Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Newsweek, 17 May 1954
Letters
What does America think of Senator McCarthy? We print five letters: one still doesn't like McCarthy, one still likes him, one has changed his mind, and one has no real opinion. Looks like trouble for Senator McCarthy! Dale Nicholls of Biloxi, Mississippi, thinks that Ernest Hemingway is wrong to criticise Frank Lloyd Wright. Two letters about Executive Suite, because it is quite the movie. Lynn Meekins of the Malayan Tin Bureau writes to point out that Raymond Moley's column about the Tin Agreement is irresponsible and inaccurate. I don't know why anyone needs to point this out at this point, but maybe Newsweek sdmehow doesn't know how Moley works. For Your Information reminds us that Medicine Editor Marguerite Clark is visiting all the cancer research labs everywhere and tells us that Grace Kelly is very pretty.
The Periscope has a new format, with separate sections for international and national news at the lead, and separate Periscopes for all the back page sections instead of just Business. Aww! Now how can I keep up with all the stories that Lana Turner's agent makes up?
President Eisenhower is said to be depressed and irritable. Franklin Roosevelt Jr is said to be feuding with the DNC, which sees him as a threat to Stevenson in '56. Insiders say that the National Security Council is eclipsing the Cabinet. (Could it be that that's because the Cabinet is crammed with "businessmen" who turned out to be idiots?) Some people at the Pentagon think that America should be throwing its weight around more considering that it has all the H-bombs right now. The Army's new bulletproof vest worked well in Korea and now they're trying neckguards and shorts. General Ridgeway was not impressed during his recent tour of Army installations to check out how the "new look" is going. Defence Department psychologists say that soldiers aren't impressed by the Pentagon's habit of handing out medals to everyone. The Navy trial submarine reactor running at Ardco in Idaho is very impressive and that is why the Navy has upped its order to four atomic submarines next year. The next round of US nuclear tests in Nevada will include training for civil defence workers and army manoeuvres with tactical atomic weapons. Where Are They Now tracks down Glenn Cunningham in Cedar Point, Kansas, where he is a gentleman farmer.
The princess was an "It Girl," later became the abbess of her own convent. |
orts that the Moby Dick, a high altitude research balloon, has set a new 6250mi distance record, that Chance-Vought is laying off 1500 workers due to delays in delivering Westinghouse J46s for the F7U-3 Cutlass assembly line, which the Navy doesn't want anymore, anyway. Doman Helicopters is in bankruptcy court. Industry Observer reports that Russian and American jet engines are catching up with British, which are "fading fast." It's not fair that the British are selling more Viscounts than Douglas is DC-7s, and it is because of dollar restrictions. This will be the make-or-break year for turboprops. Convair has started to deliver its 340 executive transports to the navy, equipped with Maxim silencers on its stacks. The Navy has designated them the R4Y. Sikorski will start delivering its turbine-powered S-59 soon, Piasecki's H-16 is proceeding through its development programme, Republic has delivered its first F-84Js, and National Airlines is experimenting with a muffler for the S-55s running passenger service between Palm Beach and Miami. Washington Roundup reports that the Air Force ir reorganising guided missile management again, and looking at improving security. There are talks about establishing an American national air show like Farnborough, while the US might buy Gloster Javelins for the Europeans, after all. No more significant legislation will get through Congress this session, including McCarran's omnibus bill on airports and any implementation of that recent civil aviation policy report. SAC is sending more bombers to the Far East.
International
The Emperor Haile Selassie is touring the United States, while Maria Isabella Patino, the heiress who recently married James Goldsmith, the son of the British hotel director, has died of a cerebral hemorrhage in childbirth. Joseph Malik is in Britain touting disarmament, the Queen is still back, and Ticking It Off reports that Communist China has been admitted to the 1952 Melbourne Olympics, President Magsaysay is making progress against the Huk insurgency, the socialist govenrment in Belgium has fulfilled its election promise by reducing the conscription period from 21 to the NATO 18 month standard, which, it promises, will not affect its 3 division commitment to NATO.
