Postblogging Technology, August 1951: New Armageddons or Happy Days?

R_. C_.,
Arcadia,
Santa Clara,
California

Dear Father:

I intend to post this from the Port as soon as I clear my baggage through customs, which means that you will see me in Palo Alto long before you see this letter, And that is my excuse for writing this note while waiting for final docking, and not including any of the family gossip that I will have already have shared with you in person. As opposed to, say, being very, very lazy.

Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie

Newsweek, 20 August 1951

Letters

Response to the tailor who complained about the President's suits is divided between people who thought it was a bad letter, and Jeanne Euphat, of New York, who uses it as a launching point to take on the plague of shoulder pads these days. The President of the Midland, Ontario, Chamber of Commerce telegraphs urgently to let civilisation know that the forlorn fairy called Vancouver still hasn't had any rain. Newsweek readers can't wait to see "dope pushers" hung, drawn and quartered, as they deserve. The remainder of the column is taken up by people who are very upset at the "Death of a Psychotic" article. For Your Information pats Business Trends on the back for forecasting rising farm incomes and is sure that this week's article on the battle between the Treasury and the Federal Reserve is going to be equally good. Then it reminds us that "Contributing Editor" Carl Spaatz is in the country to attend the National Air Races, and finishes off by pointing out that East German Communist Nazis are very frightening. (Next week, Newsweek interviews General Franco!)

The Periscope reports that the Army has an electronic countermeasure that jams proximity fuzes, now used in everything from shells to rockets, has persuaded the British army to adopt American-style maps, "effectively halving NATO's enormous map supply problem," and still hopes to persuade the British to adopt the new .30 calibre instead of their preferred .280. Hurt by suggestions that the British round is better, Newsweek reports that the .new .30 is 25% lighter than the round used in the Garand, so the .280 isn't that much of a logistical savings, after all. There is some blah blah about accelerated contracts, although on the other hand the B-52 and YB-60 will be delayed past the end of the war because their engine, the J57, won't be ready. In non-military news, Senator McCarthy is going to enter his name in some presidential straw polls, Paul Douglas gets publicity at Newsweek, too, the US is going to try to get the Italians to prosecute"white slaver" Lucky Luciano, for being head of a "global dope network." Maybe it shouldn't have deported him in the first place? Or they could take a lesson from the guy who got Herbert Noble this week? General Ridgway is going to make formal call on the Emperor of Japan, unlike General MacArthur, who hurt everyone's feelings with his snub. The US is pushing for "maximum retaliation" in Korea if the Communists leave the talks, left wingers in Britain and Israel are just too far left, George Allen will have a TV show, Man of the Week, starting 25 August, C. S. Forester is writing an NBC television series on the history of the US Navy[?], to be narrated by Robert Montgomery, Joe Palooka is also getting a tv show, while Madame Butterfly is getting a movie. 

Washington Trends reports that the services are fighting over the next budget. Fight behind the gym! Foreign aid will probably be cut, and then supplemented in the fall, a tidelands oil bill will probably come before Congress and pass, and so will a Universal Military Training bill. Democratic strategists concede that crime and corruption charges are hurting the party, but are confident that the party is still strong. 

National Affairs

"New Atomic Weapons Now Aim at Mass Armies" The cover promises new atomic weapons coming soon, but the article doesn't exactly deliver on details, instead going over the same old stuff. We have atomic bombers now, but guided ground-to-air missiles might make them obsolete soon, but have no fear, we can still bomb the Commies into the  Stone Age with atomic missiles, perhaps launched from submarines, or at any rate from hundreds of miles away from the enemy's territory. Of course, the Communists will soon have atomic missiles of their own, so the solution to that is to not worry about it, and get on with fighting a war in Europe with ground forces and atom bombs. How do the two mix? Not very well, since the ground forces will have to disperse so that they can't be taken out by a single bomb. The US Army is developing lightweight teletypes and switchboards (it says here) so that they can move around more quickly, and short field cargo aircraft, and helicopters, and airborne troops. The Red Army will have to bridge the Elbe and the Rhine to conquer western Europe, and bring their supplies across the Oder and the Vistula, so the Army is looking at "tactical" atomic weapons that can blow up the bridges. Also, if they are detonated on the ground, they will contaminate the crossing sites with radioactive debris, forcing the Reds to find a less useful crossing point, and possibly stop their invasion entirely. Lighter, smaller atom bombs would seem helpful, especially since the Army seems to be serious about "atomic artillery," but there is not a breath of a word about the AEC actually having lighter, smaller bombs. 

The President seems to have said that he would decline the Democratic nomination in favour of General Eisenhower, if the General wanted it. But he definitely said that he thought that Eisenhower was  a Republican and would run as a Republican, and he definitely didn't say he wouldn't run against Eisenhower in a general election. The President also cleared one of his cronies of taking a bribe to get an RFC loan for the American Lithifold Corporation, and vetoed two veterans' bills that would have given veterans this and that.

"The Sorge Story" You might remember this being hyped up a few months ago. MacArthur's former intelligence chief, Major General Charles Willoughby, brought back a footlocker of documents related to Richard Sorge, the Communist spy in the German press delegation in Japan, who famously warned Stalin of the German plan of attack. Sorge is said to have later told Stalin about the Japanese plans to attack in the Pacific two months in advance. Moscow then "used the Sorge spy ring to egg the Japanese on." Willoughby is described here as "ruggedly handsome, tall and broad shouldered," and to have a courtly manner due to  his German birth. I am reliably told by some advanced gene scientists that you can't actually inherit a stiff bow, and in fact he was not only born in Germany, but lived there until shortly before he entered Gettysburg College in 1913. Willoughby claims that Sorge's ring included Americans Agnes Smedly and Guenther Stein, and expands on the nature of the "southern advance" warning, which was that the Japanese had decided to attack south against the British and Americans, allowing the Soviets to transfer troops from Manchuria to the Moscow front in November of 1941. Willoughby also spent considerable time on the idea that members of the Institute of Pacific Relations were active in trying to prevent the US and Japan from arriving at some kind of short-of-war compromise in late 1941 negotiations, because this would have been a betrayal of China. Just to be clear here, Communists supporting China in 1941 is bad; but Communists abandoning China in 1947 is also bad. Finally, the article moves on to the question of whether Owen Lattimore was a Communist, again. This time, the McCarren committee had several former colleagues, including noted Sinologist, Karl Wittfogel, on board to testify that they saw Lattimore do the secret Communist handshake one time. 

The defence budget has gone through, and Newsweek has a short bit to make it clear just how much money fifty billion dollars is. It's a lot. Off year, off season elections in Polk County, Tennessee (where there have been four political murders in three years) and statewide in Kentucky and Mississippi had . . outcomes. I mean, of course they did, but what more can I say? Even the Polk County election was boring, with no shootings at all. 

Carl Spaatz's guest column is "The West Point Story." Oh, goody,  you are saying to  yourself. An insider explains the cheating scandal! Silly you, of course he doesn't! Everything is fine at West Point, just fine. The honour system has withstood the test of time (except that one long ago time just now when 90 students were expelled.) The problem, you see, is the football clique that has developed at West Point just recently, and not at all back in 1890 when the first Army-Navy game was played. The one thing the American people mustn't allow is any change in the honour system or at West Point. At all. The American people must not think that there is something wrong with the academy, or that recent graduating classes are somehow suspect. Way down in Sports, it is pointed out that everyone at West Point thinks that the expulsions are unfair because everyone cheats, because they think the honour system is hokum. 

