Postblogging Technology, June 1955, II: Free Speech and Tolerance Except for CIO Organisers

Yes, it's that movie. 

R_. C_.,
Lake House,
Nakusp,
Canada

Dear Father:

It is my last day in Britain, and I have handed off this letter and other confidential papers to the courier. We are waiting on a taxi to take us to Waterloo, and from there to Southampton to catch our ship providing it hasn't been struck in. Montreal and by rail to Revelstoke, none of the troubles of Atlantic flying with two children in tow, thank you very much! James cannot travel with us as there is some tedious planning exercise in regards ground radar at the East Anglia stations, so he will be flying in by stages, eventually to Kelowna. So we will have a rented car for the vacation, after all! Just as well, since there are probably going to be some trips to Nelson when Nakusp palls.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

(Now we can skip '56! Probably not much else going on, anyway.)

Letters

Glenn Coleman of Wayne likes Walter Reuther, and E. D. Holland of New Concord hates him. Mrs. Ernest Gregg's seven-year-old daughter got a nice handwritten thank you note from Winston Churchill after she wrote him a letter. Luis Ross of Santa Cruz oints out that it is very hard for Americans to make it as a matador. Leonard Linberg of Bristol thinks tht if Alfred Sloan doesn't have to retire at 65, neither should any other GM employees. James Schnabel explains how Judo costumes work for us. Four correspondents help us understand the difference between the NROTC and the ROTC. For Your Information explains why there aren't page numbers on the cover and why the Index moves around; it's because they only have a week to put it together! 

The Periscope reports that Zhukov will come to the Big Four conference if Charles Wilson does, too. General Mark Clark's report on the CIA is said to be blistering. Robert Anderson will be resigning soon and be replaced by Gordon Gray. Labour Secretary James Mitchell is said to be sitting on a "sizzling report" on scandals in job stateless benefits. Even Adlai Stevenson's enemies want him to run in '56. Eisenhower's nomination of Allen Whitefield to the AEC is going to be defeated. US Immigration officials are holding up visas for two Soviet performers until the Soviets approve two American tours. The Democratic school bill is going to to to the floor because something has to be done. Dr. Robert Cutter, the owner of Cutter Laboratories, which is behind the tainted polio vaccines, has been made President of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturer's Association to send a message. Which is that middle America will take the vaccines it is given. Which seems like a bad approach! The bill to regulate gas prices is dead. The Air Force has built a test stand for million lb rocket engines, and intelligence officials admit that they have no idea how many and what kind of planes the Russians can build. Polio vaccine is the hottest contraband behind the Iron Curtain, some think that the Russians are getting ready to let East Germany sink, and many Czech refugees are returning behind the Iron Curtain because the refugee camps are horrible. No-one knows about Russia's enormous network of giant underground factories. Nehru, Tito, and Burma's U Nu are negotiating some big agreement. The Red buildup on the coast opposite Formosa is complete, two weeks ahead of schedule, and the Reds can invade any time if their diplomacy doesn't succeed. Juan Peron doesn't know what to do with Cardinal Spellman's visit, because he needs American investment and is fighting the Argentinian church. Where Are They Now looks up Charles Urschel, the oilman who was kidnapped by Machine Gun Kelly in 1931. He's retired, and his son is Harold Stassen's personal assistant, and George Weyerhauser, who was also kidnapped in the Thirties, but was much younger, and manages a Weyerhauser mill these days. 

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that the Democrats are making plans to keep on being politicians even after Eisenhower beats Stevenson in '56. (The American Democratic Association's attack on Congressional Democrats for "affably acquiescing in the Republican attack on liberalism" just before Lyndon Johnson was able to defeat the Republican school and housing bills, ensuring the Democratic bills will be adopted, gets a separate story.) 

National Affairs

Newsweek discerns Khrushchev's sinister plot to split the West and overcome capitalism by being nice. 