"On-the-Spot:Time is Running Out for Israel" Harry Kern reports from the Middle East that Israel is outnumbered in some vague way that doesn't involve counting troops on the ground, and it is infuriated with the UN Truce Supervision Organisation for saying things like that the Khirbit Illin raid was a raid. US officer Commander Elmo Hutchinson of the Organisation is said to travel with bodyguards while in Israel for fear of being assassinated The Israelis are being told to curb their expansionist dreams in favour of trade with the Moslem world, while the Arab nations are being told to moderate and search for peace.
Canadians are only impressed with the St. Lawrence Seaway Bill in the sense that the McCarthy hearings show how much worse it can be. And in Alberta, the hurired construction of an air base and training range at Cold Lake, Alberta, shows that Canada is very big and very cold and that there is a Cold War on. That's lots of "Colds"!
Business
Products: What's New reports a combination padlock with a built-in sound effect called a "Thief fooler," marketed by Master Lock of Milwaukee, a no-smudge carbon paper from Mittag and Volger, and the best cold-weather oil (for clocks) yet, from Elgin National Watch. Moving on, the Suez Company gets a long, adulatory profile. It avoids government involvement, it says here! Notes: Weekl in Business notes that the recent cut in the Bank of England interest rate from 3.5% to 3% means that all British business will pay less interest, and is otherwise interested in takeovers and dividends.
Science, Medicine, Education
"Facts for Business" The Stanford Research Institute gets a profile in Science. If you want to know if your business will succeed, ask a long hair! And a New York engineer named Charles B. Spencer has come up with a fix for the Leaning Tower of Pisa that involves digging out the high side to settle it back.
"Lou Gehrig's Disease" New York first baseman Lou Gehrig was killed at 37 by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a mysterious disease about which Americans know little (hence the rumour that Gehrig died of polio). Studies in Guam, where it is especially prevalent, show that the disease is, to some extent, hereditary."Wife Killers" Why do men kill their wives? Dr. Albert Kurland, of the Spring Grove State Hospital in Catonsville, Md., has done a study of 52 psychotic wife killers incarcerated at his hospital found that they were all pretty awful and goes on to offer an explanation: They are "unconscious homosexuals," while their wives control them with guilt in a "sado-masochistic relationship" that needs treating on both sides. The Periscope tells us to watch for a cigarette made of paper to fight lung cancer[?], an oral alternative to insulin, and a "new drug that relieves several forms of mental disease."
"For B.A.s and B.S.'s: Jobs A Trifle Scarcer But Pay's Better" 343,000 graduates, including 281,00 with undergraduate degrees, will compete for fewer jobs than last year, but not that many less (not that there are any statistics on offer) and will earn more to a pretty underwhelming degree according to a Columbia study. (PhDs can expect up to $550 a month!) A box story points out that you need to stay out of New York, which will eat you alive.
Jacques Lipchitz, "Mother and Child" (I, as there appear to be two of the same title, the second being 1941, the date of the first not being obvious to me on the Internet. "Bather," below, is 1917. |
Art, Press, TV-Radio, Newsmakers
Sculptor Jacques Lipschitz gets a show at the MoMA this week, and therefore a story in Art.
KABC Los Angeles has a presenter for its Saturday night horror movie feature who dresses up like a very glamorous (ooh-la-la) vampire, born Maila Nurmi, now going by Mrs. Dean Reisner. Adventure, the CBS-TV/American Museum of Natural History co-production, is very interesting television with Perry Wolf. All the TV comics are making fun of McCarthy now. The Periscope says that CBS is going to do an air war equivalent to NBC's Victory at Sea, while the Kay Kyser show is being revived. TVs will be cheaper next year thanks to the introduction of stamped, printed circuits in place of h and wiring, and bigger thanks to a 21", 90 degree deflection tube which will produce a 270 square inch image, up from 250.
Mrs. Truman, Mrs. Roosevelt, and Mrs. Wilson threw a party in the White House and you're not invited. Thomas Dewey is in the column for fighting with the Brazilian ambassador over coffee. A ballet tour by a troupe of Russian dancers has been cancelled in France because of Dien Bien Phu. Arthur Godfrey launched into a fifteen minute tirade against the press at the end of one of his radio shows last week, and is showing up in public in crutches for unexplained reason. Who put the Benzedrine in Glorious Godfrey's ovaltine? Speaking of aging men with questionable mental health and injuries, Ernest Hemingway says that he was so badly hurt in his recent African safari that doctors feared for his life. All the famous authors got silver medals from the Limited Editions Club of New York, which definitely deserves the free publicity. Alfred Hitchcock is somehow down to 187lbs, "wh put the etc," etc. Gary Crosby will be Bing Crosby' summer replacement, because he is the boss's son! The average life expectancy of Americans is up to 68.8, or 65.9 for men, 71.8 for women. Roger Bannister (because the four minute mile was weeks ago) and the heirs of Horace Dodge are in the column for the usual reason. Lotte Adenauer and Geraldine Page are married, while Heinz Guderian, William March Campbell, Patrick J. McDonald, and Senator Clyde Hoey have died.
