Postblogging Technnology, May 1955, II: It Sure Better Not Be 99 Balloons Going By!

R_.C._,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

@Ferry Life: https://ferriesbc.proboards.com/thread/9490/bc-ferries-memories

You find me in the doldrums of an ongoing election campaign. The world has discovered peace, and I have discovered just how angry a four-year-old can be. (Very!) She finds the disruptions of packing far too much to bear, and the intimation that she shall have a nurse while Mama is away all day is not to be countenanced. At least her baby brother is a placid little cuddle bear! And I shall be well clear of Britain when Tony Eden launches whatever manic midnight expedition he has his mind set upon by then. I am betting on Athens, but not ruling out New Guinea. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Letters

Floyd Dietz liked "Careers: And a Young Man's Chances," but William Allen of the Institute of Public Service is upset the article didn't mention teaching. Some people liked the article about how the Harvard School of Divinity is getting better and other people thought it was overblown. Alice Cooper is upset that there wasn't a translation of a Greek advertisement about NATO reproduced in an article about NATO. A person who might be a teacher thinks that teachers aren't paid enough. Cammie Caroline Edwards picks out a mistake, several correspondents have opinions about the article about the Knight newspaper chain, Gilbert Jacome, the Controller of Jacome's in New Mexico, is very impressed by the murals they have in the Jacome's office. J. J. Perling is the only correspondent to get a letter responding to Einstein's sudden death, and it's pointless and silly. One letter writer about that article about scientific education says that it wasn't scientists that built all those atom bombs, while William S. Burks suggests that if we are short of scientists, maybe we should pay scientists more. For Your Information is excited that Newsweek has won an award from the National Religions Publicity Council for all its high-minded articles about religion, like the cover story this week. So, yes, your question is answered, talking about Billy Graham is very highbrow!

The Periscope reports rumours that Joe McCarthy is a very sick man who rarely appears in Congress these days. AEC "red tape" irritated someone famous enough to leak to The Periscope. (So not very famous, I am saying.) The Army is keeping the Nike II top secret. It's a bigger, chunkier, more powerful, longer ranged Nike. The Air Force is experimented with balloon-carried atomic bombs that can "carry an atomic bomb over any target country in Europe with surprising accuracy. They are a vast improvement over similar devices used by the Japanese in the last war." My only consolation is that it's in The Periscope so it's probably made up. Dr. Ralph Bunche says that Washington is a much nicer place for Coloureds to live since Eisenhower, which is a hugely important political point. Jacob Malik is ill and missing sessions of the closed-door disarmament talks in London. The waiting list for VA mental hospitals has grown to 17,000. Tactical Air Command is now regarded as equal to SAC because it has atom bombs on its planes now. Ridgeway and Carney are out at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Jerauld Wright replacing Carney.  "Radio Free Egypt" is stirring up trouble for Nasser, the British election will be a repeat of '52, Chinese Communists are also broadcasting propaganda radio, there might be a great power conference in Stockholm, you can apparently rent King Farouk's stag films in Cairo. Lise Meitner is 77 and still working for Sweden's Atomic Energy Commission, where she has been since she fled Hitler in September of 1939,, while Alois Hitler is old and trying to avoid attention from lowbrow American news magazines and the like.

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that the 84th Congress is pretty much done, even if it has another two months to run. It might have time for a fight over natural gas price regulation, but that's it. 

National Affairs

Since Congress is pretty much over, it's the time for having opinions, such as it was disappointing for Democrats and that Midwestern Republicans are inclined to disagree with the President's foreign policy. No, that's what it says here, so it must be true! Everyone is spreading rumours that Eisenhower is going to run in '56! Los Vegas was very strange during the atom bomb tests. At one point, Jenny Churchill showed up in blue ballet slippers! Illinois' civil-defence director poo-poos it all. No-one is going to take 40,000 ton bombs seriously when the Russians have bombs a million times more powerful! The Senate is granting Presidential pensions to Hoover and Truman and the Mrs. Coolidge and Roosevelt. Teenage crime is out of control! Senator Bricker thinks his amendment to require a national referendum every time the government notices that the rest of the world exists will pass like something through something. It looks like Senator Lyndon Johnson is going to get his package of regulations allowing the President to cut tariffs through. Thomas Dewey gets a box story about his private life for some reason. 

Why do all these foreigners listen to Communist propaganda
about American imperialism being bad? It's a mystery.

Ernest K. Lindley is still abroad, and this week talks about "An Ataturk in Asia," by whom he means Phao Siyanon, who seems to be in charge in Thailand, which is a great country because it is fiercely anti-Communist, and that's what you want in a country in Indo-China. 

International

"Can We Beat Moscow to the Punch?" Russia wants a buffer zone of neutral powers in Europe and that's bad and we should have a buffer zone of neutral powers. Leon Volkov asks "What the Reds Want Now?" Maybe I'm not reading between the lines hard enough, but it seems like they want everyone to quiet down and be normal for once? Except in Afghanistan where they're backing the Afghans in the war they're thinking about having with Pakistan. The South Vietnamese say they  have a copy of a secret plan where the French and Viet Minh agree to put in a Communist government in South Vietnam. This seems to be about the last-ditch French attempt to get the Americans to support Bao Dai against Diem. The British election isn't exciting enough, all the reporters in the country to cover it complain. Couldn't they just go to a Butlin's instead? Indian society treats women badly, so it's nice that Parliament just gave them the right to divorce. Pierre Mendes-France might start his own new party soon. The British are giving their air bases in Iraq to Iraq getting the heck out. More or less now that Iraq has signed the Middle East defence treaty.

All the foreigners love Billy Graham except those foreign "tart intellectuals." I feel like I need to give you a big wink now, because you know what I mean! On the other hand, Peron has officially called for the separation of church and state official in Argentina. 

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that the 1957 Federal budget will be balanced and have tax cuts due in part to the auto industry being up. There will be aid for shipbuilders. 

The big story in Business is the wave of strikes in the South, to which the UAW will now add by a boycott progressively targeting more employers in the fight for a guaranteed annual wage. 

Notes: Week in Business reports that Borg-Warner continues to diversify, that Bowater is going all in for a five-year expansion plan to take back the position of world's biggest pulp producer from ITT, that Daimler Benz is opening up an American subsidiary in South Bend to make diesel engines and vehicles, and in breaking news, that the Air Force is building a heavy forging plant in Cincinnati! Total American employment (but not the employment rate!) reached a new high in April. Various corporate financials are in and look good, while executives at U.S. Steel and Charles Schwab get profiles. 