You know, I'm starting to have some doubts about the wisdom of giving these guys atom bombs. 

Ernest K. Lindley's Washington Tides has "Realities About Taxes," in which he explains how big the Senate and House's proposed tax increases are, and how much bigger they would have to be to actually cover projected spending and sop up the inflationary effect of all that money sloshing around in the economy. He then points out that those tax increases are politically impossible, and so there you go. 

International

"Hate Hymn Keynotes Red Rally with a Million Youths Marching" Nazi Communist youth are terrible, Communist propaganda is terrible for suggesting that Western powers are too kind to ex-German Nazis, peace propaganda is terrible because it says that Westerners aren't pro-peace, and the Western sympathisers who came to see the Youth Day festivals are terrible because they evaded the Western barriers intended to prevent them from visiting Berlin. (The horrible Red peace offensive is also the subject of a separate story where Newsweek finally brings itself to explain the Malik letter of last month.)

Stop me if you've heard this one, but French government, Rene Pleven, no Socialists. Poland is doing something Communist, and Richard Stokes is now in charge of  the Anglo-Iranian negotiations somehow, and has a plan, or "umbrella." Kuwait, which has gone from having no oil at all to being the fourth largest world producer behind the United States, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, is very rich, all of a sudden. The sheikh is a great guy who lives simply, unlike his Dad, who had two yachts. (His only indulgence is a huge garage of luxury cars, which is completely understandable. Who doesn't have a hobby?) Kuwait people are getting social spending. Everything is great!

"Hatoyama Comeback" Japanese politics is interesting! Yes, yes it is. Come back here and sit down while I explain about the rivalry between Hatoyama Ichiro and Yoshida Shigeru. No sudden moves, I have rearmed and will use it in self-defence! (That's a topical joke, sir.) Meanwhile, in China, the Communists have banned the reading of Confucius in schools because he was a reactionary. 

"Tough Talk May be Paying Off as Reds Make Slight Overture" The Western peace talks strategy might be working! On the other hand, the chief Chinese negotiator isn't bending an inch, so maybe not. 

From Canada comes clear instruction to the McCarren committee to keep its witch-hunting to the United States, because Canada is not Bulgaria, although I see the problem because they're right next to each other. I think. (Ronnie sings alphabet song to herself, reasssures herself that "Brazil" comes before "Bulgaria.") The delightful Dr. Wittfogel has accused Canadian diplomat, E. H. Norman, of being a Communist. Also, Ottawa, Ontario and the SEC are fighting over who gets to prosecute American boiler rooms operating out of Toronto, when. Although it doesn't say "boiler room," because the word of the day is "stockateer." I don't think I am going to phonetically transliterate many words of the day; let's just say that I'm on strike against literacy because of the insult to Master Kung, and not that I'm lazy.)

Business

Business Trends reports that "The first serious pinch in consumer production is imminent" for about the millionth time, that munitions ("shot and shell") are about to take the lead in rearmament production, since America is out of its WWII stockpile already, that home building will be a record 1.4 million new homes in 1951, mostly in suburban areas in a continuing trend, with local politicians and officials exerting powerful pressure to get their communities filled in. The freight car pinch is getting worse, as encouraging production trends have been reversed by strikes, vacation season. This will make it harder to get bumper harvests to market and cut into materials allocations. The chemical industry is swamped, everything is coming up sulphur, and the government is getting ready to impose rent controls on all areas around military bases. Also, farmers have cut back on farm machinery purchases because they see crop prices going down due to the bumper crops. 

A long feature on "Atom-Age Plant Dispersal" doesn't really say anything new except that the FTC has approved rate increases for the rails, much to the OPS's displeasure. I don't see what that has to do with plant dispersal, which is definitely something we're trying to do. There's also an explainer about the new fight over overseas air routes to Latin America and a feature about the Illinois Central Railroad before we get on to the meat of the feature this week, which I will get to before Notes and What's New, a major story about the Federal Reserve.

"The Federal Reserve: Bedeviled by Truman's 'Spooks'" The article is an exploration of the fight between the "hard money" Federal Reserve and the "soft money" Treasury under John Snyder. (I have, meanwhile, skipped a related story about how the recent easing of consumer credit seems to have started up consumer spending again.) Snyder's treasury wants to keep interest rates down to reduce payments on the national debt; the Federal Reserve wants them to go up to reduce the "money supply," to control inflation. That being said, neither the Reserve nor the Treasury can just go out and tell the banks what rates to charge on loans. They have to rely on indirect tools in the case of the Reserve, which you understand if you understand these things, and the rate charged on Treasury bonds by the Treasury. So this is an argument about a technical instrument that the Board is using to control the money supply. Unnamed "spooks" within Truman's government want to prevent the Board from using this tool to reduce the money supply, and have previously been responsible for Marriner Eccles not being reappointed to the Board. The Board has some independence, so the delayed appointment of Eccles' successor, and the filling of an unrelated Board vacancy, will have some bearing on the continuing success of the "spooks" in maintaining  the soft money policy that, it says here, caused the inflation of 1946--7 and is about to cause another severe inflationary episode. Finally, if you were wondering who leaked this story to the press, it goes on to explain what a swell guy Stuart Symington is. 

The already-mentioned Notes and What's New: The Dallas Home Builders' Association is going to try to sell homes by television, showing the homes on WFAA TV. Wilys Overland is showing a firefighting jeep. The President is requiring all fur sellers to advertise their product by the species of origin rather than by brand name, so no more cheap rabbit fur cutting into mink sales, is the point. Scrap steel is in short supply and the industry has come up with the bright idea (as I read Notes) of going to look for it. With get-up-and-go like that, no wonder the steel industry is where it is! What's New is taken by Tri-G Company of Connecticut's "Star Finder," a stereoscope-like viewer that lets you find constellations. It also likes Junior-Pro Products of St. Louis' strip-steel flanged braces for bridging  wood joists, and Sewell Smith of our fair state's Boom. It's a board game in which the whole family can engage in a fun-filled, cutthroat competition to bring peace to the world before the low-down dirty snake on the opposite side of the kitchen table can end war forever and bring about the brotherhood of man (and sisterhood of women). Krimstock Products has come up with a chrome-plated cigarette lighter that doubles as a belt buckle. Help! My pants are on fire! Stock Car Products has an ash tray for the car, which seems like it would already have been invented? There are days when you can't just flick the ashes out the window! (Besides making Smokey the Bear mad, that is.) 

Motherhood has left me too tired to get mad at Henry Hazlitt (but just wait 'till I get to Raymond Moley's column)! Maybe it is because he is explaining why automatic cost of living adjustments spur inflation. It being Hazlitt, I'm sure this will turn out to be wrong, but it sounds plausible enough.

   

Science, Medicine, Education

"ECA Troubleshooters" Germany is pretty good with that science and technology stuff, but one thing it doesn't have is a funding agency giving money to small business, so the ECA is over showing them how to set that up. 

