Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.
Postblogging Technology, July 1954, I: Red Meat and Free Men
Nurses of the Experimental Civil Defence Mobile Column like motorcycles. Do they get to ride motorcycles, or is just their despatch riders?
R_.C_.,
Nakusp,
Canada
Dear Father:
It is so wonderful that you will be living in the lakehouse this summer! I am sorry that we will not be able to visit, as James' leave for my trip to Montreal can't be extended to two weeks thanks to Farnborough preparations. (The Fairey "The F-102 Can Eat My Dust" is being talked up as a static display, but I don't think that it is going to be anywhere close to ready.)
Around here, meat rationing ends this week, and while I'm not sure how much difference it is going to make in daily life, it seems like some kind of patriotic duty to go out (or in) for roast beef like a free and patriotic Englishman could never do under those socialists. Or, on the other hand, it's some kind of disgusting display of complete loss of self-control. But as that verges suspiciously on vegetarianism if not outright Bolshevism, the roast beefers are winning the day. Just have a look at the latest edition of my beloved "Schweppsshire" ad series. If only poor Orwell were alive to see us now. (Except wasn't he a vegetarian? I should look that up. Doesn't seem like the healthiest of lifestyles if you're going to farm in the Outer Hebrides!)
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
The Economist, 3 July 1954
Leaders
"First Aid for the Alliance" That's when a smarmy magazine offers excuses for the kind of tough-talking nonsense that Dulles pulled after the President and Churchill issued their admittedly pointless statement. Continuing in the same theme, The Economist explains that the end of food rationing is great and finally the British can eat more meat than they did in the Thirties. (On average, as it does not care to mention.) And it really is "freedom," and going off rationing isn't going backwards at all.
"Japan's Place" I know it is so very hard, but we have to trade with Japan or they'll go Red. The theatre business in Britain gets a Leader that follows up on the Equity survey that shows that far too many actors are unemployed or under-employed and the failure of a parliamentary effort to break up Hugh Beamont's Tennent Organisation, which two things are linked and I would explain why if I thought for one second you cared.
Notes
Chou En Lai has visited India without causing an outbreak of Communism, but there's still time. The French are feeling joy and hope at the thought of Mendes-France getting them out of Indo-China, into a lasting government, and the European Defence Community. Parliament is all in a tizzy over the bill to raise MP's pay, but Labour is the worst. Sir Winston Churchill is probably quitting soon, and a good thing. Talk of "peaceful coexistence" with the Soviet Union forgetst hat the Reds are going to take over the world any second now. Sweden is practicaly part of the western alliance, and that's great. The situation in Guatemala, we can finally concede, is pretty awful, the fact that the rebels' airplanes were allowed to operate from neighbouring countries is an embarrassment, and the newly installed military rulers better not go back on the social reforms of the last ten years or it will be all the worse for Central America. Housing subsidies are worse than The Economist is willing to say, and involve giving out too much money to poor people. Chrichel Down is some kind of British scandal. It's great that British Headquarters,Land Forces, Middle East, is out of the Canal Zone and moved to Cyprus. A Note gets a bit further into British meat production. There is a Chinese trade delegation in London, and Oxbridge should be grateful for all the money that humane and progressive tycoons like Cecil Rhodes and now Ernest Oppenheimer have invested in scholarship that will help us understand Africa a bit better. The Rhineland election shows that Germans might be cooling on the Christian Democrats, the ECSE is lingering rather than pushing boldly forward.
From The Economist of 1854, "Want of Rags," is a bit of news, a bit of editorial, to the effect that the shortage of rags for papermaking in both Britain and America shows the forward and upward progress of progress as well as the fact that there aren't enough rags, which, until the mass production of paper began, were a real nuisance.
Letters
George Brown points out how silly the arguments that raising wages for farm labourers will cause inflation and that the farmers will just fire all the workers actually are. Charles Jansson writes to ask the English speaking world to lay off of Mendes-France over the EDC, as he has enough on his plate. P. T. Bauer of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, explains why Our Accra Correspondent's argument for continuing the current low price for cocoa paid to cocoa producers is mistaken. R. McKinnon-Wood, Chair of the Education Committee of the London County Council, explains why it is not, in fact, discriminating against bright children. Colin Clark thinks we subsidise university students too much these days, especially the ones taking useless degrees like English. Ancrum Evans thinks that the traffic problem in London could be solved by creating an authority to squeeze street parking for all it will bear. Ernest Meili of the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation shares an anecdote about how some companies which cannot be named, but whose initials are "BEA," are not getting on with the "practical convertibility of sterling."