"The Polio Story: Whose Fault?" The Surgeon General says it wasn't him! It was Dr. Salk, who didn't do a good enough job of working out the way to sterilise the vaccines. Also the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis didn't give the Federal government enough statistical data to set up safe manufacture. The Foundation says it's not it's fault, but let's wait to hear from Dr. Salk, but it's mostly the Feds, and specifically Ovetta Culp Hobby's fault. So Surgeon General Scheele gave a news conference and proceeded to trip all over himself before blaming Salk some more and throwing in Dr. Thomas Francis, who approved the Salk process. But, in the end, it was the Public Health Service that couldn't double check the work or provide manufacturer's enough guidance, because it is badly underfunded. Shorter stories point out that, whatever happens with the Dixon-Yates contract, the plant will survive, and that General Guenther says that the Western air forces actually still are better than the Red air forces, and that the Supreme Court has been very mean to the Government by overruling the old Loyalty Review Board's decision that John Punnett Peters really was a communist no matter what the security review said, because he was a famous doctor who still liked socialised medicine. Now it has to look at all nineteen cases, because maybe the Board decided other people were Communists because they liked public health insurance or something. It would have been even meaner if it had let Dr. Peters confront the confidential informant who denounced him!

Follows the three page story about a poll of the Senate that allows Newsweek to make the cover story prediction that it will be Ike over Adlai in '56. Styles Bridges gets a box interview to explain his opinion that terms in the House of Representatives should be increased to four years so that they will have a better chance of getting ahead of the pressure groups, and that Presidents should serve for a single six year term so they'r enot running for re-election half the time. I don't like Bridges, but he has some good points! Ernest K. Lindley's world tour reaches Japan, where he finally finds something sensible to say: "Stop Worrying About Japan." We overestimate its importance, and underestimate the Japanese people's ability to just get on with the job. 

International

"Reds Bait the Hook: Now The Real Struggle" I remember from back when I was a little girl how Uncle George struggled over the endless stories about the endless process to somehow get to a big conference to talk out postwar civil aviation, and then one day it happened and everything was fine and what was the point of all that fuss? Big Four talks stories are the same. Remember when Churchill's Big Four talk in Bermuda was good, and then it was bad, and then it kind of didn't happen at all? Now we've got the Geneva talk to get through. All I can say about pages and pages of worrying about Soviet charm offensives maybe persuading the Germans and Nehru and the French is that in the middle there is a box story about the new German Foreign Minister, so maybe we should look out for him in the future. 

"Massacre at Le Mans" Coverage of the late breaking Le Mans disaster is buried beneath a lurid crime story (the fact that it happens in France always makes a crime story twice as lurid). Newsweek can report that as of nightfall 85 dead and 80 injured were reported,a nd that the fact that the race went on after the disaster is bewildering to everyone. The British rail strike is still on and isn't ruining everything, but soon will, and there's a sweet story about Wilson Bell, the janitor at Haltwhistle Country School in northern England, who quit at the age of 35 to go to teacher's college, and subsequently rose through the ranks to become headmaster at Haltwhistle at the age of 50. `Much less heartwarming is the situation in South Vietnam, where Diem is still running off his rivals and talking about not holding the election in '56 because it can't be a real democracy if the other guys win! Despite an outbreak of parrot fever on HMS Centaur, the Royal Navy will continue to permit the crew to keep some 500 pet parrots in spite of a strick ban on pets aboard ship. Because there's too many of them, you see. Various Mexicans are wary of foreign investment because they are probably secretly communist, even the capitalist ones who point to some wild-eyed sage who thinks that Woolworth's shouldn't have a store in Mexico City. Which is just clearly Raul Prebisch's point, so thanks for explaining it so clearly, Newsweek! Catholic anti-Peron rallies in Buenos Aires have been very big, and the President of Peru photographs badly.

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that the economy is going pretty well, unemployment is beginning to get back down to normal, atom-powered freighters are around the corner, and a guaranteed annual wage will probably lead to more automation. 

The lead Business story is about the guaranteed annual wage, understandably, and is followed by a story about Ford's Big Three comeback. The bull market continues, Tiffany shareholders are tired of the company's low earnings, and Winn & Lovett, a Southern grocery chain, is in trouble after going big on potato futures, betting incorrectly that the price would go down. 

Products: What's New reports the Santa Fe's new ultrasonic detection car, and the diesel electric power plants for oil drilling equipment from the Electro-Motive Division of GM. 