"Podunk, Brazil" Some Brazilian social scientists from the Escola Livra de Sociologa, led by American chief nosey parker, Donald Pierson, have been going up to an anonymous "Afro-European" town in Brazil's eastern plateau region for several years to see if brown people can run their own affairs. It turns out they can, which is remarkable news, and are in fact even better at it than white folk, in that they don't take any backtalk from their women. 

If anyone wants me, I'm being fitted for my parade-ready blue shirt. 

"Polio Prognosis" Polio is very frightening this summer but is actually running behind last year's case rate so far this year. 

"Live Cortisone" Newsweek rounds up recent stories about cortisone synthesis, winding up with Dr. Max L. Sweat of the National Institute of Health, who simplified the process of extracting it from the adrenal glands using an enzyme found there to simplify one particularly long and difficult series of steps down to a single one. While this process is not going to play a part in the mass production of medical cortisone, it is interesting in the light it sheds on the enzyme itself, which might prove a medically useful drug itself.

Stephen Potter, previously the hilarious author of cynical life guides Gamesmanship and Lifesmanship, is now the author of Healthmanship, which impressed Newsweek in that way where you have to go around spoiling the best jokes by telling everyone who will listen, and most people who won't. 

The Dean of Yale fired off a broadside memo against exam cribbing last week, just before the West Point scandal broke. Apparently it's because this generation is a bunch of degenerates, not like the old days. Speaking of which, former President of the University of Chicago, Ernest G. Colwell, has thoughts about the decline of morals on college campuses, which he blames on administration, not the student body. And football. Football gets in there, too. "Area Studies Appraised" is a brief report on Yale sociologist, Wendell C. Bennett's report on area studies for the  Social Sciences Research Council. Everyone can agree on the value of an integrated approach to studying areas like Latin America, the Far East, or Russia combining history, languages and so on, and the programmes are spreading through academe. However, he notes that there are hardly any South Asian or Southeast Asian area studies, which doesn't seem like a very efficient allocation of resources considering all the people there. Now that he's pointed it out, I'm sure that the universities will be on top of it, since there's nothing that university administrations do better than efficiency. 

I'm in a really cynical mood right now, mainly because I'm wondering what's happening to the country! I know it's hot out and the only people who aren't on vacation are very, very cranky, but from where I sit, outside but returning, there's a lot of red-hot angry-crazy right now. It's like the whole country's gone nuts. 

Radio and Television, Press, People

"More Power to TV" CBS is setting up demonstrations of its colour tv system in Berlin in hopes of convincing Communists to give capitalism a chance because it has four colours now. NBC is going to do the first nationwide broadcast in September, using the ATT microwave relay system, and will try to get Canada and that continent to the south involved, next.

If you're missing Time's Art section (don't worry, I'll get back to it eventually!), Newsweek features a Dance section this week. I'm not covering it, but ooh la la.  

In Press news, there's the wire service night reporter who got stabbed on the way to work through skid row and kept the entire service up to speed as he sought treatment, the nice newspaper from Omaha that covered the floods, the town paper in California that is challenging its business license because of the First Amendment, the New York Star's circulation woes, and the French Ministry of Justice's crackdown on the version of the Fawcett Tarzan feature that runs in French papers, by reason of "Tarzella" (whatever happened to Jane?) not wearing enough clothes.  Yes, I am sure that victory over pictures of undressed ladies in French newspapers is at hand. To be as fair as possible to the Ministry, they are taking action on the grounds that only children read cartoons.    

Mike Barnett's Man Against Crime is quite the show. 

Betty Hutton is getting divorced from her new husband because she says he's too smart for her. General Eisenhower, June Allyson, Nicholas Delano Seagrave, Senator Wayne Morse, Tallulah Bankhead, Laraine Day, Ezio Pinza, Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Gary Cooper and Bob Hope are in the paper for good enough reasons. Star accordion player(!!!) Dick Conting is up for draft evasion, the Clark family that triggered the Cicero Race Riot has accepted an invitation to move to Norwalk, Connecticut, the Duke of Edinburgh's presidential address to the British AAS gets a pretty patronising spot. 

Movies

Betty Grable's Meet Me After the Show is funny and fun even though the star spends an awful lot of time in pants considering that whole "Only wants to be filmed with bare legs" story. Did you know that "Nebraska" rhymes with "Alaska"? It's true! The Whistle at Eaton Flats is the first movie-length American film about management-labour relations. Worthy! David and Bathsheba is a swords-and-sandals flick of Biblical proportions that the Zanucks have decided to drop a lot of money on. Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward smoulder and the rest of the cast is good, but it is spectacle, not art. I think you know what I'm trying to say? A British flick, Mr. Drake's Duck, about a duck that lays uranium eggs, is the real hit of the week.

Books 

"25-Cent Originals" The big story in Books is about a publisher, not a book. Gold Metal Books is trying to break out of its paperback origins by publishing some local history and literary whatnot. (By "whatnot" I mean Keyhoe's Flying Saucers are Real. Your Nobel is in the mail, sir.) I think the Newsweek story is just an excuse to reprint some book covers! How I Killed Stalin is Sterling Noel's near-future thriller in which a double agent kills Stalin in 1959, just as he is

about to celebrate "I Rule the World" Day. I think. I might have gone light on the actual plot, which apparently doesn't justify the minor international storm the title has provoked, because apparently trying to assassinate foreign heads of state is morally reprehensible. Speaking of which, how about Thomas Dunn's book, Stand and Deliver, which is about early highwaymen (bandits, as they called them in Old England back when the English were allowed to be colourful). They were awful, it turns out, and Robin Hood wasn't real! Jock Wilson's autobiography, The Dark and the Damp, is about growing up in some small American town and having Hardships and Experiences.  

Raymond Moley's Perspectives column is a deranged rant against Senator Hubert Humphrey, civil rights bills, anti-lynching bills, and "Fair Deal Republicans" who might get them through the Senate.

 

Aviation Week, 20 August 1951

News Digest reports that Kaiser is hiring, briefly covers that B-50 that crashed into a South End apartment building this week, covers CAB's denial of the Southwest/West Coast merger, the Kaman deal to run a helicopter factory for the Navy, Kellett Aircraft's discharge from bankruptcy, KLM's contract to overhaul the J-35 engines of the Republic Thunderjets of all Allied nations. 

Sidelights reports on the Defence Department hitting 1.2 million personnel, Northwest Airlines reducing the scope of its lawsuit against Boeing for selling it 10 Stratocruiser-like lemons, and Sigmund Janas' resignation as director of Colonial Airways.

Industry Observer reports that the Stratos Division of Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation has a licensing agrreement with French firm, Turbomeca, to produce the 140hp Oredon gas turbine engine. A complete engineering analysis will be made of the MiG-15 recovered off the west coast of Korea in cooperation with the British, who had a share in the recovery. Recent flight tests of US turboprop planes operating the Alison T-40 show considerable improvement in all those earlier control problems that no-one really talked about. The Air Force is going to recondition its Douglas C-124 transports, while the latest 200hp Hiller helicopter is even better than the last one. The Navy's new construction programme aims at giving 8000ft runways to accommodate carrier air groups on land. Jet fighters use much shorter flight decks at sea, but do so with catapults and arresting gear, and the 8000ft runway is needed to make up the difference. Northrop's YB-49 jet flying wing had an endurance trial back in '49 that beat the B-47 all to heck, Northrop wants you to know. 