The New Films
(Movies has a feature about that unlikely movie star, Jean Paul Sartre)
Columbia's The Miami Story is the usual thrilling crime stories, although Newsweek tries to draw a very questionable moral about how communities should use criminals to bring down other criminals, and gives away the game with a shot of Adele Jergens in shorts and a halter.
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Books
Clement Attlee's autobiography gets a solid review. and Edward Streeter's latest, Mr. Hobbs' Vacation, is as funny as ever. V. S. Pritchett's book about Spain gets another review, Marianne Moore's the Fables of La Fontaine sounds like fun, and Erich Maria Remarque's A Time to Love,and a Time to Die is less than compelling as a treatment of the bombed out Germany of the last years of the war (wasn't he in exile at the time?), but a good love story, so I forgive him.
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This is what a contour projector looks like. |
Letters
S. G. Thigpen writes from Picayune, Mississippi with some badly needed theatre criticism of the Army-McCarthy hearings. (He likes McCarthy.) Bob Wright of Detroit likes Newsweek's coverage because it is unbiased. Seymour Wilson of Chicago is not impressed with Juan Peron. Leslie Gorell of Pennsylvania really likes Ike. Robert Yellowtail of Lodge Grass, Montana, and Gordon Bess, of Canon City, Idaho, liked Raymond Moley's investigation of irrigation and dams in the West because they don't like dams. The President of New York Airways writes to point out that actually, theyand not Sabena were the first to take large amounts of subsidy money and pretend to run a helicopter airline. For Your Information reports on Newsweek's campaign to preserve Quasset School, "America's oldest little red schoolhouse in continuous use," since 1748 in Woodstock, Connecticut. In honour of the Supreme Court striking down segregation, Herman Talmadge is the cover story.
The Periscope reports that the White House is reaching out to the Democrats on bipartisanship, Nixon is going to France this summer (big deal, everyone is going to France this summer!), McCarthy is still on about how if the Army doesn't release all the secret details, he wins, the Administration is talking about putting up a third-party, pro-Eisenhower campaign in the South in '56, Democratic Congressmen are keeping quiet about the segregation ruling because they can't afford to alienate Coloured voters, Ike is freezing out the GOP Congressmen who don't like him, Genevieve de Galard-Terraube will make an American tour as soon as she is flown out of Dien Bien Phu, the army is disgruntled with its T-43 heavy tank now that it is all about mobility. The Defence Department's "White Book" on Russia's role in the Korean and Indo-China wars could have been much longer and more detailed, but the Administration didn't want to whip up war hysteria. The Navy is building a laboratory for defence against atomic, biological, and chemical attack, which will be air-conditioned and air-locked, with emergency personnel shelters and power. The NSC says that if its spring 1953 plan for continuing the Korean war until a "Southeast Asian alliance could be formed," there would have been no Dien Bien Phu. How does that work? Top insiders want to reach out to Southern Democrats, while Senator Lennon of Georgia may get the Bricker Amendment back on the floor.
Hunnicutt, Firepower |
From Germany come reports that the Russians are upgrading to a faster jet than the MiG-15 and turning the 14000 MiG-15s already built to the satellite countries. The Communists are planning to build a "uranium city" in the Aue uranium region of eastern Germany. Army generals and de Gaulle are pushing the French to get out of Indo-China before civil war breaks out in Morocco. NATO is using closed circuit television conferences, while Major General Arthur Trudeau, the US Army intelligence chief, is touring the Middle East, where he finds that Arabs greatly resent British and American support for Israel, but hate communism more. General Naguib is still out. French officer losses at Dien Bien Phu are reported as 350 majors and below, fifteen colonels, one general, out of a total of 600 lost this year, 2200 since the war began. Where Are They Now reports that Christopher Robin Milne has a book shop in Dartmouth, while Rudolf Hess, imprisoned at Spandau, is having rational episodes and even recognised a visitor.