"Memory Machine" IBM's magnetic-disk memory machine can store up to five million pieces of information! IBM hasn't announced production details, but will make the machine the heart of a new line of information processing machines.

Henry Hazlitt uses Business Tides to talk about, let me just rub my eyes, clean my glasses (Vicious lies! Ronnie doesn't wear reading glasses!), no, the words still say the same thing, "States' Rights and Labour Laws." Now I shall condescend to read Hazlitt long enough to find out whether he is playing with the Thirteenth Amendment, disingenuous, or just colossally callow? One or the other of the last two, and you would think that it would be awfully sad that leaving people unable to tell whether you're lying or dumb would be your life's work, but editing The Freeman won't buy Henry the kind of suits he likes!  

Education 

The new edition of the Times Survey Atlas will be released annually in volumes from now through 1959 and will be as good as the last one, which is beloved by antiquarian booksellers because people will pay such a premium for it. Russell Kirk is upset that his new book, Academic Freedom, has been withdrawn from the shelves at the University of Nevada. Periscoping Education reports that desegregation has been bad for some Negro colleges and that Yale is finalising its plans to stop taking attendance at lectures. 

Pietro Annigoni, Queen Elizabeth II (1955). Newsweek reproduces it in grayscale. 

Art, TV-Radio, Press, Newsmakers  

It's not a scandal once you take into account the fact
that she is lying about her age. 

Newsweek went to this year's Royal Academy show and agrees with everyone who thinks it was awful. For some reason Art is a good section to quote Frank Lloyd Wright saying that New York, Pittsburgh, modern cars, and centralisation are awful and Bing Crosby musing about going back on the road for some select engagements. 

It's news that all the television commentators who were in Nevada for the atomic bomb tests left before the tests actually started. so it wasn't the great television people were hoping for. Some new TV isn't very good but Let's Take a Trip deserves some good press, Newsweek thinks. General Sarnoff promises that colour television is going to get cheaper. At the bottom of Press, which is all insider stories and the complete list of Pulitzer nominations this week, The Periscope congratulates itself for mentioning three things that got Pulitzer nominations. Nostradamus the Second! 

 Ernest Hemingway, Ruth Roman, one royal, and Zsa Zsa Gabor are in the column for the usual reasons. Paola Mori is in it for marrying Orson Welles even though he is 40 and she is 24. Harry Truman and Admiral Leahy have had birthdays, Marion Marlowe is married, Tyrone Power is divorced, Georges Enesco, Louis Breguet, and Lydia Bunker Hunt have died. 

This week's Special Report on child-raising literature makes the point that there are lots of babies right now, and lots of books, and child-raising literature is more scientific than it used to be (which old literature is briefly covered), because that's the way we are now. Nevertheless, some of that new-fangled advice is suspect because it doesn't support spanking.  

(Unfortunately, no-one seems to have clipped this interesting project.)

The New Movies has a nature film, The Great Adventure, from Switzerland, A Prize of Gold, which is an entertaining British heist film set in Occupation Germany with various German and Swedish stars only the most complete movie fan will recognise, and Daddy Long Legs, from Fox, proving that Darryl Zanuck really is a genius, and all who doubted him must fall down in worship.   

Books has a long review of Michael Lindsay's China and the Cold War, which is mostly a review of Lindsay, who seems to be some sort of anti-communist with a low  opinion of Ed China, fancy that! William H. Kearns and Beverley Britton's The Silent Continent is a look at how Australians are so embarrassed by their accent that they never speak in public --oh, wait,that was a good theory but it turns out to be about Antarctica. I know what you're thinking, it's not silent at all! But it is cold, and cold is like silence in being a quality. And since I have now exhausted everything you can say about Antarctica that's not boring geology and meteorology except International Geophysical Year and the history of Antarctic exploration, I will mention that it's about the last. Betty MacDonald's Onions in the Stew is a funny memoir by a funny lady. Admiral Ambassador to Russia is William Standley's account of his 1942/3 ambassadorship, which sounds as though it was mainly spent putting up with Wendell Willkie and all the other clowns from the United States who had no time for him. There's a Periscoping Books section that says that Jim Bishop, Alec Waugh, Kathleen Winsor, and Joe Lewis are working on books. Raymond Moley surveys the British election and concludes that it is very boring. 

If someone were to go into Antarctica and build some lost cities there, I wouldn't disapprove. 

Flight, 20 May 1955

Leaders 

 "Cause for Congratulations" BEA's profit causes Flight to ruminate on the continuing high cost of commercial flying in Europe compared with the United States, Canada, and Australia, where costs of 5d per passenger mile are achieved, compared with 7d in Europe. The reasons are low utilisation and low productivity. Flight mentions the probable explanation in a second Leader (weather, border controls and customs), and moves on because explaining it is boring compared with speculating about other solutions. Being Flight, it does mention that BEA is finally looking to replace the DC-3.

From All Quarters reports that Viscount orders now exceed 200, with Capital receiving its full fleet of 60 by the end of 1957. Congress has authorised a fifth Forrestal-class super carrier, the Kitty Hawk. O. P. Jones is retiring from BOAC after forty years of flying. It's still amazing to me that men have gotten old in commercial flying. It seems so  new! 

The Dam Busters, "a triumphant British picture," gets a full-page, free-standing review, spreading over two pages to allow From All Quarters to close out with a reference to the upcoming Plastics Exhibition and Convention at Olympia and an inset summary of what the new Luftwaffe is up to, which right now is tactical flying with the Allied NATO air forces. 

Here and There reports that a B-47 flying between Britain and Lyautey Air Force Base in Morocco had a landing gear failure, causing the crew to try to fix it in the air, which they did, after 33 hours in the air and multiple refuellings. Otherwise, the column is all gliders, models, and the Ministry's latest effort to deter birds at RAF airfields by distributing great masses of mothballs to them. 

"The Party Line on Airlines" J. D. Profumo, the Labour Party, and "Liberals" put forward their respective party lines on airlines. Labour supports the Corporations, the Conservatives are for free enterprise, and the Liberals are for hats. (I feel like I need to explain my joke: Various supports for "private flying" involving reserves, voluntary reserves, air cadets, and so on, many apparently more interested in their uniforms thann anything else.) The page closes out with short pieces about the Fiat G.91, the official NATO light fighter entrant, the radio-controlled Lockheed QF-80 data-collecting drones used at the recent atomic tests in Nevada, and a historic Canadair Sabre visiting Britain, because, yes, there are "historic" Sabres in 1955. 