Books
John Plamenatz's very dense book about the relationship between German Marxism and Russian Communism gets a very long review. The first volume of Edward Spear's memoir of the Second World War, Assignment to Catastrophe, Vol 1. Prelude to Dunkirk, is out. The Economist finds it engaging but not entirely satisfying. Several recent books on cricket get a group review, and The Economist quite liked O. H. K. Spate's India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography.
"Checking the McCarthy Myth" Back in 1950, Senators Margaret Chase-Smith and Millard Tydings were McCarthy's main enemies in the senate. Chase Smith published a manifesto calling him a an agent of "calumny, ignorance, bigotry, and smear." Tydings investigated him. McCarthy went on to campaign against Tyding, Tyding lost, and the Senate GOP decided that fighting McCarty was electoral suicide, and that they had to go along with him no matter how much they disliked him. Now that Chase-Smith has easily seen off a "McCarthyite" challenge in the Maine senatorial primary, it is time for the GOP to reevaluate the McCarthy myth. Or admit that they liked him all along! In spite of Mr. Eden saying that it was time for a "Locarno of Southeast Asia," which is obviously some kind of appeasing nonsense, Washington has found more than $3 billion in foreign aid to pay non-Communist Southeast Asians to stay non-Communist. It's a "good start," says The Economist, while going on to explain that the Americans buying British planes for the RAF and the Europeans was always a strange thing to do, and now that there is mounting unemployment in the American industry again, of course that $75 million has been scrapped. As with the realisation, now that it is too late, that something awful was happening in Guatemala, The Economist now notices that something awful is happening at the AEC. Can the United States really afford to limit itself to atomic or defence scientists who are impeccably politically correct? "Fashion Observer" reports on increasingly informal American summer menswear with the attention-grabbing headline, "Pink Shirts and Plaid Shorts." Observer likes colour, but not like that! It's because of the heatwave, you see. American business executives have to ride the train to work in skyscrapers and they are really, really HOT! "Please let us wear walking shorts and we'll stop talking about silk brocade sports jackets!" The Pacific Northwest Pipeline Commission is to be allowed to build a natural gas pipeline to the California fields lest the Northwest be left dependent on Canadian gas. Canada is not to be allowed to sell gas in America, and that means no pipeline from Peace River to Vancouver, as it would not be economical, and it is all Canada's fault for not allowing a transborder pipeline to export Albertan gas. The Texas Railroad Commission, which his, as you know, in charge of such things, has cut Texan oil production quotas because there is just too much oil out there. The Eisenhower Administration is officially out of the way of airline mergers.
The World Overseas
The Economist is disappointed with the Turkish elections and deems the Turks much too complacent about their national finances. We get a summary of the five-power talks at Lancaster House that "brought the world no nearer to the day when genuine disarmament is possible." It's the Reds' fault! Rumours about Australia's balance of payments getting out of balance are just that. We get a very long look at the composition of the Chinese State Planning Committee, which seems far too taken with "machine age romanticism" in the form of grand plans for railways and the like. We go on to look at the lesser members of the Committee, their background, and what that tells us about likely near-future plans for heavy industry, taxes, and agriculture. Since Sir Winston Churchill first rehabilitated "Locarno" in his 11 May 1953 parliamentary speech, it has come to be seen as a golden age of interwar peace, and with Anthony Eden is talking bout a new Locarno in Southeast Asia, it is time to look at Locarno again. It worked! Yes, it didn't work when Hitler set out to destroy it, but that is Hitler's fault. There's a headline that reads "Italian Monarchist Collapse," which seems to imply that the idea that anyone can, or should, care about Italian monarchists can be stretched into two full columns. A very long feature on Pakistan's new dictatorship, and why it exists. (The country's economy is in shambles because it doesn't make sense as a country. News!)
The Business World
"The Cost of Quiet" After three pages on private savings, presumably on the twin subjects of whether they can be, or are, being measured correctly, and why there isn't enough, we move onto the June decision by the Government to protect aircraft manufacturers against civil action over noise nuisances. Protests used to be confined mainly to London Airport, but the experiments with running helicopters out of the South Bank have given cause for wider concerns. It is also leading to more attention to the complaints of residents around aircraft factories. London Airport is protected from civil suits already; the factories are not, and while the Government action is accompanied by the Government taking responsibility for alleviating the noise, there is doubt about how practical that is, and how quickly it can be achieved. You would think that there would be more talk about the Conway as an example of a way of making the engine itself quieter!