Alexander McSurely reports that "Industry Fights Component Price Control" Which is a detailed account of why the industry thinks that the price control regime is unfair to them. This is followed in news by a story about ALPA speeding up contract negotiations at multiple airlines and the Air Force testing new Temco and Beech trainers designated T-34 and T-35. Temco is very exited by its new plane. Follows a story about the TWA/Pan American "Atlantic route battle," and a bylined story from F., Lee More about the Senate negotiations over the subsidy bill that will presumably, any day now, distinguish between air  mail payments and direct subsidies for the scheduled that run unprofitable routes in the public interest. (Just to remind myself and everyone else why they're subsidised!) UAL is the latest to start coast-to-coast coach.

"Sonic-Speed Fighter Design Awards to 3" The Air Force has awarded development contracts for a supersonic fighter to Vultee, Lockheed and Consolidated Vultee, expecting the first prototypes to be flying at the end of 1954.

"Profits Lag Climbing Backlogs" Well, that's unfortunate!

Aeronautical Engineering has "Scorpion Designed for Easy Maintenance" No-one cares about the Northrop F-89, so it is time for Northrop to send in a fluffy article about how it is reallyl easy to maintain because it has a door here and a bay there. 

"New Fuel Specified for Jet Engines" The services have agreed  on specification MIL-F-5624A, which covers a high-vapour pressure blend, JP-3, and a low pressure one with a particularly low freezing temperature, JP-4. JP-3 will go out gradually, while JP-4 is a compromise between JP-4 and British kerosene and has a bright future. 

Short articles under Aeronautical Engineering cover two new wind tunnels at the Navy's new Postgraduate School at Annapolis, a "stainless steel fuel manifold connection" from Clifford metals and new specifications for Timken "canned," that is, tinned, bearings. 

McGraw-Hill World News Service brings us "Copters Westland Wants to Make," which is a story to illustrate a nice "imagineered" display of the three types of helicopters Westland would like to make after it gets its licensed Sikorsky S-51s and S-53s squared away. They're big, can carry a lot of passengers, and eventually have jet rotors. 

NACA Reports have a "Full-Scale-Tunnel" investigation of the static thrust of a coaxial helicopter rotor, an experimental paper on "The Effects of End Plates on Swept Wings at Low Speed," based on trials at the Langley wind tunnels; a fuel paper by E. Saenger and others, "On Ionisation and Luminescence in Flames," a paper on "Determining Pressure Drop of Monatomic Gases" flowing at constant pressure through  a passage, taking into account heat and friction; and a least squares curve fitting method for calculating stability coefficients from transient response data. 

Production has Scot  H. Reiniger, "Easier Way to Fight Salt Spray," specifically, the American Chemical Paint Company's new "Alodine" chemical dip, which creates an anti-corrosion "backstop" on aluminum surfaces. It is apparently in wide use in industry, and the article goes on at great length about its application, stripping, and the kind of treatment it is expected to withstand. (As opposed to the kind that makes it give up and cry.)

A super-long "Air Force Contracts" section takes us to a bylined article under Equipment. George L. Christian is assigned to sell the Eclipse-Pioneer Division of Bendix Aviation's "New Remote Driveshaft," which is "Light." It's a living, and Heaven knows Aviation Week can't afford to cross Bendix by not giving it all the advertorial space it wants, even if it is just an engine accessory driveshaft that bends, and it is still a better article than a sad bit about five local airlines converting to 28 seat DC-3s, since the CAA won't allow them to fly single-engined types. 

Speaking of advertisers not to be turned away, Graviner has "New Magnetic Fire Detector." Yes, it is just a simple metal thermometer, but it is based on demagnetisation at the sensitive temperature, which allows the suddenly demagnetised part to swing aside to trip the switch, and then automatically reset itself when it cools down. So it is not some laughably obsolete thermocouple. Now the voice goes down two octaves as it mumbles that it is available from Simmonds Aerocessories under license in this country.

New Aviation Products has some blurbs from sad little companies that can't get their own advertorials. Cannon Electric is hoping to break into the  aircraft plug market with a hermetically sealed plug. "Hermetic" being one word of the week, we are now looking for "micro," and get it with New Hampshire Ball Bearing's   "Micro" ball bearings, which are smaller than ever. And the Air Force is buying 40,000 runway lights from Westinghouse. It doesn't seem like Westinghouse would need to sell them any more after that, but it does. They're weather sealed, reliable, stable and bright. Micro Switch's latest precision snap-action switches are all-weather. 

The ALPA Special Report continues. Also, did  you know that Israel's official airline, El Al, has somehow grown into a big boy, with three more Constellations bought this week? 

Letters has a lengthy letter from G. A. W. Wynne, the public relations guy at BOAC, who explains that BOAC stopped using the dehumidifier on the Stratoliner because it pushed the plane's weight up by a full 1000lbs by soaking every soakable material in the process of dehumidifying the plane. Oops! Fortunately, they have fixed this, and will be able to resume dehumidfying. Three letters all love, love, love Aviation Week. Dexter Keezer of the Department of Economics at McGraw-Hill saw a simply ridiculous amount of gasoline being wasted by planes idling on the runway in a recent trip. What's New has received Fifty Year Fly-Past by Geoffrey Dorman, and a pamphlet on calculating "The Ground Run of Aircraft in Landing and Takeoff."

Robert Wood's Editorial takes aim at the OPS for threatening the plane programme with all its price stabilisation and then proceeds to take up the entire rest of the column with a potted history of coach lines, which are just great!

 

Letters

Joseph A. Clorety of the American Veterans Committee writes to correct the article that says they're tired of that asshole, Paul Douglas. They are fine with Senator Douglas. They just agree with Senator Humphrey, who thinks that Douglas is an asshole. Alfred D. Rosenblatt writes to defend the AEC's star-shaped headquarters. It is not an ideal target for bombing because of its shape. Its shape makes it uniquely easy to camouflage and decoy! "No doubt" numerous decoys have already been built in the neighbourhood! My taxes at work.  From New York State's Department of Hospitals, a reminder that they exist. Sergeant Berrigan writes from Fort Bragg to point out that whereas the Navy has a stockpile of 10,000 oyster forks, his unit doesn't have the equipment it needs for training. Harvard's Department of Astronomy really liked the article about the "Harvard-Navy Meteor Programme." For Your Information is off to Spain to find about that General Franco fellow, and also Yankees Stadium for something about baseball. 