Aircraft Intelligence reports that B-47s cost $2.2 million to fly off the lot, the S,O. 9000 Trident, Mystere IV, and possibly the Alouette II, and Potez 75 will be at the Paris Aerial Salon.  

"Supersonic Fighter: A Critical Examination of the F-100A Super Sabre" Flight throws some oblique criticism about British security constraints in way of introducing an article about the F-100, which it now feels prepared to publish based on the amount of photographs and other information the Americans have made available. Most of the substantive detail is structural. 

We're left with a good half page, so Flight treats us to an almost detail-free summary of S. F. Kelly's recent summary of Rolls Royce engine development given to a British Industries Fair/Gas Council luncheon last week, news of the reoccupation of the disused Oranienburg airfield in East Germany by a wing of Red Air Force Il-28s, and an Institute of British Photographers show that had a picture of a Constellation over the Atlantic. 

Robert Blackburn, "An Introduction to Air Freight, Part I: The American Domestic Scene" Well, this seems like an article requiring the greatest attention after twelve years of Aviation coverage! Blackburn likes forklifts, loading diagrams, and a statistical report on types of air freight (clothes are number one, at 9.4% of cargo by weight.) 

"The SNCASE S. E. 210 Caravelle: France's First Jet Airliner" A very detailed cutaway drawing of the prototype Caravelle, just delivered, and a substantial discussion of its structure, with a promise of performance details when the manufacturer releases them. 

"Regularity in the Making" Passengers have no  idea how hard BOAC has to work to maintain a regular schedule. Here in the way of illustration is a shot of headquarters at London Airport. 

Flight Control: An Historical Review: Abstracts from Dr. Draper's Wilbur Wright Lecture" Dr. Draper explains autopilots, feedback, cybernetics,, that kind of stuff. Listeners flee maths in panic. Follows "Deutsche Lufthansa in Service," a very brief survey.

Correspondence has Bruce Robertson responding to H. F. King's recent article about Westland in the long ago days before the war by reminiscing about the old days, before the war, at Westland. R. Lamprell explains why his Cygnet was scratched from the Swansea Air Race. (It crashed!) "Subtype" talks about the old days, before the war and invites any Flight reader who knows what was going on at the British Aircraft Factory in 1907--08 to do the same. Not to be  outdone, P. Beechfield Carver writes in about hats, RAF music bands division. 

It has come to our attention that The Engineer's boredom reserves have exceeded the safe limit and that the relief valve has been opened, and in that interest, here is "At the BIF: Materials, Tools, and Equipment at Castle Bromwich." Half paragraph summaries of company displays follow at length, but do not crowd out a particularly uninteresting number of The Industry, which is forced to lead with an apprentice award ceremony at Rotol-Messier, which is the sort of thing usually reserved for the shorter paragraphs at the end after the latest exciting inventions are detailed. Oddly, in this issue we hear about the Rolls Royce B.60, one of its automobile gasoline engines, but this one  for ground service in NATO. 

Civil Aviation has "Decca Evaluated" It is the findings of the Ministry of Civil Aviation's 1951--53 evaluation, now released. We know it was positive, but here are the details. BEA is "trialling" passenger helicopter service again, Continental might buy Viscounts, Hunting-Clan likes its Viscount, and the West African Airways Bristol 170 crash on 5 February 1955 is found to have been a structural failure. 
 

Letters

I don't know if it is worse that Newsweek preinted this
in 1955 or that I reproduced it in 2025

Secretary Benson really liked the article about Secretary Benson. Raul Quadron is in Kuwait, read the article about all the places Americans are vacationing in, and is so homesick that he sent in a silly poem about how nice and also prosperous the United States are. Palmer Van Gundy thinks that all this talk of abolishing war is silly, because, as General MacArthur points out, it would need a world government. Or just a mutual assistance pact like Locarno, but the only thing out there dumber than MacArthur is people who take him seriously, so what do you expect? Betty Oates met Vinoba Bhave once and doesn't think much of him. Several writers had very edifying questions about the scene of the man being beheaded in Yemen. Boyet Stevenson asks what this "Espresso cofee" is, and Newsweek explains the exotic Italian drink, and tells us that espresso machines can be bought at large department and gourmet stores and that the coffee is available through Italian and Spanish grocers. The Commissariat a L'Energie Atomique explains the legal standing and parameters of its suit against the AEC for violating French priority in atomic fission. It's not quite a patent lawsuit, but it's close. Albert Peckham of Chicago is glad to hear that a restored Germany is still feeling some of the consequences of its wartime folly. For Your Information explains Newsweek's publishing philosophy, which is that it needs to persuade as many business executives to read it as possible. 

The Periscope reports that Tito is fighting with Malenkov, that Zhukov is promoting Malenkov, that Buglanin is promoting Chou En Lai, and "top Chinese Reds" are bitterly disappointed that the Soviets are talking with the Japanese without them. A few items down we get word that the Red Chinese army is restive and that Mao Tse Tung's sickness might be fatal. And with that you have your Behind-the-Red-Curtain rumour catch-up for this week! "U.S. Army circles" are upset about Austrian independence because they have to give up two bases and do something about wartime communications between Italy and Germany. The Periscope predicts who will leave the British cabinet if the Tories win the election. The Reds are fomenting a Kurdish revolution against Iraq and Turkey. Nine months after the coup, Guatemala is a mess and American officials are "apprehensive." Central Intelligence officials say that the captured U.S. flyers are going to be returned for propaganda benefits and because "several prisoners" have been "sufficiently brainwashed" to confess their "crimes." The AEC is fighting efforts to declassify information about fallout. Sam Rayburn is aiming for the Vice-Presidential Democratic nomination, because there are no limits to his ambition. Missile scientists are working on an intercontinental missile that returns for refuelling and re-arming, which would be a major saving if we just had the missile and the engine to go with it. Where Are They Now catches up with Dickie Kerr, who, at 62, is coaching his local American Legion boys' team. Mo Berg, on the other hand, was a spy in the war and now has a law practice.

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that  "many high up Washington diplomats" think that the Reds are mellowing and want to negotiate a more peaceful world. 