Washington Trends reports that McCarthy is not aiming for a breach with Ike, at least before November. Ike is also moving away from Senator Dirksen and is mulling over what he will do about desegregation. Democrats meanwhile still feel that they are caught on the fence over segregation. There's talk that the Coloured vote saved four Southern states for Stevenson in '52, while Senator Russell's attack on the decision cost him any chance of a presidential run in '56. Adlai Stevenson will definitely run, though.
National Affairs
McCarthy argle-bargle!By Fritzflohrreynolds - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=95963387 |
Southern mountain men like ramp, Newsweek says. It isn't wild garlic, it says. As if Americans would eat wild garlic! Also wild and ornery, the Atomic Energy Commission, where all the other members have had just about enough of Lewis Strauss and his "giveaway" of atomic power to private industry.
International
"Anglo-American Rift: Smoke Without Fire" The Conservatives lost 250 seats in local council elections earlier this month, so they know exactly how far they can go in Southeast Asia, and it isn't very far. Eden is said to be upset at having to basically be the only Western diplomat actually negotiating with the Reds, and he hasn't got very far, either. The French only have 200,000 men in the delta, which is "the size of Connecticut," with 6400 villages. Due to guerilla activity, actual French control is increasingly restricted to the port of Haiphong, where 30,000t of American supplies are unloaded each month, Hanoi, and the sixty-mile road and railway between them. And Hanoi can probably not hold out much longer, because the road can't be secured. Germany is moving towards establishing diplomatic relations with the communist world, Mau Mau raiders entered Tanganyika this week, D. Y. Leonov denounced the Kinsey report in the Soviet magazine Problems in Philosophy this week, and the South Africans marked the Supreme Court desegregation ruling by extending apartheid segregation and striking Coloured voters from the rolls, as Malan's National government has tried to do several times before, being stopped by the Supreme Court until it used parliamentary legislation to get past them, resulting in a parliamentary crisis and oh look, I've reviewed two years of all the stories from South Africa worth printing. Chiang Kai Shek just started another six year term as President of the Republic of China while the pirate war in the South China Sea continues, as the Communists move to expel the Koumintang from the Tachens. Vladimir Petrov is said to have confirmed from Australia that missing British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean are in Moscow. More May Day pictures are out, all of celebrating civilians rather than parading troops.
"Whose Guns for What?" The Swedish freighter, Alfhelm, under a British charter, arrived in Guatemala this week with a load of 2000t of Czech munitions, mostly small arms and ammunition, but supposedly some light field guns, too. The State Department is upset, although it admits that there is no formal embargo, while the Guatemalan government is curious as to why the US is so set on depriving Guatemala of the means to defend itself. US arms are being shipped to Nicaragua and Honduras in response, and Newsweek points out that with a 6000 man army, an air force of a few dozen officers, and a national budget of $74 million, 2000t of arms is quite a bit, and it is all probably a communist plot, especially the strikes in Honduras.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that if the President does authorise a $6 billion increase in defence spending, te business downturn that wasn't going to happen and wasn't so bad and is almost over, will definitely be over.
Pabst Brewing is going into cola, while chicory farmers are profiting from the coffee shortage. The New York Central fight is over, the United Steelworkers are asking for substantial wage increases in he new contract, the textiles sector is improving, and a steady increase in highway building, to be funded by tolls, is sure to boost the national economy. (Newsweek runs down a series of state highway budget increases and notes that, the billion in spending, the Federal highways bill includes $700 million in matching funds for state spending as well as $175 million for the interstates directly.
Science, Medicine, Education
Walter Reed is using an electronic thermometer manufactured by Burlington Instruments for fast and accurate readings. The National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness has some promising new drugs for treating drug-resistent epilepsy cases, glutamine and asparagine.