Business Notes
If you cared about the Savoy Hotel takeover dispute, it's over now. Finance, taxes, and the European Payment Union take up the first several pages, but we get a bit about production advancing 6.5% over last year, although even with the boom, some employers, like steel re-rollers, are still on short time. The Economist is angry and indignant about the American choice of more expensive Westinghouse electrical dynamos for two dam projects in the Pacific Northwest over English Electric bids, but that is old news and we're only rehearsing it again because the Americans have stuck their noses into the Rhodesia Railways with a £3.5 million loan to buy American equipment. Tin and rubber are having good weeks, the reason that the British consumer isn't paying the price for the increase in cocoa prices isn't that Cadbury and other buyers have a huge, fat margin between sellers and buyers, but rather that everyone is substituting. The Hawker Hunter is cleared for service and deliveries will now ramp up, at least until the American money runs out, if it does, as the Senate might still reverse the House cuts. The Gas Council has found natural gas while drilling in Surrey. The Geological Survey's search for uranium finds "slight . . . deposits" in Devon and Cornwall that are too large to be ignored but too small to justify an ore treatment plant. The Empire's uranium prospects are best in Northern Rhodesia. The presence of uranium in road pavements in Worcestershire which have attracted comment now that everyone is wandering around with Geiger counters is due to uranium in the local coal. The Economist reports on the Ministry of Fuel and Power's survey of steam and power usage for industry in about the same detail as in such of The Engineer's editorial as I have covered. (That is, maybe there is a big story running there now. I should check!) About 45% of coal mined in Britain is used to raise steam, and the survey, which was intended to assess how efficiently it was being done, is already leading some firms to look at the state of their plant.
Flight, 2 July 1954
Leaders
"What Noise Annoys?" Flight thinks that something should be done about noise, but on the other hand it is progress so all the whiners can just shut up.
From All Quarters reports that the first Jet Provost has flown, that A. V. Roe was down at Brooklands this week to talk about the old days, before the war, that a Government order for the V.1000 had been placed as the replacement for the Handley Page Hastings as the long range transport of the British services. The V-1000 is not partially complete and you can see it if at Weybridge, at least if you're Flight. It is 146ft long, bigger than any transport exceptt he Convair C-99, and will have a span of 140ft and a height of 38ft 6". Although the design owes much to the Valiant, it is much bigger, and the greater angle of sweepback indicates a higher planned cruising speed. Power units are still the Conway, and they are still to be buried in the inner wing. The Conway's slightly quieter operation (because so much air "bypasses" the compressor-turbine axle, and soaks up the sound) isn't mentioned, perhaps because to get the full advantage you would want to design the engine with an even higher bypass, and this would make it fatter, and impractical to "bury," as well as reduce power to the advantage of economy, and the Conway's two orders so far are for the V-1000 and the Victor, so split between applications calling for power and economy. The prototype V-1000 should be at Farnborough in 1955, and will be the backbone of Transport Command. Five V-1000s, Lord De L'Isle points out, could have an infantry battalion in Kenya in eighteen hours. There is also an order for more Beverleys.
In the United States, USAF helicopters have been spending the weekend bringing food to 262 rail passengers stranded by floods in West Texas, John Murray has put off the first flight demonstration of his shaft drive helicopter, F. G. Miles is putting a new high-aspect ratio Hurel-Dubois wing on its Aerovan, and intendds to license produce the HD 32. Representatives of the Australian Department of Supply and Defence Production have been to Crichton to see Handley Page Victor production, which, Handley Page assures us, is "more stringent than for any other V-bomber." The 30mm Aden cannon confirmed as the new armament for RAF fighters has a 1250rpm firing rate. Crawford Gordon, the chairman of Avro Canada, during his visit to Britain, shared details about the CF-105, which will be a twin-engined delta-wing fighter with a new engine. Aviation Week is reporting a 52,000lb auw and 20,000lb from each engine. Gordon will only say that the engine is the most advanced axial currently in development, largely because of the extensive use of titanium, which the company has just succeeded in forging in prototype with a surface so good that only polishing is needed to finish the blade. Convair has a similarly high opinion of the R3Y-2 Tradewind, which can carry up to 103 troops, or four 155mm howitzers, or three trucks right up to the beach, discharge them through the nose-opening door, and then back off the beach and be airborne again after a 30 second run at the highest speed of any propeller-driven plane, and also it has an extruded-magnesium deck and a self-contained crew cabin at the top and it slices bread, too! I would like to see it do any of that. It would be the first flying boat to actually be a boat!