National Affairs

Everyone likes Ike, Newsweek discovers, and that is clearly the week's top story. Senator Wiley thinks that the Big Four are going to get together and talk about not having World War III. Maxwell Taylor gets a profile on the occasion of his appointment as the new Chief of the Staff of the Army who won't fight the President over "New Look" cuts. The one Republican woman in Congress is getting some attention by suggesting that the Party can't count on Ike to carry them in '56 and have to make more of an effort to be popular. The Surgeon General is in the news because he is promoting the decision to have the Federal Government distribute safety-proven polio vaccine stocks to everyone fairly. Joe Martin is pushing an initiative to have MacArthur promoted to General of the Army, which does not impress the President. Two Republican Congressmen agree that Edward Corsi's criticisms of the refugee relief program are "wild," and that's that. The new mayor of Galveston is quite a guy. A TV reporter caught a crooked cop in Miami and filmed it for TV. The Hoover Commission is halfway through releasing all its reports on Government waste. That's a lot of reports! And waste! (Especially when it is defined in terms of the Government being bigger than twenty years ago.) Talk of disarmament and the renovations of the Capitol get stories. "A Plan to Win It" explains that the West won't win the Cold War by spending lots more money on propaganda, which can come out of the Defence Department budget because it is so big. 
  

Ernest K. Lindley is still in Thailand, which is afraid of something called the "Thai Autonomous Republic" across the frontier in Yunnan, apparently led by Pridi Phanomyong, where British and American officials want them to be concerned about Communism in Vietnam. Ernest suggests that a good way of doing that would be to just give Laos to Thailand. 

International

More about the Four Power summit and potential talks with Red China and Austrian independence. "Terror in Singapore" explains that Red Chinese subversion in Singapore includes "terrorising" the teachers in Chinese schools, and a strike that turned into a riot in which the UP's manager for Southeast Asia, Gene Symonds, was beaten to death and "scores" of other people were injured.

"Clash and Compromise" The French and the United States are still arguing about Indo-China. The French position is that the Communists are sure to win the general election in 1956 and that the only thing to do is to make the best terms possible, because if the elections are cancelled, the Viet Minh will "come marching south," and will "have very right to do so." The U.S. position seems to be "It's not fair and I won't I won't I won't." Accordingly the French threatened to withdraw their expeditionary corps and as the situation stands right now, the upshot is that everything has been punted forward to give the Vietnamese time to stop being Communists. The Viet Minh has finally taken over Haiphong, which is bad, of course. Italy's having a government "crisis" involving two factions of the Christian Democrats fighting and this possibly leading to someone having to pay attention to the Communists,, which would be bad. The leader of the Italian Communists won the Stalin Peace Prize!!!

The Special Report on the British Election goes on and on and on, mostly about Anthony Eden, who is sure to win the election and introduce a new policy of staying up to 4am frantically fidgeting and talking too fast to understand before sleeping until 4 and missing the Cabinet meeting. Raymond Moley pays for his trip to England by explaining British party politics. The Queen is sending Prince Charles to nursery school and Harry L. Whitney is the latest American to try to break into the Spanish bullfighting circuit. Canada is  having a scandal in Alberta, a flood in Manitoba, and an outbreak of anti-Communism in Quebec.

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that GNP is at a record $370 billion, and the expansion is even bigger than it seems because Government spending isn't increasing and Government spending isn't real prosperity. The expansion may moderate soon, however, as the recent dip in housing indicates. Congress will probably approve an increase in the debt limit. The main story, not a note, but still not worth much attention, as far as I can tell, is that the UAW has held a strike vote but isn't going out yet. There has been a selloff on the Paris Bourse, a short paragraph tells us that Minneapolis Mining & Manufacture likes to do lots of research, and it is estimated that there might be $710 million invested in atomic power between now and 1963. For some reason the last, two paragraph page of this article is illustrated with a picture of that Gloster Meteor variant that was modified to be operated by a prone pilot in case that helped with "G" forces. (It didn't.) 

Business Notes reports that they are building a Hilton hotel in Berlin, plus more merger news. It's good that now that the GOP is in power, cartels aren't bad any more! Various businessmen have new jobs at the top of various corporations, including John Barr, who replaces 82-year-old Sewell Avery at Montgomery Ward and gets a half-page box story profile. That doesn't stop Wolfson's continuing effort to take over the company, though. Products: What's New reports a prefabricated steel building from Wonder Bulding that is different from all the other prefabricated steel buildings somehow, an electric, two-headed,. desk mounted power stapler from Bates Manufacturing, and a gallon bottle of whiskey from Ballantines intended as a novelty gift. Henry Hazlitt explains in Business Tides that even though he is in favour of lower tariffs, there is "No Need for OTC" because it is more bureaucracy, and, more importantly, will involve talking to filthy socialist foreigners. 

At some point I commence to wonder what Hazlitt actually means by "socialist," and what it has to do with the poisoning of the genes of future generations by radioactive fallout. 

Science, Medicine, Education

 "The Lively Atom" In this and in a boxed interview, Newsweek covers Ralph Lapp's "scathing charge" that the AEC's 15 February "fallout report" "does not tell the whole story." Lapp himself is a bit obscure about this, but he refers to the AEC being afraid to reveal secrets related to "weapons architecture or detonation schemes," and to the lack of any information about "how a superbomb can be inflated," from which I am inferring that he is referring to what we've heard about from the Japanese, that the Eniwetok test produced U-234 particles, indicating that the bomb was wrapped with nonradioactive Uranium-238,, which captured neutrons from whatever was going on inside the bomb and exploded like the U-235 in a regular atomic bomb, increasing its explosive power, but also the amount of poisonous fallout it produces. He goes on to charge that the AEC is not being frank with civil defence officials and the public about the amount of time people in the area poisoned by the fallout will need to spend in fallout shelters, and therefore the amount of "hotelling," as Uncle George puts it, that will be needed. The rest of the feature is finished out with a discussion of the course this summer's solar eclipse. He also points out that the report fails to mention medical information about fallout. It is interesting that the main article goes into more detail about genetic damage (which seems like there is a weird emphasis), while Lapp in the direct interview mentions cancer and cataracts. 

"The 'Poor" Psychiatrist" Even though "more than half of the patients who seek medical advice have problems directly related to mental or emotional disorders," they never want to see psychiatrists, says Dr. Henry Davidson of Cedar Grove, N.J., to the APA. This is why psychiatrists make so much less money than regular doctors, only eighteen grand or so. It's probably because they don't see enough patients and don't advertise enough. For a psychiatrist, Dr. Davidson doesn't seem to know many crazy people! 

Communists are educating children in East Germany now, which is bad. On the other hand the New York Public School Board's adult education program is "experimental." 

Press, TV-Radio, Newsmakers

Press gives the new editor of the New York Herald Tribune a page-and-a-half because it's press and it's New York! 