Science, Medicine, Education

"Food From the Sea" A Japanese fish processing ship, the Banshu Maru, is being picketed in California because the Japanese tuna fishery is underselling American boats by using new technology such as 60-mile-long fishing lines with special non-snarling hooks. "In that direction, many Americans felt, lies the path to fishing prosperity in the years ahead." America, the story concludes, has begun doing more  research into fishing, and needs to do much more. The tuna industry is the sixth-largest fishery, and will likely be the biggest in the next few years. The story continues the theme from last week, that the seas have vast unexploited fisheries that will feed the world once science finds all the fish and explains little mysteries like the complete disappearance of the California sardine fishery for ten years in the Forties. 

Science  finishes by catching up with Vannevar Bush, who is working on automatically stabilising hydrofoils, and Oliver Buckley, who is out on the Atlantic being the boss of the laying of the Atlantic telephone cable.

The AMA annual conference in Atlantic City was opened by Norman Vincent Peale to show that doctors can be spiritual, too. The AMA President followed up by pointing out how nice some doctors are, like Jonas Salk. They also heard about the Kwajalein fallout victims, who are recovering well, about SAC's new airmobile hospital. There was also a Hall of Progress (my name!) that tells us that by the year 2000, infection disease (including the cold) will be wiped out, cancer eradicated, diabetes treated by insulin in tablet form. And that, "Thanks to proper hormone medication, women will stay "young, beautiful, and shapely indefinitely." But, says prognosticator L. H. Daniels, the world will still need doctors!    

"If Siwash Goes Under" An extensive look at private corporate funding for private colleges. Private colleges need the money desperately due to persistent budget deficits, but shareholders' advocates have asked whether corporate boards should be allowed to spend company money on colleges. 

"Bruna and the Bikini" Bruna Vecchio is, or was, a high school student at an Ursuline school in Milan who entered some beauty contests and was disqualified for being underaged, but then some pictures of her in a bikini appeared and she was expelled from her school for being a very bad girl, but then the school had to readmit her, but then the school ostracised her, but then she was nominated as the Italian entrant into Miss Universe, so she has had the last word, says the story. Good Lord. Over in Australia, some ten-year-old is upset that her school board IQ test called her a high-grade moron, which would upset me too. I'm not sure who to blame, but it's not the ten-year-old!  

The  author of the Wikipedia article about Alberto Giacometti seems to like these "artist and creation" pictures

Press, Arts, TV-Radio, Newsmakers

"Jeeps, Jibes, Jolts" Badly behaved newspaper columnists are the story this week after Philip Wylie wrote a very offensive column for the Miami Herald, while Walter Winchell and Westbrook Pegler are about as offensive as ever. Some newspaper publisher in eastern Kentucky is in trouble for calling out all the jury nullifications that occur in murder cases around those parts, and Country Gentleman is ceasing publication. 

Alberto Giacometti gets a story because of his current show at the Guggenheim,with a box story about new art books to fill out the story. 

Ed Morrow is still smoking even after his See It Now investigation of smoking and cancer, because he is addicted, he says. The argument about pay-per-see television continues, with Jerrold Electronic Corporation of Philadelphia now claiming  to have a universal decoder. Arthur Godfrey is in even more trouble. Novelist Gore Vidal has sold some movie rights and is rich now. Periscoping TV-Radio predicts a wave of cloak-and-dagger shows next year, including Top Secret, starring Ilona Massey, and Crusader. Regular shows include some kind of serial broadcast of The Late George Apley, and an "optimistic" show about 1976, to be called 1976. 

Diego Rivera, Alger Hiss, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gary Crosby, the President, James Thurber, and Maureen Connolly are in the column for the usual reasons. Val Peterson is in it because the Federal Civil Defence Administrator is buying a house 14 miles away from Capitol Hill so as to be safe from any H-bombs dropped directly on the dome. The  nearest five miles would be obliterated, he explained to a Congressional Committee, the next six miles were iffy, and the last 3 miles were a margin of error. Ma Ferguson has had a medal, Morehead Patterson has won an award, and Walter Hampden and Robert Elliott Burns have died.   

The New Films has Marilyn Monroes' latest, Seven Year Itch, from Fox. It's pretty good. MGM's The Cobweb is also pretty good. Periscoping Movies reports that Universal is making a retrospective musical about Edvard Grieg, to be called The Song of Norway. 