The Periscope reports that the Army's recent press release about "rapid malaria cure," primaquine, was provoked by a "startling" malaria flare-up amongst veterans returning from Korea. Apparently, up to a third of veterans are infected, and their symptoms emerge as soon as they go off the Army issued chloroquine prophylactic. Another health concern from Korea is an infection which has proven "fatal in 11 of 78 cases," which is believed to be Weil's Disease, carried by parasitic worms in Korean rivers. Speaking of which, the weather is now shutting down Communist operations in Korea as the summer rains wash out roads and bridges. UN supply lines, supported by superior engineering, are doing better. The army is also developing a land train for Alaskan service, which, this being an American magazine, becomes a "revolutionary trackless train." Senator Johnson's next round of investigations will be of war contracts. More employees at IRS local offices are going to be charged with everything from corruption to gangland ties in the coming weeks. Democratic insiders are resigned to Truman running again in '52 and expect Senator Robert Kerr to replace Vice President Alben Barkley on the ticket. The Italian delegates to the Berlin World Peace Conference are in trouble for harassing German girls. Senate Democrats are getting nowhere in their effort to get the Administration to stockpile cotton, Mexican beef will probably be kept out of the States for another year by hoof and mouth disease, the Air Force is experimenting with a British jet engine starter that speeds up jet bomber starting times by firing up all engines simultaneously. Richard G. Baumhoff's The Damned Missouri Valley will be the first book about the floods. Andre Kosatelanetz, husband of Lily Pons, will have a variety show on CBS this fall, while Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray are splitting a handsome ten-year contract for an expanded version of  radio show, Bright Star. 

Washington Trends reports that the alliance between organised labour and the Democrats is weakening. The Political Action Committee is out for 1952  and the AFL won't automatically back Administration candidates. The GOP may run on "Communists in government." A new agency will administer foreign aid. Symington's name floats to the top again. The Administration will push for general cuts in foreign aid to meet the Congressional mandate for a reduction. "Treasury officials" think that the increasing deficit may lead to a new tax bill next year with higher individual income tax rates and an excess profits tax. The armed forces will have to dip into their reserves to meet shortages of officers in the Army and enlisted men for the Air Force, both for the Navy. 

National Affairs

"Foreign Aid Roaring Through Despite Congressional Qualms" A great picture of Robert Taft, mouth wide open, illustrates a story about how the President got more than he expected, but less than he asked for. Is that a cut? Well, it's more money than last year! A lot more money. Why the change of heart? For one thing, General Eisenhower invited Republican leaders over to Paris to see what's up and prove to them that the money was needed. (Incidentally, he is also pushing the French for a housing development at Soissons, because his SHAPE staff, living in Paris on American wage scales are putting inflationary pressure on the Paris housing market. It is also daft to be beefing up our armed forces and neglecting our allies, and we have to build up our armed forces because of the disgusting arrogance of Red negotiators at Kaesong, which requires us to negotiate with overwhelming brute force. 

"Blasts by the GOP Eight" The report of the minority members of the committee hearings on the dismissal of General MacArthur are in. Their findings? Not enough focus on that dirty pinko rat, Dean Acheson; The war in Korea is great, but also illegal since the President started it without asking Congress; There should be no peace in Korea short of the complete reunification of the peninsula; General Wedemeyer's report was great! The Democratic members replied that their GOP colleagues were a bunch of idiots. Also it somehow got into arguments about whether Alger Hiss dictated the Yalta agreement. 

"Net Around the IPR" The usual GOP's crack team of Assistant Witchfinder Generals were out in force to tell the McCarren Committee about all the communists swanning around the Institute for Pacific Relations back in the good old days. There were Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, awake and conscious enough to testify, showing that alcohol isn't nearly as bad for your health as they say. Newsweek's conclusion, on the other hand, is that the McCarren committee's "careful methods" are winning reluctant admiration, that he is making "so-called 'McCarthyism'" respectable, and that the various summaries and reports of the Republican members will be powerful ammunition for the Republican candidate in 1952.

"'Longie' Zwillmann: Big Businessman or Gangster" This is a full page-and-a-column story in Newsweek, first after national politics. Abner Zwillman is a former bootlegger turned New Jersey politician. Seemingly inspired by the attention the Kefauver Committee had already got out of pursuing Frank Costello, Senator Herbert O'Connor decided to go after Zwillman. Most of the rest of the story is spent on Zwillman's career and implying that he continued his life of crime after he said he stopped. Which seems kind of like libel to me? But I guess if Congress started it, it's okay. 

Ernest K. Lindley's Washington Tides explores the reasons behind the foreign aid cuts. The reason behind the foreign aid cuts is that Republicans win Midwest elections on the xenophobe vote. Or, as Lindley puts it, they are "bookkeeping savings to impress gullible voters."

"FBI Roundup No. 1" America continues to prove that it has freedom, unlike Communist Russia, by arresting all its Communists for thinking Communist thoughts. 

The Korean War

"Junior Talks Hit Snags --And US Keeps Powder Dry" The Junior talks are going on in parallel with the main talks, and are intended to sort out the precise line of the armistice. The major Kaesong negotiations are going astray because the Communists won't shut up and do what they're told, like in real negotiations, and now the Junior talks are, too. There's a great story about how General Nam Il can't light his cigarettes with sputtering Korean-made matches and had to use an American match, so an American matchmaker has volunteered to send a barrel of American matches so that Admiral Turner Joy could, the charitable businessman suggested, rub the generals' face in the superiority of American free enterprise matches. I cannot see how this could possibly go wrong, unless perhaps the reason that North Korean matches are so terrible is that we bombed their factories nonstop until the MiGs arrived.

 

Follows the showcase story from Spain that frames the Franco interview. Spain is politically inert, and in economic decline, but according to its not-Fascist-at-all head of state, it is Europe's only hope of salvation from "decadence." The "tough" Spanish army could defeat those Reds in a minute if they just had arms, and could America maybe spare a few tens of millions of Yankee dollars to help a buddy in need? Why Spain had to suffer through being a conveniently located neutral selling to both sides during WWII, and now its economy is just like Sweden's and Switzerland's, except much smaller and going in the opposite direction. In the course of the interview,General Franco shares his views that nations and nationalism are the best things ever and that military strength and "ideological preparation" are essential to confronting Communism. Socialist countries like Britain and France are terrible, while Spain is advancing into the social-political evolution of the future with youthful strength.

"U. S. to Steamroller Gromyko If He Stalls at Japanese Pact" The Soviet delegation to the San Francisco conference is promising to negotiate and present the Soviet position, which is obviously unacceptable. I don't think that the accompanying picture is intended to send the message that it obviously does, but it's Newsweek, and I could be wrong. Meanwhile, the Japanese National Police Reserve is alleged to be twice as strong as reported (150,000 instead of 75,000), and several thousand officers have been removed from the postwar "purge list."

"Bigger and Better" The week that General Eisenhower welcomes the newly arrived Second Armoured and Fourth Infantry Divisions, a secret report in which he says that any Red attack in Western Europe would be accompanied by an "attack" on American industry is released. It only makes sense, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe says. 

While Richard Stokes is still talking in Iran, Iraq is signing a 50-50 royalties deal and increase its oil output and make a lot of money. China is promoting anti-American sentiment and getting ready to invade Formosa in a fleet of 200 formerly American ships originally donated to the Koumintang as war surplus, now rusting at Shanghai. The article goes on to explain that People's Liberation Army crews are being trained by foreign advisors including two Italians, two Swedes and 50 Russians, who even have their own quarters! (Another story says that Hainan Island is being converted into a Russian submarine base. Maybe the Russian advisors stay there? It's only a thousand miles away!) Also, Jamaica has taken a walloping from a hurricane that did $56 million in damage to Kingston and killed 100 people, with a thousand still missing. 