I never cover Religion, but I have a secret taste for The Periscope, which hits the feature this week with a blurb about Marley Cole's upcoming Jehovah's Witness: The New World Society, which blows the lid off the Eisenhower family's affiliation with the sect. (Also the Swiss are going to let the Jesuits back in and liberal Swedes favour the dis-establishment of the Swedish Lutheran church. I know you couldn't care less about the last bits, but I find it interesting! 

This week's special report is about "Pay-to-See Television: The Angry Debate." Broadcast television people are strongly opposed to over-the-air subscription television.  The last episode of See It Now is airing this week because Alcoa, its sponsor, is dropping it for reasons entirely unrelated to host Edward R. Murrow's scrap with Joe McCarthy, as "tv gossips" say. Newsweek surveys TV public health announcements, advertisements, and shows about mental health. Everyone is talking about mental health except the victims! 

Ted Williams, Billy Reed, Ike, Robert Mitchum, Richard Taylor, Linda Christian, the Trumans, and one royal are in the column for the usual reasons. The President's mother-in-law has had a birthday, John Ringling North is engaged, Joan Crawford is married, Charles Deere Wiman, Odaq, Tommy Burns, and General Summerall have died. 

Life and Leisure reviews the latest edition of Duncan Hines' Adventures in Good Eating.

The New Movies has Hideo Sekigawa's Hiroshima is a "grim documentary account" of the bombing. Heartbreak Ridge is a French war movie about the French battalion in the Korean War that is even more cliched and sentimental than American war movies. Violent Saturday is a controversial heist movie from Fox, and Welles' versioni of Othello is quite something. We are spared Raymond Moley on the back page because he's in the middle. 

Books has James Woodress' Booth Tarkington: The Gentleman from Indiana gets a full page review. Get your copy read and down to the used bookstore before the generation that cares drops dead! Marguerite Higgins' News is a Singular Thing is the next up, with a review that begins with a paragraph or two about her recent attempt to crash a meeting between Madame Chiang and twelve Republican governors. I'd like to see that!Richard Quintana's Swift: An Introduction gets a review as Newsweek make a belated move to the middlebrow, and then we read a novel by H. F. M. Prescott, The Unhurrying Chase, which is . . . a novel. 

Letters has Maurice Dubin writing to say how much he liked the very positive article bout Israel, Dorothy Robinson explaining why Senator Neuberger's proposed ban on TV makeup for politicians is silly, G. V. Holton saying how much he liked the article about G. V. Holton, Nils Hagstrum of Helsinki explaining how saunas actually work, Herbet Reginbogin pointing out that Germany is just biding its time before it starts WWIII, and three letter writers really liked the very positive article about Billy Graham. For Your Information mentions that now columnist General Spaatz has joined Lindley and Moley overseas and includes a nice picture of Spaatz, Secretary Talbot and Charles Lindbergh touring the site of the USAF Academy. Remember when being a fascist meant you couldn't do photo ops with a member of the cabinet? Those were the days!

Zhang Xueliang's place of detention in Taiwan. Fascinating the facts that get left out.
  By Peellden - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18234011

The Periscope "If the current mood continues, expect Congress to force stand-by controls" of the distribution of the Salk vaccine. Senator Kennedy was so long in returning to Boston, it turns out, because he wasn't out of post-operative danger for his spinal surgery for two full weeks. Edgar Chandler is currently getting his security clearance to replace Corsi at the refugee-relief program. Albert Chandler's comeback campaign continues, SAC warns that the Russians are building up their air defences. A House oversight committee cut appropriations to the US Information Agency because it tried to distribute Emily Davie's Profiles of America, even though it contains excerpts from the works of notorious Communists Thoreau and Eugene O'Neill. Embarrassing to the President for endorsing the book! The Pentagon has repealed "IBM" in favour of "ICBM" because it was violating International Business Machine's copyright. The Weather Bureau promises twic-daily H-bomb weather forecasts for the top 100  U.S. cities to help civil defence with evacuations. The Pentagon is working on a new rocket plane that can reach a hundred miles up. The Air Force is still working on dropping H-bombs from bombers safely, and is thinking about parachutes, and "toss bombing" for A-bombs from fighter-bombers. Sweden's ambassador to Moscow has flown to Peking to try to broker a deal to release the U.S. fliers. The French are refusing to occupy defensive positions along the 17th parallel because they're afraid of being caught between the Viet Minh and the Vietnamese nationalists. The World Peace Conference has been postponed while Communist propaganda is revised, U.S-Egypt relations are on the down slide because the Egyptians still don't like the Middle East security pact. The Soviets are experimenting with a six-engined version of the Tupolev plane for long-range troop transport. Where Are They Now reports that Not only is the "Young Marshal," Chang Hsueh-liang in detention on Formosa, the IRS is suing him for $41,000 in U.S back taxes, which helps explain why he is still alive. The Periscope somehow gets the idea that Henry Pu-yi is in detention in Khabarovsk. 

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that party leaders think Eisenhower is a shoe-in for '56 unless a "new era of peace" threatens prosperity due to cuts in defence spending. 

National Affairs leads with "Three Ways to Deal with Russia," which is be nice, be mean, or be in the middle. Follows a long full-page spread on the Big Four Conference that might or  might not happen, terminating with "Power in the Air," which wonders if the U.S. is actually ahead of the Reds in the air, as some people say that their jet bombers, in particular, are coming along much faster than people thought. Senator Walter George does a box interview with Newsweek explaining why there shouldn't be a "Neutral Zone" in Europe. Adlai Stevenson is a "maybe for '56," it says here, and the drought might be about to finally break as rainy weather spreads across the country beginning with the flooding in the Southwest. Polling finds Democrats and long-haired intellectuals are in favour of the guaranteed annual wage, recognising Red China, and negotiating over Quemoy and Matsu, and are against the Bricker Amendment. Businessmen and Republicans disagree with the first two positions, are more divided over the Formosa Straits, and join everyone else in wishing Senator Bricker would just for God's sake go away. The USAF lieutenant who was originally found guilty of shooting a Korean trespasser in a restricted area in cold blood under Korean pressure, has at the latest count had his sentence commuted to time served and been given a dishonourable discharge, but is still complaining about how unfair it was. The President has vetoed a pay raise for the Postal Service, everyone is fighting over the polio vaccine, Oveta Culp Hobby might be resigning because of sickness in the family and not over the vaccine inoculation program, and we get the fullest account yet of the DEW line of radar early detection sites in the north of Canada. Various former union officials have been convicted of being in organised crime, which just goes to show. Johnny Schivell is national news because he is a very smart, very young person who does well on IQ tests. General Marshall has joined the board of an association of well-intended prominent people. Ernest Lindley has reached Singapore, where it is said that all the Singapore Chinese are ready to go Red at the drop of a hat. 