Here and There reports that Hawker is getting the first mobile sound muffling screens from the Ministry of Supply, and we hear more about that giant Bell passenger helicopter. Rhodesia has an air force, Silver City's new airport at Lydd is something else.
"Lydd Airport features at the end of the 1961 Hammer film, Weekend at Lulu." but not in this clip.
There's a bit on gliding, and on the new Swiss basic trainer, and aircraft modelling, and then the Meteor NF12 night fighter, the latest in the line of funny-looking Meteors with long noses for the radar, which would be the interesting part if it wasn't Top Secret.
Aircraft Intelligence reports that the F-100 night fighter is still going to be the F-107, that the Republic F-105 is still going to be a plane, that the single-ski version of the Convair Sea Dart is coming along still, that the prototype Lockheed XC-130 will leave the factory soon, that Brodeurs and Vautours progress in France.
The Hurel Dubois HD31 takes Flight out for a spin. Terence Mullaly visits the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Aviation Artists.
D. L. Brown writes to explain about the Miles Messenger. G. A. Thorne and A. Jenkins have opinions about The Dam Busters. Harold Nicholson is upset about a story in the sunday papers that he assumes we've all read. "Briton in the UK" finds security screening there to be wearing. E. J. Newcombe recalls the old days, before the war.
We hear about the ongoing Leduc ramjet interceptor experiments, a summary of the Air Registration Board's annual report (it has been working on aviation gas safety standards and has been looking at flight and pilots' manuals).
"Indefatigable Helmsman" Maybe the Prime Minister should retire. (During this week's debate on overseas information services, it came out that the Cabinet still doesn't have a plan to organise them, eleven months after it decided to do so.) -Also, "Seato" isn't much of an answer to Southeast Asian security if Asians won't join it, the end of meat rationing might have downsides, and Mendes-France is on the KNIFE-EDGE in North Africa.
Six daughters, and not one wanted to go out to India with him.
From The Economist of 1854, we have "Materials for Paper," which points out that the shortage of raw materials for paper is more about cost than material, since there are plenty of substitutes for rags. The advantage of rags is that they are waste; so there must be more clothing waste; so there must be moe clothing; so there must be cheaper substitutes for cotton, flax, and hemp. It's five years to Bagehot taking over this paper, and all I can say is that he must have been just about the smartest silver-tongued devil to ever walk the Earth to save this paper's reputation after Wilson was done with it. To save you the bother of looking it up in case it isn't on the tip of your tongue already, Voith has at this point been selling wood fibre paper for at least five years, although the business would not really take off until after Wilson's death. (Of dysentery, because he refused to leave Calcutta during his first monsoon in Bengal, because he thought that summering in the mountains was for the lazy and slothful.)
Notes
France! EDC! German rearmament! And now that we have that out of the way, "Return to Geneva" covers Molotov's abrupt return to Geneva after Eden's daring statement in Washington that some peace in Indo-China would go down well right now, even at the cost of allowing the Viet Minh to keep what no-one is willing to take back from them. This so far shows that the skeptics were wrong to think that the Geneva Conference wouldn't reassemble, so maybe they are wrong about a settlement, too. Mendes-France has repeated that he will resign if there is no cease-fire by the 20th, and that his last act will be to introduce a Bill into the Assembly requiring National Servicemen to go to Indo-China. So the delegates have ten days to come up with a plan, or the Fourth Republic will fall. Speaking of which, yet another Economist sketch map shows the absolutely unsustainable position of the French in Hanoi once the rains end in September. Americans are starting to worry that there are a billion dollars in US war materiel to be lost in Hanoi in a "super-Dunkirk," and more men are needed to even hold the lines against the eight divisions the Viet Minh can now field during the evacuation than are available, and local cease-fire talks, supposedly contingent on Geneva, are underway at Trung Gia. Speaking of endless wars, Gaitskell is now certain to beat Bevan for the treasurership of the Labour Party, which is linked to a TUC vote expected to be in favour of Attlee's policy of supporting German rearmament. MPs have decided that they need to be sensible and vote for their pay raise. Americans continue to be determined not to be sensible about recognising Red China. Our current global financial order continues to make no sense, and really should be fixed, and as long as we're a eight-year-old girl wishing for a pony, let's make it one that can deal with countries that run persistent trade surpluses. The Russians are publishing spy thrillers now, which probably goes to show that Communism is awful. Everyone thinks that the Conservatives are playing politics by trying to deport Joseph Cort back to the United States. The House debate on civil defence shows that Parliament hasn't given up on it yet, and is going ahead with organising the "mobile columns" that will descend upon the places hit by multi-megaton hydrogen bombs and . . . Which is why we're arguing.
