Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.
Popular Posts
- Gathering the Bones, 18: Hew Down the Bridge!
- Postblogging Technology, October, I: Forest for the Trees
- The Bishop's Sea, III: The Real Presence
- Postblogging Technology, November, 1943: Caesar's New Clothes
- Postblogging Technology, November 1950, II: Platypus Time
- Postblogging Technology, March 1944, I: Pulling In the Horns
- Postblogging Technology, December 1950, II: Christmas Corps
- I Would Run Away to the Air: The British Economy, Montgolfier to 727, Part 1
- A Techno-Pastoral Appendix to Postblogging Technology, October 1950: The Chestnut Plague
- Gathering the Bones, XXIII: Wyandotte Days
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
The Early Iron Age Revival of the State, XXII: Roman Britain's Window Into the Sacred Spring
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, March 1951: Sound and Submarines
Saturday, June 19, 2021
Postblogging Technology, March 1951, II: No Affray
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver, Canada
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Saturday, June 12, 2021
Postblogging Technology, March 1951, I: Shipshape and Teakettle Fashion
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada.
Your Loving Daughter,
Friday, June 4, 2021
A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, February, 1951: The Last Days of the Labour Deterrent
I am using the Parliamentary announcement of orders for the Vickers Valiant, the first of the V-bombers, as a reason to talk about Operation HURRICANE today. The official British request to use the Montebello Islands off the northwest coast of Western Australia is still a month away as of February of 1951, and the Australian general election is not until April, but surveys of the isolated islands are already well under way. Ultimately, the bomb would drop, the Valiant fly, and, indeed, the whole era of the independent British nuclear deterrent would come and go before Labour returned to office, promising "the white heat of revolution," in 1964, In Australia, in contrast, the Liberal-County coalition would be in office until 1983. This is getting to be our last chance to talk about the nuclear deterrent that Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin wanted, and which Hugh Dalton opposed: The Labour deterrent. Although it is also the Menzies deterrent in some sense worth talking about.