"The Stubborn Plague" In 1904, tuberculosis took the lives of 188 out of 100,000 in the United States every year. This year, it is 16 per 100,000. Unfortunately, the tuberculosis rate hasn't fallen anywhere near so quickly. There are 400,000 active cases in the country right now, with 110,000 new cases a year. Fifty years ago, the largest group of victims were young women; today, it is men over 40. Up to a quarter of the population has been exposed. New developments include a blood serum test for the disease, a vaccine, and a double drug treatment that might eradicate the disease and not just suppress it (isoniazid plus pyrazinamide), and new treatments that combine heavier and quicker drug courses to reduce the wearing amount of bed rest recommended for tuberculosis treatments.
Columbia University gets a profile on the occasion of its 200th year, although it turns into a profile of President Grayson Kirk, mostly.
TV-Radio, Press, Newsmakers
Genevieve de Galard-Terraube is in the news, which makes Elizabeth Friang jealous, so here is a profile of the thrill-seeking Gaullist journalist. Ecclesia is the only non-censored newspaper in Spain, and Periscope reports rumours that the Los Angeles Daily News is for sale, that five of the newsmen that Senator McCarthy has threatened to subpoena on charges that they "advised" the Army, will refuse to appear, and horror comics are hitting back at Dr. Frederick Wertham, who explained to a Senate hearing that they cause juvenile delinquency. No, they say, in fact Dr. Wertham causes communism! A fine pickle, I must say!
"A Trickle of Culture" We look at the long and painful process of establishing all those educational TV stations for which the FCC reserved channels. Five that are actually up and broadcasting provide good models for people trying to follow in their footsteps. At NBC, they are worried that "people are turning off their sets," which is why NBC's fall season will be "spectacular."
Billy Graham, Gone With the Wind, the Marquess of Milford-Haven, Charles Lindbergh, Herbert Hoover, Ray Jenkins, and Irene Castle Enzinger are in the column for the usual reasons. Bertrand Russell and Lady Astor are celebrating birthdays, Betty Hutton is divorced, Louis Stark, Fred Waller, Andrew McNally, Gideon Seymour, and Chief Bender have died.
New Films
The French Line (RKO) is a Technicolor/3D project whose basic point seems to be that Jane Russell has a nice figure. It has been subject to controversy, but "is more to be pitied than censored." three Coins in a Fountain is a love letter from Fox to the city of Rome. So it has three girls (Maggie McNamara, Jean Peters, and Dorothy McGuire) and Rome on top of it, so beat that, Jane Russell! Man with a Million sees Arthur Rank send Gregory Peck to London with a million dollar bank draft. Say, I wondered how these movies got made! It's in Technicolor and is supposed to be funny, but they got the wrong director for it, but Jane Griffiths has a fetching debut.
Books
Aviation Week, 31 May 1954
News Digest reports that the F-102 and Grumman F9F-8 Cougar are closer to service and that the latest Navy Viking test hit a new altitude record. Brigadier General Milton Arnold (USAF, ret) has dropped his alienation-of-affection suit against George M. Bunker, president of Glenn L. Martin, over his adopted son, Charles E. Ford, and has announced his marriage to Dorothy D. Michael. That's bizarre. Industry Observer reports that the Army thinks that atomic artillery has replaced atomic short range missiles, that the variable air inlet of the Republic F-103 removes the need for a separate ramjet, tht the RCN has received its 3 Piasecki helicopters, that GE will produce B-52 defensive fire controls to backstop Arma, that average USAF aircraft maintenance cost was just under $20,000/year in 1954, that the Defence Department has ordered the Air Force and Navy to adopt a standardised aircraft number designation already, that a B-52 needs between 50,000 and 90,000 spare parts in store, that the DC-7 can hold up to 20,000lbs in cargo.
Robert Botz reports for Aviation Week that "Red Surprise: 15,000lb Thrust Jets" The Russians are well behind SAC in terms of deploying jet bombers, and are following stupid old British airframe design approaches rather than smart new American ones, but you've got to hand it to the biggest new jet engine around, which was heavily influenced by German axial engine design.
William J. Coughlin reports for Aeronautical Engineering about "How Convair Idea Men Map the Future" Idea men are everywhere these days! Specifically, Convair's assistant to the President for planning, Thomas Lanphier, has a ten man office (plus a stenographer), and they sit around talking about the future all day when they're not flying off to hang around Curtis LeMay's office, talking about the future. What kind of ideas do they have? Good ones. The best ones. Also see David A. Anderton's "They Sell Analytical Engineering," which is about the forty men at Arde Associates, who have invented the brand new concept that no-one ever thought of before of consulting on engineering problems under contract.