Image courtesy of Robin Reid via Bourne Hall Museum Source: https://eehe.org.uk/74243/civil-defence-mobile-column/
"Confusion in Kenya" European settlers in Kenya are still beside themselves over the new Constitution because they figure that it is the beginning of the end. The Economist points out that they depend on the British taxpayer for their internal security, so maybe they'd better just shut up and sit down while they can still enjoy half a loaf. Let's hope that the settlers see the future more clearly than The Economist. Also, Dag Hammarskjöld sure has a job and a half at the Uno, which the magazine has decided shall be reorganised and given a new charter next year, because why should that be so hard? South Africa is having a pretty good year, but various troubling indicators show that it is too soon to celebrate. British courts have handed down the latest "It's art, not smut" ruling. It's a triumph for literature, freedom, progress, all that good stuff! The BMA still doesn't want general practitioners on salary. Vladimir Petrov revealed to the Australian royal commission investigating his claims that the Soviet embassy had a special desk in charge of disseminating "disinformation." "One can only be grateful to the Soviet authorities for providing such a badly needed term." Britain is going to open a new prison hospital for psychopaths, because what else can you do with them?
Letters
Arthur Skeffington has learned points to make about electoral boundary reform. The Press Attache of the Pakistan High Commission writes to oint out that Pakistan is so a real country. Kofi Baako of the Convention Party Information Bureau says that the Party still has good reason to oppose the "reunification" of Togoland. T. Zavalani points out that communism is awful. J. K. Adair defends Liu Shao-ch'i's importance to China and Communism.
Books
Philip Mitchell's African Afterthoughts points out what a great job Mitchell did as colonial governor in East Africa. Nevil Shute's Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer explains how R101 came to grief by way of telling us why the "private enterprise" R100 was a relative success. He then goes on to explain that he helped found Airspeed and became a novelist because there were too many smarter engineers at Vickers for him to have much hope of promotion, which is charming, but he's the big name novelist, so who is laughing now? He also spends enough words on his time at Airspeed for the reviewer to conclude that he also wasn't much of a businessman, but that he doesn't say. George Williamson has finally given us the inside scoop with Inside Buchmanism. Given that this is another way of saying "Moral Rearmament," my absolute fondest hope is that someone reading this in fifty years will think to themselves, "what?" The reviewer, however, takes Moral Rearmament quite seriously, so great big "yawn" from Ronnie, there! Charles Morazé's Les trois ages du Bresil is probably a pretty good book about Brazil, but let's not forget why this review is here, which is that smart Economist readers know French! T. Cauter and J. S. Downham have The Communication of Ideas, which is the latest smart and entertaining book about writing smartly and entertainingly until we get to its "index of intercommunication," which is just silly, although credit for the idea that people communicate based on their shared reading, radio-listening, and television-and-film watching, because that's how I do it! Ursula K. Hicks proves that women can write worthy books about that sort of thing too with British Public Finances: Their Structure and Development, 1880--1952. Cecil Chisholm's Retire and Enjoy It is a good guide.
American Survey
"Washington Weekend" Americans are crazy. On the other hand, if you can leave Red China out of it, the Eisenhower Administration seems to be on the right road on farm price supports. The Justice Department's antitrust action against United Fruit is some kind of apology for Guatemala. No-one really understands where the President's tax bill is now. McCarthy has been in seclusion since the end of the Army-McCarthy Hearings, while the Senate and now the Hoover Commission manoeuvred to clip his wings. We will see if he can get his CIA investigation underway when he reappears.
"Who Wants Machine Tools?" The US machine tool industry is over-producing again, and is keen for accelerated depreciation to get more tools, especially "specials," into industry hands.
"Repairing the Slums" Congress is still fighting over the President's Housing Bill, even though, of 39 million private dwellings in the United States, in 1950, 7.4 million had no private flush toilet, 8.3 million had no bath, and 2 million were overcrowded. It is generally accepted that about a third are substandard and that five million are slums. Chicago alone has 22 square miles of blighted areas and 56 of "conservation" areas. But most American public action on housing is directed towards private home ownership. Congress has never allowed funding for more than 35,000 public housing units a year, income requirements for public housing are too stringent, and too much "urban renewal" replaces slums with middle-class housing the poor can't afford, which is why the new Republican Housing Administrator is talking about going it one better with "total urban renewal," which will use zoning laws to force landlords to invest in their stock.