Books

Two travel books, Freya Stark's Ionia: A Quest, and Andre Migot's Tibetan Marches get a combined review that makes a meal out of the fact that they're very different books. Paul Hyde Bonner's Excelsior! is a novel about trouble and tension in Zurich during the war. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff have a good book about the history of jazz, and Feodor Dostoevsky's Winter Notes on Summer Impressions is out in an English edition, ironically because it is Dostoevsky travelling in Europe and indulging his xenophobia. 

Raymond Moley (and the Republican caucus) have found a way to be against Federal school aid. The money might be spent in the wrong place, you see. 

Aviation Week, 20 June 1955

Vikrant launching a Breguet 1050 Alize during the 1971 war ---Indian Navy photograph (Wikipedia)

News Digest reports that McDonnell has a tentative $100 million contract to produce F-101s, that North American has a separate atomic power division now, that East Coast Aircraft has built an experimental all-magnesium F-80C for the Air Research and Development Command to evaluate the possibility of replacing aluminum with magnesium as the standard airframe material, that Cessna's CH-1 helicopter has won CAA certification, that Flying Tigers mechanics are striking for a pay increase and union recognition, and there is progress in France with the SO-9059, an interceptor version of the Trident, and the Breguet 1050 antisubmarine aircraft. Industry Observer reports that flight testing of an atomic aircraft engine will take place within a year on a B-36 testbed. (The plant won't actually power the plane.) The Convair Atlas ICBM's guidance system will be developed by the Arma Division of American Bosch. The Douglas F4D has developed a serious high altitude stall problem since being fitted with the J57 due to air intake through the nozzle being impeded. Production of the initial batch of 17 F-104As has been accelerated to make up for the loss of the prototype. Bellanca is diversifying into electronics, missiles, drones and other fields under its new owner, Sidney Albert. Bell is experimenting with a modified Nike coated with a silicon carbide-coated graphite liner that doubles burning time. Lockheed President Robert Gross explains Lockheed's wing design philosophy: Never mind all those delta wing fans. The thin, relatively straight wing is best at higher speeds. Washington Roundup reports that the 16 June Red Air Force Day saw a great air show and static displays of aircraft and spaceship models. The Defence Department expects all sorts of breakthroughs in 1956 so don't you dare touch its budget! Uncle Henry's reputation is coming back to bite him as business rivals accuse him of using his pull to get the Halethorpe heavy forge management contract. Charles Willis, a  nonsked man before he joined the Eisenhower White House, is bowing out after two years as a Presidential staff assistant because he is a screw-up, which isn't stopping him from landing at W. R. Grace. We're told, once again, that General Gruenther doesn't think that the Red Air Force is all that. Yet. 

Claude Witze reports for Aviation Week that "USAF Builds Global Bases at Record Rate" Most of the activity is related to runways that can take a B-52, which are being built in potential B-52 operating areas from Guam to Britain. The article has a bit of specific costing, and is followed by the news that the ARDC has been cleared to move its headquarters from Baltimore to Dayton, because it's too hard to fight the Air Force Ohio boys. Lieutenant General Donald Putt, the USAF Deputy Chief of Procurement, is the latest to complain that basic research is being neglected while the Soviets re going at it hard. USAF Assistant Secretary for Research and Development Trevor Gardiner told the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences this week that arms are too complex for central direction of research and development. Napier is planning to take an Eland-Convair 240 on an American tour next year. Good luck! 

William Waterton reports that "Paris Air Show Spotlights French Gains" There's editorial, but also a nice pictorial that covers the plane side. Waterton covers some of the static displays, particularly the engines, but nothing on show is new to us. Rather a blockbuster but buried in a box at the foot of the article is a report that Lockheed and Bell are in merger talks. 

George Epstein and David Kinigsberg report for Aeronautical Engineering that "Other Industries Share Benefits of Aircraft Research" A very long article points out that other industries use aluminum, electronics, and high-powered jet turbines. 

Irving Stone reports for Production that "Ryan Develops New Welding Techniques" This is the second article in a row to describe Ryan's honeycomb metal sandwich material. It is actually about Ryan's new Fullerton Laboratory, where the research is being done, as much as about the new techniques for welding thin plates and so on. 