"Wright Reveals Production Activities" I bet you were wondering what Curtis Wright was up to now that no-one wants to buy their planes or engines. Lots of stuff! The foundry is still going, the electronics division builds simulators, and the Marquette division has pump contracts.Speaking of silly corporate plumping pieces, Philip Klass is off to Balco to report for Avionics on the "New Capacitor [that] Shows Long Life at 200C" It is a hermetically sealed glass tube with a metal coil in it, but the details are top secret, although much of the rest of the quite long article are devoted to the extraordinary performance numbers it generates. R. B. Shulters of the Wire-Wrap Division of Keller Tool writes to contest Philip Klass' recent article, in which Klass intimated that the new Wire Wrap connection isn't the best thing since sliced bread. He's wrong! He misunderstands solid-state stress diffusion! Airtron has new waveguide components, various companies have power supplies, mag-amplifiers, and (according to Filter Centre) silicon transistors, more capacitors, radio remote control for Regulus missiles, better radar, and better vacuum tubes on the market.
Richard Balentine reports for Air Transport that "Turboprop Transport Battle Heightens," by which is meant that while Capital Airlines is buying the excellent Viscount, some study says that the Convair 340 Turboliner would be cheaper, if it existed. (Convair will start selling conversion kits next summer.)
Letters
The Engineer for 21 and 28 May, 1954
For the 21st, (Not the Seven Day-) Journal reports on parties at the Inst. Elec. Eng. (they have 20,000 members now, but it's still not enough!), Institution of Engineers-in-Charge, and Newcomen Society. A report on hydraulic research in 1953 is out, and a conference on Large Electric Systems is on in Paris, and there's still time to fly over and take in the final session. For the 28th the RAe.S hears its Wright Memorial Lecture, with A. E. Russell telling the assembled that the turbofan was the future. The Locomotive Manufacturers of Great Britain have a party, the Inst. Mech. Eng another one (there's a lof of them and they need parties!), the Scottish Industries Fair opens so that there is finally something to do in Scotland, and the Road Research Laboratory issues its annual report. Sir Harold Hartley's talk on "Production in the Year 2000" has some gross numbers about raw materials used that seem like they're a bit optimistic in assuming that we know what materials will be used, and confidently predicts no energy shortage, but problems with water.
"Some Recent Swiss Hydro-Electric Schemes" runs on the 21st and 28th, while Edward Livesay is still kicking around France riding locomotives and filling pages. Isn't there anyone in Victoria who misses him?
"Gauge and Tool Exhibit" runs on the 21st. The Ministry of Supply has assembled some absolutely thrilling new industrial measuring things.
"Plutonium Factory at Sellafield, Cumberland" Now that it has been running half a decade, you can go and tour the factory, under Ministry supervision, and as long as you wear one of those full-body protection suits. This is an old-fashioned production plant where the fission heat is just thrown into the ocean, and the uranium cylinders are treated as the raw feedstock in an extraction process that separates the uranium, plutonium, and other fission products by first dissolving them in good old nitric acid and then separating them in a fractionating column. Sellafield ends up having to dispose of the "highly radioactive" fission byproducts, but given how little plutonium is produced, there can't be a great amount of them. The separated uranium is reprocessed into feedstock while the plutonium is sent on to its final destination. There is also low-level effluent produced in the cooling water, which has to be retained in pools for a year or two.
There was also a visit to a "Discharge Lamp Factory" on the 21st, the Coryton Oil Refinery, and the German Industries Fair (continued). The lamp factory is a BTH plant in Leicestershire that makes high-power sodium discharge lamps, for streetlights, maybe? The writeup of the Coryton plant goes into the work of refining crude oil into various kinds of car-ready gasoline in some detail. It also explains how much electricity is used. (It's a lot!) This week's choice of exhibits to visit in Hamburg is big diesel engine makers like MAN. The Engineer is particularly interested in all the supercharging they do now. On the 28th we go out for some sun or its north German facsimile and look at big cranes, locomotives, and open-pit mining equipment before ducking inside for some machine tools and a log band saw. On the 28th we begin a visit to the International Railway Congress, 1954, with a discussion of the prospectus and a look at some new locomotives.