The World Overseas
Italy is in sad shape politically. France! EDC! Fourth Republic political paralysis! A conference in Rangoon can't agree on whether state enterprise is the right solution for backward areas.
"Canalising the Moselle" The Moselle is the largest Rhine tributary not yet canalised, and talk about doing it has been going on since the Congress of Vienna. (That's a long time.) The problem lies in getting all the countries it flows through to agree, and the current scheme to do 167miles covers stretches in Germany, Luxembourg, and France. Hydroelectric development will lead to 13 barrages generating 750 million kWh, and navigation will be improved allowing 300t barges to ascend the river to Thionville, important given that there are all those steelworks in the midst of the coalfields, but Germany and France have to agree. A long look at culture and propaganda in the new China follows.
"Big Ruhr and Little Ruhr" Ruhr industrialist have long worried about the arrival of American competition, but now they have a new fear, the Soviet-led development of the Silesian brown coal fields. These are now largely unified under the Polish flag but beyond that there is Soviet control, which the industrialists fear will result in the development of a "little Ruhr" flooding western Europe and the world with low-cost Red steel. The only solution is the cartelisation of Ruhr producers, so won't anti-trust authorities get out of the way? The Economist points out that this is all nonsense, that the coal in question is just soft brown lignite and that the publicists are counting Soviet bloc steel production in unhelpful ways by lumping together crude and rolled steel, and basically counting a lot of ingots twice over. A good thing that no other alarmists have ever done such things!
The Business World
"Rayon Grows Rich" Speaking of new fabrics for poor people (I'm such a snob!), the industry is doing pretty well!
Business Notes
Skipping the finance again, we come to "No Excuses About Coal" Sir Hubert Houldsworth told the TUC this week that while we can all agree that the industry is getting the right number of new recruits, they are still not all going to the right places and workers aren't increasing on the coal face enough to make the extra 4 million tons needed by the end of the year without an extraordinary effort, so it is time for coal miners to scramble. Again! Meanwhile the unions are demanding too much "levelling up pay"and for less of a link between pay and productivity. On the other side of the equation, the country produced about 4% more steel this year than last, 9.1 million tons, of which consumers only took 8.6 million tons, so now would seem to be the time to worry about "Peak Demand for Steel," but actually it is just a matter of meeting a changing market, as the motor industry can't get enough cold-reduced steel. Harry Ferguson is out of the combine he himself forged with Massy-Harris and is looking to get into small cars. The finances of Associated British Picture Corporation show that all is still not right in the industry in spite of the company now being in the black. The Ministry of Transportation continues to struggle with the denationalisation of road haulage. The last development council, the Furniture Development Council, published its sixth annual report this week. It has finished its safety standardisation efforts, so what is it doing to justify its industry dues? The highly unorthodox new diesel engine that Rootes is making for the Commer range is worth a look. Marchon Products has just refinanced a development built around a £500,000 hydrogenation plant in the West Cumberland area to produce 4000t of fatty alcohols for detergents, pharmaceuticals, and plasticisers, replacing oil and coal tar products with ones made from vegetable oils. Hopefully it will be able to cope with the stiff competition in the industry! Wool sales are "quiet."
Flight, 9 July 1954
Leaders
"Fixes --Or in a Fix?" Air navigation aids need to be better.
From All Quarters reports that various RAF fighters are making sonic booms when they shouldn't, in part because they go faster than cautious RAF reporting indicated they could. Congress doesn't want to buy British planes for Britain (or other foreigners), continued. The latest reorganisation of the USAF in the Pacific gets some reporting, along with a rare mention of Felix's very responsible position. The poor man needs to hire Arleigh Burke's publicist! We visit the Blackpool factory where Hawker is building the Hunter. Australian and American sources describe the testing of a 3000lb British beam-riding ground-to-air missile with some kind of terminal homing. The RCN has ordered a British approach radar for its Shearwater base.
There are pictures of assorted planes blowing up Salisbury Down, but I can't be bothered.
"Weapons on West Down" The "four services" have put on a spectacular demonstration at the West Down Range at Salisbury for the RAF Staff College and the Joint Services Staff College. (The fourth service is the Belgians.)
Here and There reports that the entire crew of a BOAC Stratocruiser, Monarch, saw a flight of UFOs 150 miles south of Goose Bay last week. Another offshore contract for Sea Hawks has been let.