International

A full page article explains how Tito is getting rewarded handsomely for being the original European "neutral," and Newsweek catches us up with the British victory (thanks in part to those blowgun wielding headhunters from Borneo that are in the news here and there) in Malaya, which is paradoxical, because leftists are poised to win the Malayan election and do all sorts of leftist things like be independent and have social welfare, and no doubt full-blown communism is right around the corner. The British election is even more boring when Raymond Moley is covering it. Lufthansa is flying into London now, and Edgar Faures is fighting Mendes-France's campaign to replace wine with milk by promoting fruit juice, instead. In North Africa, Newsweek can see Faures maybe getting out of Tunisia, but not Algeria, where the French seem determined to fight to control the country. 

Worldwide: Ticking It Off reports that the French Commissioner General in South Viet Nam is asking to be relieved, while General Collins is gone, replaced by a U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, G. Frederick Reinhardt. The British have appointed a new Charge d'Affaires in Peking, and Private William Marchuk, who fled to East Berlin six years ago and then was imprisoned by the Soviets, has been sentenced to twelve years for espionage by an American court martial on his release and return. 

"War or Peace in Middle East: Israel's Sharett and Egypt's Nasser Talk About the Prospects" Facing page interviews of the two premiers. Sharrett denies that Israel has expansionist ambitions but Egypt needs to get out of Gaza, which belongs to "Palestine," but not Jordan. Some other country made out of Palestine, then. Premier Nasser is all in favour of peace with Israel as long as Israel conforms to UN resolutions on refugees and the internationalisation of Jerusalem, demonstrating its "honest desire for peace." On this hemisphere, the Argentinian Congress and Senate have endorsed Peron's proposal for the disestablishment of the Catholic Church and the removal of its tax-exempt status. In Chile, it looks like the "personal ambitions of individual officers who are inspired by neighbouring Latin American military dictatorships" is causing turmoil in the army as various colonels jockey to be the one to launch a military takeover of the government on the thin pretext of inflation. Says Newsweek, anyway.

Business

Where I stole this: https://www.earlytelevision.org/
dumont_vitascan.html

The Periscope Business Trends reports that autos are expected to be up, steel down, and consumer durables holding on in the next six months. The lead article establishes that consumer demand is sollid. Western business leaders who flew to Tokyo to have a conference about how Asians are anti-foreign and have too much red tape for investment are instead mourning the unexpected death of George Sloan. Meanwhile, Alfred Sloan is still at work at GM at 80. A separate story explores the possibility that more people will buy colour televisions and broadcast units now that the TVs are cheaper and Vitascan is available, and that it will be a whole thing with more shows and more colour tv broadcasting setups at the stations, so more people buy colour tvs, so there are more shows, and bam, your black and white set is obsolete! Actually, it's mainly about Vitascan. Products: What's New reports that the Foundation for Better Reading has a speed reading kit for busy executives, complete with a gadget, the Phrase-O-Scope. Wasco Products of Cambridge has the Pyrodome, a vent that automatically pops open when excessive heat develops near it. What happened to smothering fires? The Atomic Development Mutual Fund is "in at the ground floor." Business Notes: The Week reports that American is introducing new polar routes to four more West Coast cities, Packard production is up, and Uncle Henry resurfaces with his Honolulu resort  home real estate scheme that I don't need to tell you about! A Special Report looks at the possibility of an auto strike. Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides reminds us that "Compulsory Unionisation" is bad, not like "compulsory labour," which is --wait, never mind, this isn't for The Freeman. 

Science, Medicine, Education

"Foiling the Northern Fade-Out" More coverage of the use of ground-wave transmission to stay in communication with planes flying over the Arctic. 

"Anatomy of the Big Wind" Dr. Alfred Redfield, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, has explained and described the "tidal wave" that follows a hurricane that, he says, causes 90% of hurricane deaths. He points out that previous such waves have been bad enough, but one that hit New York square when the tide was in could be devastating. And it it's New York, it matters! 

"If They Hate School" Psychiatrist Dr. John Campbell of Atlanta says that if your kid hates school, it might be manic-depressive disorder. Dr. Adolph Brown describes a prosthetic that substitutes for a surgical face lift in the current issue of Ear, Nose & Throat Monthly. 

Everyone thinks that the ROTC is a way of wasting time while avoiding the draft, and McGeorge Bundy of Harvard has proposed reforms that will make it work better. Bethune-Cookman College gets a profile, while Periscoping Education reports that the proposed visit by twelve Soviet students has been scuppered by disagreements over whether they need to be fingerprinted, and that the aid-to-school bill before Congress will be shelved because Southern lawmakers don't like it. Javier Pereira, a Colombian who might be 166 years old, is coming to New York for a medical check up to see how that is possible. 

Alberto Burri, Red Plastic (1961)

Press, TV-Radio, Art, Newsmakers

Ilya Ehrenburg is in Berlin, where he gave an interview and said that neutrality should involve Germany and not Czechoslovakia, while we get caught up with editorial staff changes at the New York Herald Tribune and the Paris version. These are in a short column strip paralleling "The Doctors and Deadlines: How Responsible is Reporting of Medical News." A parallel block story tells us to only trust accredited medical reporters, who do exist. The main story mainly focusses on different coverage of the Salk vaccine rollout in different parts of the country. Then it interviews several people who think that medical reporters are too conservative these days. 

Arthur Godfrey is in the latest stage of his ongoing nervous breakdown. The latest studies of TV's effect on society finds that it's not as bad as some people say (about declines in reading, socialising, and church-going), but it isn't good, either. 

Leonard Koetser keeps finding high art forgeries in London, and Alberto Burri's odd art gets a feature story but no photos. RCA Victor's "An Adventure in High Fidelity" and Capitol's "An Adventure in High Fidelity" are well up in the list of record sales in spite of being novelty recordings of sounds as captured by hi-fi and not music at all, leading hi-fi enthusiasts to wonder if someone is pulling their leg. Or is it that everyone is pulling their leg?

Marshal Tedder, various royals, Tommy Manville, G. David Schine, Carroll Reece[*], Ike, Grace Coolidge, and Frank Lloyd Wright are in the column for the usual reasons. Andy Carey is engaged, James Doolittle is getting a medal for being Jimmy Doolittle, Senator Kennedy is recovering, Mary McLeod Bethune, George Sloan, and Owen Roberts have died.