Philip J. Klass reports for Avionics that "London Airport Gets Decca Taxi Radar" Itis Q-band, and the first taxi radar to go into operation, although one was evaluated at Idlewild in 1952 and is being used at ARDC. The technical details and use are briefly described before we get on to the meat of the article, which is its prospective American rival, from Airborne Instruments Labs, which is even better in every way, and which would be in use even now if it weren't for the Korean War slowing things down, and which will be available in 1957 or 1958. An entire, very small article follows about how avionics companies are working on very small things these days.

Filter Centre reports that the American Society for Testing Materials has a new subcommittee for vacuum tubes and semiconductors; CGS Laboratories has an automatic Morse-text converter for teletypes; GE has extended its transistor warranty because they are getting more reliable; the USAF might switch to Collins equipment from RCA; Abrams is working on a digital intervalometer for bombing and aerial photography; GE is using X-rays for quality assurance of capacitor production to reduce wastage and improve reliability. 

Letters

Leslie Trigg of Aerojet writes to express frustration at the suspicion that the industry is holding down engineer wages with a "Gentleman's Agreement." William F. Remmert of Remmert-Werner is concerned that Air Force surplus sales at giveaway prices drive down demand for new equipment. Ralph Vanucci is the latest person to write in and explain that there's no shortage of engineers, just bad management. Michael Rabin likes Aviation Week. 

George L. Christian has an entire page-and-a-half article about a new foolproof quick-disconnect cable coupling from Weba, of New Hyde Park, New York, for Equipment. 

Captain Robson's Cockpit Viewpoint tells us what would make a good short-haul plane, which everyone wants but industry somehow can't deliver. 

New Aviation Products has a spectrum analyzer from Brush, a solenoid actuator linkage from James Cunningham, the Fillerarc welding system form GE, a surface discharge igniter for jets from KLG, "overcoming the problem of relighting jets at altitude and spark plug fouling," and a resetting timer from Lear.

Air Transport has "Prototype Comet 4 Tests Design Changes," which I think we've heard about in general. De Havilland says that it is working on reverse thrust, but hasn't got any concrete plans yet, and, worryingly, it is not including in the very tight weight increase allowance.  Meanwhile, Douglas has a model of its DC-8 out. 

Robert Hotz's Editorial explains about how basic research is key to airpower race, just in case you missed this the first million times, and way down at the bottom a few paragraphs of "Light on Tacan Row," which seems more relevant to how research is actually done in the United States than any number of velliety filled two-page columns bemoaning the lack of basic research. It turns out that the Air Force told the Department of Commerce and the CAA very clearly in 1951 that it was working on Tacan and should not go ahead with DME. There was no secrecy, and the commercial air authorities were not blindsided. Hotz goes on to conclude, incomprehensibly, that everyone was at fault equally. 

 

Letters

W. K. Wilson of Nanaimo has doubts about speed reading kits. Several correspondents liked the article about Southern Baptists. Irving McNeil liked the article about U.S. Steel, James C. Lowery liked the article about coffee when it said that Italian coffee was good, but on the other hand it was bad when it said that Spanish coffee was good. Two writers like the new USAF Academy, including the widow of the Representative that pushed it through, and a sergeant in California is upset at criticisms of the Academy's chapel. For Your Information reports that Cardinal Spellman sent Newsweek a long telegraph about how much he liked the article about Archbishop Montini. 

The Periscope reports that Krishna Menon (who is suspiciously Communistic) wants to ban monkey exports from India even though they are being used to produce polio vaccine, because it is cruel to monkeys. Western intelligence analysts say that up to 20% of the draft-age East German refugees coming over to the West are secret Communist agents. There is an underground fight in the German Defence Ministry between Reinhard Gehlen's "vast U.S.-supported intelligence agency" and the liberals who currently control it. On the other hand, the Communists are relenting from their evil plotting in East Berlin. Intelligence agencies also predict that the Soviets will soon fold the Cominform  and use the World Federation of Trade Unions in its place. US Intelligence operations in Formosa are being retooled because "Western Enterprises Incorporated" is ludicrously un-secret. The Chinese Reds are offering bounties to defectors on a sliding scale based on the equipment they bring over, the rotters! Attlee's decision to stay on as Labour leader is a blow to the Labour right, since, it is said, if  he had resigned, they would have purged the Bevanites. A fresh series of purges are predicted in Czechoslovakia. 