"Atomic Power: Notes on Some of the Problems Involved and NACA Research" Flight takes three whole paragraphs to explain how an atomic reactor works before getting to the point that you can use them to produce heat as well as plutonium (and tritium, don't forget the tritium!). Can you use the heat to produce thrust? You can! For one, you can just eject the spent air from an air-cooled reactor, which is a bit crazy, since the neutrons that come out of a pile don't care what kind of atom they hit; they can make anything radioactive. So it seems like a closed cycle is a better idea than just shooting out a radioactive plume all over the landscape. That implies a heat exchanger on top of the shielding for the reactor, and while a gas heat exchanger works just fine at Calder Hall, planes have to be smaller than Calder Hall. Or you can use the coolant to drive the turbine, but take the power off the turbine, which requires a novel coolant that doesn't corrode its way to freedom. So there is lots of experimental work going on wich things like lead-bismuth and molten sodium hydroxide. An atomic plane with a pile in the fuselage would need stronger wings than anything that exists right now due to wing-bending, but wouldn't differ from regular planes in anything except weight, and perhaps not as much as you think, say NACA scientists.
"The Avro 504" is this week's installment in aircraft histories (not design studies).
"Instrument Panel Developments" The Bureau of Aeronautics is quite pleased with its current standard panel. Filling out the page is an advertorial for Mervyn Instruments new infrared spectrometer, a bity about the USN's T-34 trainer, and the new runway at Sydenham Airport, Belfast
.
Aircraft Intelligence reports that a new Vickers four-engined transport being designed for BEA will operate the Rolls 'Royce axial-flow, twin-spool turboprop, designated the RB109. As an insider, I can tell you that while Rolls-Royce and Vickers are very happy with the RB109, it is definitely raising eyebrows with the Canadians. It is increasingly looking like the Dart was a happy accident due to its modest design. The 109 is supposed to deliver over 5000shp and no-one's seen an engine that size turn a single shaft without a hitch, yet. Say the Canadians. Who might be getting cold feet for other reasons. The Douglas A4D Skyhawk seems to be flying well in spite of its novel tail, and Douglas is having no problems with the J65. The first Douglas F4Ds have been delivered, Lockheed is developing the T-33B as a private venture improvement of the T-33, and the B-29 and B-50 have been officially retired by SAC. Dassault is putting the Avon into the second prototype Mystere IV, and the navy's North American FJ-3 Fury gets a three-profile view but no editorial content, which is interesting because it is another J65 job.
Th4 competing Commonwealth trans-Pacific services of Qantas and Canadian Pacific get a brief blurb with publicity shots of Super-Connies and DC-6Bs. This leaves a full page free for an advertorial for the new Hymatic universal test rig and an obituary of Travers Ayers, which was a real name.
We also visit the site where mass-produced Martin Matador missiles are assembled. I do not think I understand, or possibly don't want to understand why a hydrogen bomb-carrying missile needs to be mass produced. Flight visits the ARB luncheon, and checks in with the clubs and gliding before throwing up its hands for lack of editorial content and throwing in the latest edition of Industry, featuring advertorials for the Fourway "electric mobile conveyor," which seems to be a battery-powered truck with a hinged boom, Mollart's high-speed spindle for grinding small bores, a runway filler made of spent sugar cane by Celotex, a high speed marking machine from Rejafix that seems to be a stamp of some kind, and, in a final bid to fill out the page, reports the latest British Standard, T. 61: Chromium-nickel heat-resisting steel tubes (suitable for welding). I would capitalise properly, but it would be more work than writing out this apology! Or not! I don't care, Flight doesn't care, no-one cares!
Correspondence
B. Dillon and B. V. Davis are from Australia and New Zealand and want us to know that the question of the perfect agricultural plane is more complicated than recent articles in Flight suggest, and lay out their preferences, which is not the Auster AOP 9. "American Taxpayer" explains why recent comment about how the cost of the 707 was affected by high American taxes completely misunderstands the American tax system. W. B. Hakes protests that describing the Gloster Meteor F.R.9 as being equipped with an F24 camera is misleading, since it was long since replaced by the F.95, as noted in, among other places, Flight.
How do you go from running a division of Decca in 1954 to being a Rolls-Royce salesman in California in just two years?