In Latin America, Peru and Ecuador are squabbling over a contested border that puts almost as much land as there is in Ecuador in dispute. There was a war in 1941 that the rest of Latin America stepped in to stop, and now there is fighting again and the world is urging the four guaranteeing powers to step in. And that's pretty much it from Latin America. 

Business

The Business Periscope reports that profits are down, that there's a lot of news about materials shortages and allocations that don't really add up to actual news, that the steel supply is easing and there is a shortage of "odorants," which are the smelly things that they add to natural gas so that you can sniff a leak. It is interesting that we are talking about the materials shortage (there's a big separate story on the copper shortage, exacerbated by the Chilean mine strike) and focussing on the fact that America has a weak hand, when America has such a strong balance of payments surplus with the rest of the world. I'm sure there's a simple explanation for why everyone wants American dollars but won't take them for copper or sulphur, but it probably involves international finance and goes wooshing over my head. 

The Senate agrees that there was undue political influence on the RFC but can't agree on anything else, Kansas City is drying off and coming back, and if you'll remember roughly a million years of

campaigning for more generous tax amortisation periods on capital expenditures, well, the Administration brought them in last October and has handed out $9.2 billion in facilities, but now it is calling a halt and trying to figure out a programme that seems to have become essentially free money for nothing for business. Fancy that! There's also a bunch of news about wage settlements blowing holes in stabilisation, and the latest is steel shortages that are holding up natural gas pipelines in the East. A whole paragraph ago we said steel shortages were easing! 

The Week in Business reports that shipments of televisions dropped last  month compared to the same month last year, although crude oil production is up. The industrial index of production dropped to the lowest number since November, and Western Electric is about to start building that coast-to-coast radio-telephone network it has been talking about since forever. 

"The Pattern Changes" While wealthier Americans are summering in Europe or going to exclusive resorts, regular Americans are increasingly taking road trips in their cars and staying at motels instead of hotels and resorts, which has resort and hotel owners worried and thinking that something should be done about it. 

What's New has the Gentry Division of Consolidated Grocer's Group, which has a "cocktail sauce" spice mix. Sprinkle the packet into the oil, vinegar and tomato puree to get your own cocktail sauce! The American Binder Corporation has a magnetic note pad holder with an hour glass for timing toll calls. The Toy Center of Brookline has a new version of "Jack Staws," the game where you pluck things out of an electrified hole and sound a buzzer if you touch it with your "straws." Rain Bonnet, of Los Angeles, has an inflatable hat-umbrella, which looks as ridiculous as it sounds. 

Henry Hazlitt throws a snit in Business Tides over "Congress's Monetary Duty" Congress has a DUTY to fight inflation by telling the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to start reining in credit and the money supply and not fool around with all these Keynesian wage and price controls. It is better than his usual column, though, because after some editorialising, he actually provides some facts about proposed ways in which the Federal Reserve can do this. 

Science, Medicine, Education

"Evolution in High Gear" Newsweek checks in with Professor Donald Hoffmeister of the University of Illinois, who investigates life in the high mountain areas of the Southwest, which are islands of wetter and more moderate climates above the desert floor. He concludes that evolution is advancing far faster in these regions than in other regions, and also that they may be "linked" with Mexican biology. That is, animals, possibly including jaguars, may be crossing the desert from one island to the next, including ones down in Mexico. 

"Light Appetite" Jack Koff, a City of College undergraduate electrical engineer, has built a robot named "Squee" for the Dayton Company, and put it on display at the Minneapolis State Fair, although it was actually conceived by electronic brain enthusiast and actuary, Edmund C. Berkeley. "Squee's" special trick is that it can be "trained" to wander around looking for tennis balls. In other words, it gets hungry and looks for "food." There's lots of quotation marks doing lots of hard work in the last sentence, but my sense is the biggest job is being done by the ones around "trained."

"Gilsonite Grows Up" is the happy story of scientists discovering more uses for the mineral of the same  name that someone discovered years ago, while scientists are aghast at the small amount of "pin money" that Congress gave the National Science Foundation, and Dr. Peter Schlumbohm, famed inventor of the Chemex coffee maker, has a new invention, a fan made of paper that is arranged to draw the air it circulates through the porous paper of the fan blades, filtering as it cools. He is just going to sell the paper and flange it is mounted on, because he figures pretty much everybody has a 5hp electric motor around the house. 

"Rabies and Polio" Dr. Herbert Hipps, of Waco, Texas, has a theory that the rabies vaccine immunises against polio, and is conducting his own private investigation of his theory by giving the anti-rabies inoculation to any children whose parents volunteer them. The Texas State Health Authority has pointed out that this is 1), crazy; and 2), dangerous and unpleasant, since the rabies vaccine is a five-shot course with a significant risk of adverse effects, which is why it is only recommended to people who have been bitten by a rabid animal. 

"Experimental Error" A "28-year-old University of South Dakota researcher" killed two subjects of a medical experiment by injecting them with ten times as much demerol as the experiment called for after he injected them with the wrong drug. "It was one of those things you can't account for," he explained himself.

"Quality of Mercy" Everyone, especially high Catholic churchmen associated with Fordham University, to which a number of them have transferred, agree that the West Point students expelled in the cheating scandal shouldn't be punished except that they shouldn't be allowed to play varsity football this year. Newsweek checks in with the 729th Railway Battalion of the Army Transportation Corps, which was raised from the Baltimore and Ohio. The New York Board of Education is going to charge some school fees to cover extra-curricular activities after their recent wage settlement with the teachers' union. 

Press, Radio and Television, Art, People

We check in with the next generation of Hearst heirs, ready to take the reins after William Randolph's strangely unheralded death before it is off to Italy for a Press story about the (alleged) murder of an American officer by two other Americans in a cloak-and-dagger mission behind the lines in Italy that has been covered up for seven years. The story was uncovered by a freelancer who did a story for Time and sounds like a Time angle. The two Americans who murdered the third, wanted to turn over a cache of arms to Communist partisans, the third, their lieutenant commanding, disagreed. Both of the (alleged) American murderers were Italian-Americans. Rumours have swirled since the war, and Time finally dug up enough evidence for an 18,000 word article. At this point the rest of the American press finally jumped on the story, and the Defence Department and Bill Donovan have made vague statements. (Donovan spoke in defence of one of the accused in a way that broadly implies that he was following orders when he did whatever he did.) The issue is that there is no extradition treaty that will send the Americans to Italy, and no court competent to prosecute them here, so they can't be tried, and it is not clear what will come of it.  Also, the Wood Pulp Journal's last issue was delayed by a pulp shortage, and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is very embarrassed that it published two ghost-written articles by this year's Seafair Queen, 19 year-old Shirley Flowers, because while she wants to be a reporter some day, obviously she can't because she's a beauty queen, and beauty queens can only work in the paper's advertising department. It just stands to reason! 

The Ford Foundation has hired Robert Saudek to run its new Radio and Television Workshop, while President Truman will give the inaugurating address over the ATT coast-to-coast microwave television network hookup next  4 September, the opening speech to the San Francisco Japan peace conference. (By the way, Italy is in a snit because Japan is getting easier terms than it did. Which reminds me also that American manufacturers are now in Italy looking for machine tool production. Which is especially interesting given the way that the Anglo-American Productivity Council seems to think that the lesser races can't do efficient things like make machine tools.)