Civil Defence Headquarters has concluded that OPERATION ALERT shows that our government would have been wiped out by fallout. Terrifying word from inside is that the latest US fighters can't climb to the altitude of the new Soviet bombers, and that only Nike missiles can defend us. Senator McCarthy is lining up wrest control of the Wisconsin GOP from Alexander Wiley. We hear about the USAF balloon atom-bombs again, the Army's new cigarette-pack-sized Geiger Counter, the AEC's new, smaller, atomic plants are cheaper than ever. Army psychologists have recently discovered that new recruits "seem to learn better through TV than from live instructors." Where Are They Now finds Paul v. Lettow-Vorbeck, who is retired, and Pietro Badoglio, who is also retired, and, at 83,  no wonder! 

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that no-one likes Joe McCarthy any more and that Congress is behind the President as he flies off to Geneva. Meanwhile over in Russia military reformers are having trouble persuading conservative elements that the next war will be fought in the air and with atom and hydrogen bombs. They do say that Russia has an advantage because it is bigger and its industry is more dispersed, but they do not "reports here to the contrary, advocate for preventive war." 

National Affairs

UN anniversary session in San Francisco some more, Big Four talks some more. Newsweek really doesn't like Krishna Menon. 

"So Much to be Done" OPERATION ALERT was one snafu after another. 

"Fire to Frying Pan" While our diplomats are working to get our fliers out of Peking, three of our boys who decided to stay on the Communist side in the 1953 prisoner exchange are coming home after all, and the country has to decide what to do with them. (Their families are ready to welcome them back, while on the other side the Army wants to try them as traitors.) And Bill Baldwin, the American who has signed up with the Kenya Police Reserve to fight the Mau Maus, doesn't want to come home even though the State Department says he has to. The Dixon-Yates controversy gets another story, and Lyndon Johnson a Special Report.

International

 There needs to be a story about the Geneva conference. Here it is. The Bundestag is handling the new German Defence Minister harshly while Adenauer is in Washington. Paul Anderson made an impression at a weightlifting competition in Moscow and why isn't this in Sports? Andrei Volkov's column asks, "How Long for Khrushchev?" Apparently, Khrushchev's "uninhibited" behaviour in Belgrade has hurt his status in Moscow, and the Soviet press is talking up Bulganin, and Volkov supposes that whichever of Bulganian or Malenkov(?) gets the support of the Army will overthrow Khrushchev's "collective leadership" and emerge as the "true successor" to Stalin. Britain's "costly strike wave" is ruining everything. Ronald Ledger, a newly elected Labour MP, is the talk of the country for speaking about the way his family was scattered by poverty in his youth, and wishing he knew where his siblings were, and being reunited with them by the power of the press. 

"Jean Dawson (center)"

"Roster for Murder" That's the document that Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil recently handed Premier Faure. It is a list of French residents of Morocco slated for murder by a "secret gang of die-hard French empire-first settlers" for advocating for more independence for Morocco. He wanted to sound out the Premier about allowing Arab nationalists to publish in the Maroc-Presse, which he had just bought. The Premier was in favour, Lemaigre-Dubreuil did so, and on 11 June he was machine-gunned to death, the seventh person on the list to be assassinated or at least attacked. This has provoked, at last, the first arrest of  French "counter-revolutionaries," an "unnamed inspector of police" in Casablanca. Things are not going well in Morocco. Ernest K. Lindley spends three weeks in Indonesia discovering that its main problem is, you guessed it, Communists! And the local Chinese! And nationalism! And that was so much fun that Newsweek recycles the same story for Malaya, or actually Singapore, where the fact that the general strike fizzled just goes to prove how dangerous the Communists are. The draft Soviet-Japan Peace Treaty presented to the Japanese government is apparently outrageous. We get a summary of a tumultuous week in Argentina, which, in Newsweek's telling, began with the Church excommunicating Peron, and escalated into an attempt by the the Navy to seize the Casa Rosada, and hopefully Peron himself, and in which Navy planes bombed the Plaza de Mayo. As the navy revolt fizzled out, mobs burned churches and the upshot is that the army remained loyal, but the Peronists may not, and Peron may be gone soon because his own supporters consider him too much of a liability. 

