P. Walker of the National Zoological Park works with exotic animals, with an emphasis on tiny mammals, including shrews. 

"Melting Some Ice" A. F. Bell of Clifton College says in Nature that ice skating works by the pressure melting of a water film to create a thin, low-friction layer beneath an ice skate. All very well, but why do feet slip?

The lead article discusses the administrative difficulties involved in combining the medical services of the three armed services, and the difficulties of explaining "administrative" to Marine Corps doctors. "Surgery of the Mind" describes a new surgery with all the benefits of a prefrontal lobotomy and none of its damaging aftereffects. In a lobotomy, the fibres connecting the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain are severed. In a topectomy, certain parts of the cortex are removed. (It's only the brain. Who's going to miss it?) So far, topectomies have been performed on 24 hopeless cases, and now 20 are ready for discharge, and ten are working at their former occupations, and there is no measured effect in IQ tests. The operation requires general anaesthesia. 

"Health and Age" The latest installment of the United States Public Health Service Hagerstown study is out. It finds that while at 25, 33 of every 1000 persons have some kind of chronic illness such as heart disease, ulcers, diabetes or cancer, or some form of physical disability, at 45 the number rises to 100, and at 60 to nearly 250, while at 80 more than half the group require regular care, and at 90 the figure is more than 900 in 1000. Of every 1000 60 year-old inhabitants, nearly 25% develop a chronic condition in the next five years. 

"Rubella and the Unborn" The National Society for the Prevention of Blindness has found that of 132 pregnant mothers who contract rubella, only 18 had perfectly normal children. Seventy-six babies had chronic cataracts, 68 had brain abnormalities, 67 malformations of the heart, 13 other eye defects, while one child was a Mongolian idiot and one a cretin. Defects of hands, teeth, cleft palates, and harelips also occurred, but numbers are not given. Preventive exposure of unmarried girls is the only way of preventing this.  

Press, Radio, In Passing ("People" in Newsweek Talk)

Negotiations to sel PM to Clinton McKinson continue with a 26 March deadline. The International Typographers Union has found a settlement with the New York dailies that will prevent the kind of labour action now going on in Chicago. The Virginia Legislative Assembly has voted to open an investigation into the News Leader and Times Dispatch after they were mean about the Assembly's recent attempt to keep Truman off the state ballot and to give themselves a $300 bonus. Memphis Press-Scimitar reporter Eldon Roark has had a gig at that paper writing about strolls he takes through the city for the last fifteen years. Now he has a Pulitzer for it. The rest of the prizes are listed below a story about the stroller, presumably because foreign reporting and the ERP aren't nearly as exciting as the cats and hobos of Memphis. 

"Town Meeting Milestone" The article celebrates the 500th broadcast of the Blue Network's "American Town Meeting of the Air" show, which was entitled, "Which Way America: Fascism, Communism, Socialism, or Democracy?" Unlike the 1935 show of the same name, no Fascists or Communists were invited, although both of the original presenters are available, with Lawrence Dennis still standing up for world Fascism and Muste now more prominent as a pacifist. "Pacific Petrillo" follows up with Caesar Petrillo, still on a peace offensive after settling with radio. 

Mme Joliot-Curie was taken into custody by Immigration at Ellis Island and held over night because she is a member of the International Federation of Democratic Women and was visiting the United States to address the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, which is on the Attorney General's List, and is married to M. Joliot, who is a member of the French Communist party.

Mark Hanna III, great-grandson of the Senator, was arrested in Buffalo for passing bad cheques. General Chennault is very upset that his daughter, Lillian, has married an enlisted man, Arthur Reindle. Lillian, asked about it, pointed out that she was also upset, specifically, at her father's remarriage to a 24-year-old Chinese girl at the age of 66, and not 55, as the General claims. "Hollywood star" Jacqua Lynn has won annulment from her marriage to Paul Haertel on grounds of nonconsummation. In a speech to the American Legion lunch in Tucson, Lady Astor said that she was "weary of so much talk about the common man and people who are underprivileged." 

The Transitions page of my issue had a little mishap. Specifically, I am using a photographic copy of a friend's copy, and it did not turn out well. I'm still going to mention George H. Armitage, 61, providence toolmaker, who was killed along with his wife Ruth and year-old daughter Kathleen and five other persons when his Vultee plane crashed into Laurel Hill. Other people died this week, rest assured, but their brief obituaries didn't appear on the same page as a Continental Motors ad.  

Movies

I Remember Mama is a good adaptation of the stage play, although with more outside scenes of good old San Francisco. Saigon is a movie with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in it, and also some other people. A plot was added in post-production because some people like that sort of thing with their sizzle. Relentless proves that the Western movie still has legs, not hurt by Robert Young and Marguerite Chapman. The Academy Aware nominations are out, but you've never cared about that, and I know that you're not going to start. now.

Books

Carey McWilliams' Mask for Privilege unmasks the privilege that protects anti-semites in America, although Newsweek is upset at his unsupported claim that most Americans support Zionism and that the two million Jews of the Soviet Union are safe.  Allan Ullman has turned the radio drama Sorry, Wrong Number, which then became a screen play, into a thrilling novel. 

"As Still Another Sees Us" is a review of the latest book by a Briton visiting America, in this case Geoffrey Gorer, previously famous for giving the minority report on the Kinsey Report via a review in the Sunday New York Herald Tribune. The review is middlebrow blah blah quoting Margaret Meade but not Philip Wylie, who said the same thing. (Which is "Women. . ." with the trailing ellipsis followed by a great headshake. As I say, middlebrow, because this is what passes for smart among the not-smart; America listens to its women too much. I know, I know, now you're shaking your head.)

Because I missed a chance to comment on Saigon, earlier.