Art returns with a slight story about Hans van Meegeren. 

Jersey Joe Walcott, Solomon Lightfoot Michaux, Douglas MacArthur. Alben Barkley, George Marshall, Omar Bradley, David Sarnoff, Lily Pons, Emmet Lavery, Lela Rogers, Juan Peron and wife, Eva, Denise Darcel, Sidney Bechet, Elizabeth Ziegler, Anthony Eden, Robert Carr and Margaret Truman are in the column for the usual reasons. The housewives of Marshall, Texas, who are going to court because they refused to withhold social security from their servants' wages, are in the column for a very good reason. So is the next-door neighbour of J. Edgar Hoover, who was burgled of thousands of dollars of jewels, and a bank president in New Jersey who systematically stole money from the bank, used it to buy stocks, and used the stocks to elect a fictitious board of directors that made him president, has been found out. Neighbours thought that he was a quiet and friendly man. 

John Rockefeller and Igor Stravinsky's widow have married, both at advanced ages. Bernard Baruch isn't married or dead, which makes it odd that he is Transitions this week, but Arthur Margetson, Louis Jouvet and Alfred Schnabel are.  

New Films 

People Will Talk is a remake of the 1933 German film, Dr. Praetorius, and is the funny but also suspenseful story of the title character, who is an odd psychologist, played by Cary Grant. It gets a very long review that goes into production details, so I'm not sure whether it should go under this heading or the top Movies heading, but this is the way that Newsweek called it. (It is also on a decidedly mature topic that Newsweek is very evasive about.) Iron Man is a fight movie that the review has no strong opinions about, which is not what we buy the magazine for, Newsweek! Pickup is a sordid, cheap movie. 

Books

Ada Bedington was a member of a British literary family who was more famous as a hostess than an author, although her eight books were quite good, and Newsweek is excited about the first American publication of one of them this week, The Limit, as it is a "minor classic." Louis Malley's Horns of the Devil is a suspenseful novel about the Sicilian (and American) Mafia. Dorothy Stroud has a life of Capability Brown, "England's Face Lifter." His real name was "Launcelot," and now I am sad, because up to this minute I believed that he had been christened "Capability," which is just an infinitely better name. Tri-Coyo and His Shark is a fable-like novel of picturesque natives doing wistful things in Martinique, and then Mont Pelee erupts and kills those who need killing, by Clement Richer. Edgar Lustgarten's Defendants' Triumph is a sequel to his Verdict in Dispute of last year. The former was a story of several trials where the defendants were found guilty in spite of doubts about the trial; the new book is defendants found innocent even though they were probably guilty as sin. Sounds fun! I should probably pick it up even though criminal trials are not the kind of law I will ever be doing. 

Raymond Moley's Perspective is about "The Hearst Tradition" this week. I learned that Hearts was a great guy who knew how to sell papers, and it isn't true that he was a "liberal who became a conservative," because there is actually only one kind of liberal, which Hearst always was. You see, "liberals" are "progressives" and are good people, whereas modern "liberals" are "statists," who are only a smidgeon better than Satan --I mean, Stalin-- himself. 

Aviation Week, 27 August 1951

News Digest reports that a Russian Il-10 being tested at Wright-Patterson was damaged in a belly landing recently, but will be repaired if new parts, and particularly tires, can be found. Oak Ridge has developed new reactor shielding materials that will help in developing atomic-powered aircraft. TWA's maintenance base near Kansas City is back to "near-normal" after last month's floods. Canadian Pacific has ordered three DC-6Bs,  making it the 22nd operator of the big plane. British European Airways will be inaugurating turboprop operations with cargo flights by two Dart-powered C-47 cargo planes until its Viscounts are ready. 

Sidelights reports that Curtiss-Wright is buying the Otis Elevator works in Buffalo. CAB is fighting with Alaskan pilots again. 

Industry Observer reports that Emerson Electrics and GE are working with the Air Force to eliminate electronics bugs in the "complicated armament system" of the B-47. These have put the rear-firing guns out of service. Three Red Air Force MiG-15 groups have been assigned to defend the Red missile centre at Peenemunde, while the runways at Brand-Briesen are being reinforced to take the Tupolev TU-4 B-29ski. The first 3 B-52s will cost a cool $21.3 million per plane. The USAF has become very interested in the heavy forging programme. The new 80,000 meter-kilogram hammer brought over from Germany to the Wyman-Gordon drop forging plant in North Grafton, Massachusetts, can knock off a complete landing gear strut column for a B-36 in a single operation. The Air Force is going to recondition its WWII surplus Beech C-45 light transports, of which it has more than 900 in storage. The Air Force reports that it will be doing 45,000 engine overhauls this year, 36,000 in its own facilities, with industry taking the rest. 

Ben S. Lee reports, "Races Prove Crowd-Appeal of Air Power" Two hundred thousand people turned out, and none of them died. (In airminded ways.) Ben gives us the complete rundown. 

Alexander McSurely, "Four-Place Helioplane Shown at Races" But Alex got to hang out with the crackpots! Who are at least good at stealing the credit that belongs to Fieseler and Westland. 

"Faster Write-Offs for Planes Sought" Of course it is. The Civil Air Regulations are going to be reviewed this year, with likely changes in landing distance and spoiler requirements. Nonsked airlines are involved in the "operation homelift" which is completing the rotation of over 4000 Korean War veterans exclusively by air. 

"Battle Looms on C-46 Load Limits" You might remember the C-46 as the Curtiss large, twin-engined plane that got a place in the military airlift alongside the DC-3 only to gain a reputation for taking one too many loads of paratroopers down in flames. The plane was relegated to cargo use, and has been flying at 48,000lbs all up, but now the CAB says that that is unsafe and wants to cut the limit to 46,000, and people are vowing to fight the CAB, because everyone knows that Curtiss is all about safe planes, and did not leave the plane making business because it was told that no-one would buy its  junk ever again. Fortunately, various nonskeds, and in particular Flying Tiger are in it beside Curtiss. 

"Carrier Clears Deck With Hinged Stacks" It looks like the Navy has no idea what Forrestal should look like, as the latest story reverts to a flush deck arrangement with hinged stacks and a retracting island. They do know that it will be the biggest warship ever, with a full displacement of 70,000tons.

McGraw-Hill World News has "Australian Canberra Bomber 'Years Off'" Fisherman's Bend is getting ready to produce it, but it is going to take years. 