The New Movies has The Prodigal, a CinemaScope Bible epic featuring Lana Turner as the bad evil priestess. Love it or Leave It is an MGM vehicle for James Cagney, an unusually successful musical drama about some nearly forgotten gangsters. 

  Books has the climax of Joyce Carey's Prisoner of Grace trilogy, Not HonourMore. Basil Davenport's Inquiry Into Science Fiction is pretty good. Geoffrey Willans' Admirals on Horseback is a "light once-over of the bristly problems of Western co-operation." The review of T. Harry Williams' P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray sums up by saying "The country could have used more like him." I know you find military history repulsive as well as boring, but I feel I need to point out that this is insane as well as evil. 

 

Flight, 27 May 1955

Leaders 

Looks pretty,. In retrospect, the prototype Apollo's habit of walking itself around
the airfield on "idle" was probably a sign of things to come.

"Full Ahead" The Gannet and Wyvern have been a  handful due to control difficulties of the sort that everyone  has had with turboprops, but which are especially dangerous at sea, but now Eagle has taken aboard the first squadron of Gannets and problems with it, an yway, seem to be sorted out. Seamews will join it soon, and will probably be more trouble free because they are less ambitious. Nothing say about the Wyvern, though. 

"Systematic Approach" We should plan our design processes, is what I think Flight is saying. 

From All Quarters reports that not very much. (KLM financials, Vickers forming an American subsidiary, a crash in Kenya, open houses and royal messages here and there.

"Brood of the Eagle" Much more about Eagle's air wing, which includes a Gannet and a Wyvern squadron as well as two Sea Hawk squadrons, although the Wyvern squadron is "yet to join." 

Here and There is one page, but it is all social and company news. 

H. F. King, "Mars to Javelin: Gloster Aircraft of Forty Years" Flight's long time correspondent lifts "years ago, before the war" out of the Correspondence section and into the light of historiographic (it never ceases to amaze me what translations I can find, even if the word is not  your favourite) light. Follows "Part III: Friends in the Gloster Family: A. Cdre A. H. Wheeler's Memories of Grebe, Gloster, and E.28/39" Flying old planes!

"J71: Allison's Big Axial Turbojet" After the sad saga of its turbojets before the T-56 finally sold, Allison needs a hit, which unfortunately the single-shaft J71 is unlikely to be. 

And more like this. 

"Jet-Airliner Systems: Electrics, Air Conditioners, Pressurization and Fuel Supply" So this seems like enough material to carry a four-and-a-half page article. That's me being sarcastic! By the time we reach the third paragraph, we get an explanation. These are the Caravelle's systems, and specifically the ones supplied by British subcontractors. 

"Man-Carrying Centrifuge: New Acceleration Research Rig for Institue of Aviation Medicine" The Institute has a machine for whirling volunteer(?) test subjects around fast and seeing what happens to them. 

Correspondence has S. Scott-Hall pointing out that he has been in America, and he doesn't think British aviation impresses Americans very much. Michael B. Hawton is upset at the lack of attention to Custter's Channel wing. Grenville Manton provides some badly needed reminiscing about years ago, before the war, commenting on the 22 April article about the Sopwith Camel.

Wyverns will go into battle in Suez and will not exactly cover 
themselves with glory. They're like the Spitfire, the
iconic aircraft of a war!

Civil Aviation reports that United States Steel is buying some Viscounts to replace its three executive DC-3s. TCA's Viscounts are causing a stir. We get more about Pan Am's expanded Arctic flying services from West Coast cities to Europe. Some National Air Race and Service Aviation coverage (and Industry with some personnel moves) does not close out the issue because the article about the air group of the Eagle finishes out on the last page with a full-page pictorial. 

The Engineer, 20 and 27 May 1955

Let's see what (Not the Seven-Day) Journal has for the busy engineer: On the 20th, a four-day exposition on railway electrification with single-phase industrial frequency power, which is visited in a main body article on the 27th, explaining at greater length how it works; the annual report on new building research from the DSIR, which includes an ingenious study of dead loads on existing bridges and a way of calculating the actual volume of stone and brick in existing buildings; an announcement of this year's Whitworth Fellowships competition; the annual report of the British Chemical Plant Manufacturers' Association, and an exhibit of historic steam locomotives at Euston Station. For the 27th there was a talk on the development of nuclear power by John Cockcroft at the ICE, the annual meeting of the Institution of Metallurgy, with an award speech by the President emeritus, F. C. Thompson, an announcement that the Permanent International Association of Navigation Congresses will hold their 1957 session in London, the summer meeting of the Institution of Water Engineers heard papers on the Manchester waterworks and the development of diesel pumps, and the Fire Research Organisation of the DSR presented its annual report, highlighting fire prevention in prestressed concrete structures, non-water retardants, wetting agents, and the continuing danger of piles of oily rags, which can smoulder for days without being detected.   

It's vaguely amazing how quickly this ship came to be seen as impossibly old and
dowdy and was relegated to the downtown-Esquimalt run. 

On the 20th, Ian Bughan's "Training of Overseas Graduates in F.B.I. Scholarships"  explains that there are some culture clashes when young, rapidly promoted Australian technologists are brought over to Britain and put through traditional line apprenticeship training. The same position at the top of the paper is taken by R. A. S. Abbott of the Newcomen Society giving a historical review of "Vertical Boiler Locomotives, Part One."  L, W, Nichols' 'Pitch Errors of the Serrations of Gas Turbine Blades" describes a new comparator built at the NPL to measure variations on the order of 1.25  microns. On the 27th, we get F. A. L. Winterniz, "Cantilevered Pitot Cylinder," an investigation of how they perform in free stream conditions with fluid dynamics and trials. The new centrifuge at the RAE's Institute of Aviation Medicine, already mentioned in Flight, gets four pages, focussing on the rest of the facility. The Development Department of T. I. Aluminum investigates the "Economics of Aluminum Sheet as Cladding for Industrial Buildings," specifically thermal transference, and offers an estimate of the cost savings of cladding over traditional building methods. Unlined aluminum is idea for situations where as much insulation as possible, but only as much insulation as can be afforded, is appropriate. The National Physical Laboratory gets a look in on the 27th covering its annual open day on the 20th, where visitors got to see wind tunnel models and a magnetic memory