Civil Aviation reports on just how much better the Viscount is than the Convairliner, all the exciting things Decca Radar's new radar division is doing under the thrusting leadership of Air Commodore Michael Watson (ret.), the Marathon sale to JAL, discussions of a third runway for Nandi, Fiji, a sale of Super Connies to Iberia, the two-man layout for Aer Lingus' new Viscounts, a Franco-Soviet air agreement for Aeroflot and Air France to fly a joint Paris-Moscow service, with passengers changing airline at Prague, and the new premises of International Aeradio. Tests on the Comet continue and it would be premature to say anything more. Air Charter, Ltd, has won a contract for 50% of Government trooping to the Canal Zone.
"Gamecock and Peregrine at Home" A recent FAA demonstration at Bramcote drew crowds in spite of rain. The squadrons involved were officially based at HMS Gamecockand Peregrine, respectively, and in spite of a lot of words being expressed, the best I can do technologically is a demonstration of the Blackburn Y.A. 1 and one of the Navy's new Hiller H.T. 1s.
Fortune's Wheel explains that "The Case for a Universal Card" was actually satire.
Business Roundup reports that the recession that wasn't going to happen, and wasn't nearly as bad as people said, and is almost over, is almost over! The federal budget is okay, construction is good, cap[ital spending and income are up, as is consumer spending, and this is your monthly reminded that some businesses have done very well since the war.
Business Notes from Abroad is apparently a new feature. We visit London, where Rab Butler is continuing to think about restoring partial convertibility, Paris, where a giant convention of American businessmen had a really good time and then explained why Europe just isn't capitalist enough, shared Jean Monnet's latest promise that the United States of Europe is just around the corner, visits Brussels, where the governing socialists remind everyone that socialists believe in sound money, too, check in with Gunnar Myrdal's efforts to organise East-West trade, and notices that Japanese labour isn't actually that cheap when productivity is taken into account.
Leaders
"Republican Economic Policy: It Works" If you say so! A shorter editorial note reiterates the point. The Government is doing too much stuff! On the other hand, U.S. rayon producers seem as happy with cartels as their Italian counterparts (see story). John Arsdale of Provincetown-Boston Airlines wants to sue the Weather Bureau for getting the Memorial Day forecast wrong. Tough luck, says Fortune. Theodore Hauser, the new chairman of Sears, pointed out in his speech to the shareholders that Sears customers aren't likely to be farmers these days because there just aren't that many farmers any more. I think this is supposed to be funny? New Harmony, Indiana, is not going to be a national memorial like Williamsburg. It would be too expensive and no-one cares.
John McDonald, "The Businessman in Government" Remember when Ike hired all those businessmen to bring a businesslike attitude to government, and they all fell flat on their faces when they weren't putting their hands in the till? It turns out that it was harder than it looked.
A nice long feature on the expansion of Eastman Kodak has some great pictures. Otherwise it's just a company profile. The current big research drive is into new plastic fabrics for photographic film, but also the polyethylene film plant it has built in Texas, which is kind of an extension or diversification based on that research. (Otis also gets a company profile, but it is even less technologically interesting, since its automatic elevators are in all the ads, so who needs to talk about them in editorial?)
Daniel Seligman asks, "The Four-Day Week: How Soon?" Good question! Business sure isn't going to do it on its own, he concludes. Herbert Solow visits Italy and finds that government is just too big over there. Business is rebuilding Columbus, Indiana, which is great, and American shipyards can't get any building contracts, which is bad.
"Anyone for Monorail?" The US spent $6 billion on roads, bridges, and tunnels last year, which, as big as it is, is necessary and should be more. But "what disturbs transportation authorities is that, by comparison, no appreciable thought or effort is being put into mass rapid-transit systems." In the old days, everyone wanted a New York-style subway system, but those days ended in 1940 when Federal money dried up in 1940. There have been major new subway projects in four cities since 1940, but with a cumulative track length of only ten miles. Cleveland is about to spend $35 million on a mile-and-a-half loop and existing US subway systems come to only 284 miles. Elevated rail seems like the only system likely to pay for itself, either modernised two-rail standard gauge that will be much quieter and less intrusive than the original "Els," and some kind of suspended monorail, possibly with wheeled trains that can run on the surface where the elevated rail isn't needed. This was all theoretical until last year when the California legislature passed a bill to get a Los Angeles monorail rolling, presumably on quiet and comfortable rubber tyres.
A proposal for a $165 million monorail running from North Hollywood to Long Beach is on the table. LA has hardly any passenger rail, however, while New York is well provided. The problem is that the 40mph speed of current passenger train service is a bit limiting. A nice monorail would be grand!
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