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that the Ford-UAW guaranteed wage plan has hit its first snag with Ohio's unemployment insurance law. The steel industry is not expecting a strike,the Administration promises prompt action against speculative excesses, and his top economic advisors are talking about an increase in the discount rate to reduce the rate of automobile loan issues, since they fear that holders will be vulnerable in a down turn. More uranium mills are opening, removing a major bottleneck to more uranium production. The government is appealing the du Pont antitrust suit. West Germany is starting an atomic freighter programme. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating price fixing in the antibiotics industry. Steuben Glass is offering the most expensive Davy Crockett knick-knack on the market, a $1500 glass bowl. 

Auto sales are up, the sell-off of the United States Rubber Company has so far generated a surprise profit for the taxpayer, share gains by German companies with East German interests indicate that German speculators are hoping that German unity will come out of Adenauer's visit to Moscow. Americans who are boycotting vodka because it is Russian are actually boycotting all-American G. F. Heublin's Smirnoff Vodka, just so you know. (To add additional value to the story, Newsweek explains what a Bloody Mary is.) 

Products: What's New reports an automatic brake for cars from Hemphill, that does away with the footbrake by automatically advocating when the acceleration pedal is "released beyond a point." Burroughs has an electronic "character reader" that may be the "missing link" in the automation chain. It is now reading traveller's cheques at the rate of 7200 an hour for a New York bank. A story about Ringling Brothers highlights the rising costs that are making it hard for them to put on a circus. We get a box explanation to the effect that Henry Hazlitt is too ill to write a column again.

Science, Medicine, Education

"Birds, Bees, Flowers" I quote the subtitle of this week's section to show that Newsweek editors are too clever by half. 

"Sextants for Birds"  Dr. G. V. T. Matthews of Cambridge is working out how birds navigate. He doesn't believe that it is some kind of inborn magnetic sense, or a "super-vision, super-smell, infra-red response," or a Coriolis force detector, or ESP, or radar, or an inertial navigational system. They just use solar navigation. Bees, which are even more precise navigators, and Professor Karl v. Frisch is in New York from Vienna to prove that they have an internal chronometer and that his Vienna-born bees won't start their day at dawn, Vienna time. Brooklyn Botanic Garden is putting in Braille signs inviting blind visitors, only, to handle the plants. That's got nothing to do with flowers navigating, but flowers don't navigate, so I guess. 

"Drink in the Brain"  Dr. Frederick Lemere of Seattle has discovered that alcohol is a habit-forming drug because it shrinks the brain cells or something like that, but social drinking is fine. Nobel Prize for Medicine coming by return mail! Periscoping Medicine reports that Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr. of the University of Michigan predicts an imminent cold vaccine. Boston doctors have an electric heart stimulator that can reverse heart stoppages. It is a portable, 13lb device with twin paddles that have to be placed on a bare chest. NYC-Bellevue doctors have conclusively shown that athlete's foot is due to low body resistance, mostly, and not fungus. 

Commencement was the same as usual this year, although engineers can expect good pay and Adlai Stevenson cracked up the audience at Smith. Carl Sandberg did a commencement, John Foster Dulles did two, and Governor Shivers of Texas, invited to give the baccalaureate address at the University of Southern California defused an attempted student boycott by avoiding the subject of segregation, instead just calling for tolerance of different views and freedom of speech. Harold Frederick Horstmeyer of Alpha Tau Omega at Northwestern gave the best valedictorian speech, and Miss California Stroupe of Florida is the nation's prettiest coed. Everybody else is drunk. 

"One of the most notorious political spots to ever appear on television sets across Texas."