Leaders
"The Happy Scholar" The Engineer pays tribute to the late H. W. Dickinson of the Newcomen Society, who was also the subject of the Newcomen party described in the Journal for the 21st. It seems he invented the history of technology? (Speaking of, the Science Museum has a new display on the history of the gasmaking and distributing industry!) "The Essential Problem of the Hydrogen Bomb" highlights the recent "official leak" of a study confirming Sir George Thomson's hypothesis that a hydrogen bomb with the right, carefully chosen metal in its external casing could be a threat to all life on Earth, since some metals, when they absorb an errant neutron or two, become very dangerously radioactive for a very long time. Anyway, the unnamed culprit turns out to be cobalt, and The Engineer asks why we don't just ban the things. Leaders for the 28th look at how road improvements need to be done, but also carefully planned, to improve the speed of London traffic, and then at coal. Another coal crisis is just a matter of time! I know we've been saying that for six years, but it's true!Letters for the 21st has a missive from A. B. Buckley, who is very cross with the British Standards Institute for changing the long-established size of bib-taps and stop-taps for water from 0.888" to 0.947" (+/-0.0038). On the 28th we get quite a long and technical letter from J. F. Cooke responding to and acknowledging criticism of his paper on "Regime Flow in a Silt-Carrying Channel," which apparently gilded the lily a bit with math. H. G. Conway and Geoffrey King continue the conversation on unified standards of screw threads.
On the 21st, we summarise discussion of a paper on "Rapid Starting Technique for Power Stations" given by J. S. Hall to a recent session of the Inst. Mech. Eng. The conclusion is that "steam dumping" is not required in modern plants with good steam temperature control, and if you get rid of it, starting is much smoother. This is pretty important for the transition from low-load to high-load periods. The discussants seem skeptical. There is also a precis if the introductory remarks by W. H. Glanville of the Road Research Laboratory to the "Symposium on Concrete Quality and Mix Design."
Our American Correspondent launches a multipart look at the "American Mariner Class Cargo Ships" on the 21st. The 35 ships of the class are being built now and are steamships.
On the 28th, H. Goldenberg, "Calculation of Transient Heating in Single-Core Cable Dielectric" is a featured article, showing a mathematical technique for calculating same, while Professor W. A. Tuplin contributes one of his occasional "How to do engineering" articles, "Sifting A Report." He shows how to turn masses of reported data into something meaningful, essentially by graphing it.
Also on the 28th, the monthly Metallurgical Topics summarises papers on the seizing of metals, the hydrogen embrittlement of austenitic steels, and internal stresses due to flame hardening (with welding torches.)
"Improved Television Camera" This unsigned article comes from Marconi, but is an unusual advertorial because of its length and the practical importance of better TV cameras in this exciting modern age of television. They are lighter, easier to transport and operate, and have better image, especially colour. Speaking of advertorials, the usual assortment of heavy machine tools and glorified nuts and bolts. ("Torque limiter.")
"Gantry-Mounted Linear Accelerator for X-Ray Therapy" Self-explanatory, I think.
"Automatic System for Mass Production of Electronic Devices" is a visit to Project Tinkertoy.
An unsigned article from GEC describes "High Density Tungsten Alloy." It's sintered for easier working. More advertorials look at "High-Speed Automatic Gear Hobbing Machinery" from David brown and Chesterfield Tubes' work on extruding stainless steel sections. The eight shorter ones need to pay for more page space before I will seriously describe a fork lift or an air filter!
The Ministry of Transport/Motor Industry Research Association's new auto research lab is open
Industrial and Labour Notes shows the general upswing in British business continuing, Labour having some fun with the idea of Britain importing coal (800,000t last year) now that they are in opposition, some coverage of strikes, and more worries about effluent in water. On the 28th, the same again, with clouds on the horizon as the fall in import raw material prices may be coming to an end. Shell is drilling for underwater oil in the South China Sea, the Gas Council for natural gas in Britain. Launches and Trial Trips has seven ships, four motor, one steam turbine, two compound steam; two tankers, two cargo ships, one cablelaying vessel, one cargo and passenger, one cargo and ore. Three are being built in France. Only one on the 28th, a French steam passenger ship, the Laos.
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