drum for computers, among other things.The Esso Petroleum Company writes to describe how useful its twin strainers (on inlet coolant sea water) are at the Fawley refinery. Very! And installing the second one gave the builders an opportunity to modify the first one for regular cleaning. Which I think was the point of installing the second strainer in the first place? For civil engineering on the 27th we get a look at sea wall construction in Kent using precast concrete blocks installed by cranes, an offshore coal boring tower for exploring offshore coal fields. "Passenger, Train, and Car Ferry Princess of Vancouver" gets a writeup on the 20th. Built by Alexander Stephens of Glasgow, high availability was required and met by having four engines (two each coming and going). Electric welding was largely employed, and considerable word count is used on the lounges (no cabins for the Vancouver-Nanaimo run), cocktail bar, and observation lounges. I'm sure I will see for myself soon! The engines

burn bunker fuel in diesel-style engines using a number of innovations, which doesn't sound like the way to get high reliability to me, but we'll see! "Driving the Allt-Na-Larige Tunnel" is about digging it, not motoring through a new tunnel in the Highlands. The point is a new speed record, 444ft in seven days. Various machinery, from the tungsten-tipped, specially suspending drill bit, to the spoil car, to the compressed air debris removal. "German Racing and Sports Cars" describes same, including the Mercedes Benz 3 litre that one this year's Mille Miglia. Simon Hydraulics writes in about its "Hydraulically-Operated Platform for Overhead Working," which is just another cherry picker but presumably a really good one. 

On the 20th again, we have "Colour-Light Signalling on the Southern Region," a review of the replacement of levered flag signalling with coloured lights and all the electrical cable needed to make it work. Hundreds of miles of it, with fuze boxes, special bridges for the cables, and lots of fussy details. Advertorials in this issue appear for a hydraulic guillotine shearing machine from Pearson, an immersion vibrator for compacting granular soils from Vibrofounds, a fork lift steadying device from LTD, and the annual report of HM Inspector of Mines and Quarries is briefly noted. 

On the 27th, monthly coverage of Metallurgical Topics has papers on the "Siliconising" of steel, "Activated" sintering of metal powders, basically where chemical reactions take place in the powder while sintering is going on, the low temperature properties of titanium (-100 to -196 C), which is less than supposed by earlier trials which were complicated by nitrogen contamination of the titanium, and a Bureau of Standards investigation of metal fatigue failure. Historically, premature failure was most often caused by burrs and decarburisation.  Separately below the fold, the British Non-Ferrous Metals Association Open Day is covered. Recent progress in aluminum extrusion, nickel plating, titanium and rolling strip from metal powders is highlighted. Speaking of visits, it is off to the RAF Technical College in Henlow

Leaders On the 20th, The Engineer is impressed by this year's Mille Miglia and the rising Continental competition for British sports cars and worried that Continental engineers are taking it more seriously than British. Literature fills out the page along with Letters, the former reviewing Mullins, Spontaneous Ignition of Liquid Fuels, the latter taken up by John Fox worrying about power savings given that the supply of coal for industry will be static for decades, and H. Pownall proposing an ambitious "Grand Contour Canal" to round out the internal waterways system. On the 27th, The Engineer defends the British Industries Fair on charges of being overwhelming and boring and yet non-inclusive, and the Royal Navy commitment to NATO, which is a promise of lots of ASW escorts and minesweepers, and notes a massive building programme gets in the way of new large ships, but the capabilities of the carrier fleet have been "ingeniously" extended to support the allied striking fleet. Guided missile anti-air ships of "more than 10,000 tons" wll be laid down, perhaps as early as next year, to catch up with American developments. The Navy's experiments with hydrogen-peroxide submarines, which the Germans were prepared to launch by the hundreds in 1945, continue. Literature looks at the first volume of Serge Leliavsky's Irrigation and Hydraulic Design, which is impressively technical in an all too-often empirical field, and Letters gives a forum for George Matthieson of Power Jets to promulgate his ideas for gas turbo-blowers for blast furnace design. It's no good rushing ahead with developments when you have the wrong technology!

On the 20th and again the 27th, The Engineer visits the German Industries Fair in Hanover, giving a substantial three paragraphs to each of seven stands featuring cranes, two diesel engine manufacturers, a steam locomotive and a vacuum press, plus gears, a "furnace charging car," welding equipment, motors, turbines and an excavator in the next issue. To round out the issue, along with advertorials for a milk bottling plant for Express Dairy, an automatic drill head from Dunmore, a grinding wheel crushing attachment from Newall, a multiple unit diesel train equipment for British Rail, and a stud welding jig from Compton Parkinson, Dunlop is invited to submit an article on the highly technical process of cycle rim manufacture, which same article is filled out to a second page by a notice of railway flood repairs on the LMR in the northwest. (Oh, and a discussion of anode corrosion protection at the TRINA spring session is covered.) Apart from a short blurb on construction of the St., Lawrence Seaway in Quebec, the remainder of the 27th ahead of the foreign sections is advertorial, featuring a "Transient generator for porcelain insulators" from BTH, a pressure feed oil can that appears to be a grease gun, an optical locator for jig boring machines from Optical Measuring, and a dry electrostatic filter for small air conditioners from Air Control Insulation. 

On the 20th, American Section features the 35,000t press from the USAF's heavy duty press program, now at work in Worcester making the 12ft-long, 18" wide, 3/18th" thick (at thinnest) wing spars of the F-102. The press' four cross beam supports are 414,000lb steel castings made at Sheffield, the largest steel castings ever made in the British Isles. Other parts are equally colossal, but not made in the United Kingdom. On the 27th the feature article is on the atomic engine plant of Nautilus, with new details on the water coolant pumping system, turbine plant, thrust blocks, design of the zircnium-uranium fuel elements and the portion of the leak-tight coolant cycle within the reactor shielding. All these details are expanded upon mainly in the context of the Idaho experimental station, as Nautilus has yet to run its machinery at full power at sea. We finish the section with a look at flood control in the TVA, which is proud of the way it controlled flooding conditions in March, but appreciative of the weather forecasts that allowed it to predict the storm and empty reservoirs. This was especially valuable at Paducah, where it was possible to avoid the standard precaution of closing the gaps in its surrounding dykes that are left open for highway and rail access.  Also on the 27th, Indian Engineering News looks at lignite mining in India, engineering industry progress, and a Burmah Shell refinery. Industrial and Labour Notes for the 20th has exports, labour disputes, gas use, iron and steel production, and company profits (and hopefully investment to follow) up. For the 27th, we get much the same, and an admission by a representative of the cablemaking industry that it is quite efficient, thank you very much. (British Railways is dancing around admitting the same.) Launches and Trial Trips are not covered on the 20th or 27th.