Production Engineering has "Experts Tell Why Planes Cost So Much" Congress wants to know why the price of jet fighters has ballooned, with the North American F-86D going for $600,000 a pop. Dutch Kindelberger explains with charts. They're bigger and more expensive and cost more to make with fancier machine tools to make thinner and stronger planes. They're also  loads better.  You're welcome. Although when the article gets to the poit of calculating the lost labour due to rest breaks (or as we young folk say today, "coffee breaks"), maybe it's a bit more detail than we needed. On a 240 day work week, a half hour for breaks every day works out to three 40 hour weeks! When asked if they could cut back in quality, Kindelberger points out that there is no limit on quality in military aircraft. The "boys" have to compete in battle, and the manufacturer has to worry that they are going to come up against superior enemy aircraft. "Now, improvement in quality means continuous innovation. That means experiment, and experiment means cut and try. . . .[It] involves laboratory rok, calculations, and developments of all kinds. . . . If we wait, we are asking for trouble . . . when those planes go into competition, and conseqluently we cannot stop at any point." The industry is actually very efficient and there is very little problem with airframes any more. The problems are with electronics and fire control equipment and "gadget auxiliary equipment such as cooling turbines . . . . The engines and all of the gadgetry are all in a constant state of flux and improvement . . . " Planes cost what they cost. 

"Jet Fuel Carbon Probed in Tiny Cell" Wright Field is burning jet fuel in tiny combustion chambers to get a handle on the carbon-deposit characteristics of different jet fuels.

"Two New Aircraft for the French Navy"  "if the current plans of the Louis Breguet company reach fruition . . ." The French Navy will get two aircraft, a conversion of its 761 "Deux Ponts" transport and a turboprop-plus-turbojet two-seater, the Type 96 Vultur. The Deux Ponts conversion replaces the existing French engins with more powerful Pratt and Whitney R-2800s, while the Vultur has a Mamba upfront and a Nene in the back. 

"Wilderness Lab Serves Avro" Avro, needing cheap facilities in a hurry, has built its engine-testing plants in the distant Ontarioiu bush at Nobel, a full 165 miles northwest of its plant, north of Toronto. Look, I've driven in Canada. 165 miles is not a long way. Well, I mean, it is a long way, especially if your Lincoln has decided to spring a gas leak, but it isn't a long way between towns! So, as I was saying, Avro engineers and technicians go off to faraway Nobel and test things like this and that. Blades, combustion chambers, the usual. Also, various CF-100 subcontracts have been let. Every manufacturer in Canada, and by "Canada," I mean, "southern Ontario," is getting a taste! And by "every," I mean two steel companies in Tilsonburg in the heart of Orange country. 

"Flight Tests Bring Brabazon Changes" The plane that's never going to fly commercial service is getting some modifications to get its Certificate of Airworthiness. Gust alleviators, mass balances, that sort of thing. But the Mark II, that's going to be something! It will have Bristol Proteus engines instead of the Centaurus, and a 4-wheel bogie in place of its single-wheeled landing gear. And a pony! With a fluffy white mane!

"Douglas Skyraider Gets Faster De-Icer," Says Goodrich, which coincidentally makes the pneumatically-inflated rubber boot.

 
"Photoangulator Fixes the Slant" The US Army's Research and Development Lab at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, has developed a new photoangulator, which is a device that turns oblique photograpphs into horizontal projections. It is better than old photoangulators in that it provides trigonometric solutions, rather than geometric ones, and that is Progress. Also in progress, Canada has a new wind tunnel. Although the headline says "New Tunnel Built for Canadian Studies," so they may just be throwing Canadians in a wind tunnel to see what happens. I approve!

"Aviation Week Design Study: Canberra Mark II"

It's a design stud that doesn't actually study the design. Remember back in WWII when these were pages long, with lots of details? Not any more!

NACA Reports has a preliminary investigation of a new supersonic inlet, an experimental investigation of the effect of surface heating on boundary layer transitions in supersonic flow, a decisive study on the effect of arbitrary surface temperature variation along a flat plane on convective heat transfer in an incompressible, turbulent boundary layer, a comparison of theoretical and experimental responses to single-mode elastic systems in hydrodynamic impact, and a spin-tunnel investigation of the effects of mass and dimensional variations on a typical private plane. 

Equipment has more details about the Stratos deal to produce the Occidon turbine, with details of the design of the small turbine. 

"TWA Shifts Radio Repair to NY Firm" One way that TWA is recovering from the Midwest floods is to transfer its radio repair work to  Smith Meeker of New York, which is actually in Trenton, New Jersey. The article is lengthened by a discussion of the radio rigs it has repaired, which are sometimes pretty unique and complicated.

New Aviation Products has a rubber fighter cockpit seal from Goodrich, a "miniature heliacal potentiometer" that fits into instruments very neatly, by Van Dyke Instruments, Allen Aircraft Products has a water injection valve, Purolator's new aircraft hydraulic system filter is stronger and more rugged, and Simmonds Aerocessories is marketing a new, flush-fitting, heavy duty access latch. 

If you're looking for the next installment in the special report on the "new ALPA," look no further, including the full text of the CAB Decision 83 on pilot mileage.  

Letters has a letter from Frederick Lee, of Sales at Hollingshead, which explains just how great its nonflammable hydraulic fluid is, although J. Kenneth Craver of Monsanto writes to say that it is all lies, to which W. V. Sholz of Technical at Hollingshead defends his company's claims for two columns. Aviation Week gets a correction from Airline Transport Carriers, and throws its source to the wolves, as good magazines do, and a correction from General McNaughton that Aviation Week can't blame on anyone else, so it closes the column with a letter from the President of the University of Detroit about how great Aviation Week is. 

Robert Wood has the week off to think up some new topics that don't involve nonskeds, coaching, races, or railroads. 

Checking in with The Economist at the bottom of the month, there is an interesting bit in the 18 August American Notes about the frantic effort to revive the American machine tool industry, which shrank away to nothing during the postwar boom due to the flood of second-hand government tools, and which did not enjoy the head start given by foreign orders in 1950--1 before the Second World War boom from $200 million in orders in 1939 to $1.5 billion in 1941. In the current crisis, the automobile industry is happy to shift to producing machine tools, but needs the money to do so, and some kind of protection for its skilled labour pool. The government is waving its magic wand, but hust how magic are price controls, really? I illlustrate with a graph from another article about how arms production, and specifically the giant air force America is being pushed into building, is driving up wholesale prices, even as consumer good inventories build. Unless the Russians manage to persuade the West that it isn't as threatening as all that, and the arms buildup abates. Recent price wars are pretty clear proof that prices will fall if military demand abates. A combination of the highest personal incomes in history with falling prices implies a huge demand for consumer goods. Good times are here again!

The Economist's understanding of the Bell Labs "transistor" announcement, discussed in the 25 August Business Notes, focusses on British manufacturers who are going to try to make them under the proper, fussy British label of "germanium valves." They clearly have enormous potential. Germanium crystals having recently been used in televisions on both sides of the Altantic. The problem in the past has been that germanium is rare, and that it is hard to grow a proper-sized crystal. The Bell Labs breakthrough didn't originally promise much progress, since the valve was fragile and produced too much radio "mush." The new product, however, is robust, can be made as a "blob of plastic about the size of a pea." Chemical purity problems have been solved, and the valve is now suitable for low-power amplification. There are still problems with seating the germanium whisker within the "blob," and it is more expensive than valves, but the small size, long life and simplicity (it needs no low-tension heater currents) make it ideally suited to "electronic computers and control equipment," and eventually guided missiles and proximity fuzes, in televisions, hearing aids, telephone and telephone exchanges, where the power savings from doing away with valve heater currents will be enormous. All in all, there's quite a bit of potential here for  happy days ahead.