 

Newsmakers, TV-Radio, Press

 

The press correspondents invited to observe OPERATION ALERT at its secret "Emergency Press Headquarters" report that the whole thing was a big snafu. A journalist asked civil defence press chief Charles Pearce, "Is this the way it would happen in the real thing, Charlie?" His answer: "Mr. Snyder will take over at this point." To which a voice from the press group said, "Coward." Wade Nichols is doing a good job of keeping Redbook's circulation up. John Dowling, the 41-year-old Time Buenos Aires' bureau chief, gets an obituary on the occasion of his death in an air accident. Periscoping Press reports that Mrs. Joe McCarthy has been offered a syndicated woman's column, and has turned it down. "A new well-financed Paris daily" is about to go to press to support an attempt to put Mendes-France back to power. NBC's new "Monitor" show is the "longest and most frenetic radio programme in history." It runs all weekend and aims to win back the advertising revenue that the national networks are losing to local stations. The Independent Television Authority in Britain has laid down rules about what the independent stations can get away with. 

Robert Taylor has had a baby. Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. John Golden, Ralph Heyward Isham, and Gerald Smith have died. (Note that the regular Newsmakers column is missing. This is all from Transitions.)

Lyudmila Vasilyevna Tselikovskaya

The New Films has some Soviet films which have been released in the West, including the amiable family story, A Big Family, a Chekov adaptation, Poprigunya, starring Ludmilla Tzelikovskaya, a circus movie, a ballet, a "wman's movie" (Marina's Fate), and a general review of the Soviet movie scene. They like foreign movies, although they are released long after their Western runs, while up to 100 Soviet movies are released in the United States a year through Artkino, although they are hard to find in cinemas. Columbia's Against the House is at least a good idea for a movie and has Kim Novak, who still can't act. Lady and the Tramp is an animated feature from Disney, the first to be made for CinemaScope, which is "OK if you like dogs." 

Books

Bela Kornitzer's The Great American Heritage: The Story of the Five Eisenhower Brothers is about how a sick orphan in Abilene prayed to Milton Eisenhower to be cured of the Black Death, and other miracles of the sainted Eisenhowers. Alvin Yudkoff's Circumstances Beyond Control is a novel about of suspense and psychology, while Lonnie Chapman's Ship's Company is a war novel set in the Battle of the Atlantic. Warren Eyster's No Country for Old Men is meandering and pointless. 

Raymond Moley's Perspective column this week proves to his own satisfaction that the United States doesn't need to spend money on highways to improve safety, since all that's needed is stricter licensing, lower speed limits, and more highway patrols. 

Aviation Week, 27 June 1955

News Digest reports that the T-57 is flying in a C-124 testbed. Ford is working on a contract to produce 750 J57s for Air Materiel Command. Fairchild has a contract for 73 more C-123Bs. Pan Am is ordering RCA's AVQ-10 weather radar for its entire fleet of DC-6s and DC-7s. Northwest Orient is testing the Bendix X-band radar for its Stratoliners. Industry Observer reports that Boeing will accelerate B-52 production from 10 to 13 aircraft a month because the Reds are so scary. A Northwest Airlines Super Constellation almost ditched 7 hours out of Tokyo because of sudden power loss across all four of its Wright Turbocompound engines due to icing. The first F-100Cs will be delivered in July. Lockheed is working on nuclear-powered aircraft, too. Bristol has taken a license on a Snecma thrust-reverser device. Production streaming has cut the cost of the F-89 from $40/lb to $19/lb. The first Elizabethan to convert to Napier Elands will start freight service with BEA in "about a year." The Army has spent $15 million on its convertiplane programme so far. Rolls Royce RB109 turboprops will go into the second Elizabethan to be converted, for trials. Republic and North American are having trouble cutting titanium plates and are thinking about going back to traditional methods like rule blanking. Washington Roundup reports that Congress is open to spending some money on airport construction, that the industry doesn't believe that the Air Transport Association can "self-police," that the Navy is tightening rules on showing new aircraft at air shows because of all the crashes, the Air Force has banned sonic booms at air shows, the Amy is upset that the Air Force is raining on its freakshow of new planes, Washington is looking at a new airport, and the Navy is gingerly trying out its plan for leasing the surplus cargo aircraft it needs in case of war but not right now.  

Katherine Johnsen reports for Aviation Week that "AF To Speed F-101, F-104 Production" The Senate has also allocated more money for Marine Corps aviation over Administration objections. There are more details about the budget, and coverage of Senator Symington's accusations that the Administration is covering up just how far along the Red bomber force is. He also thinks that the Defence Department has too many bureaucrats. Claude Witze reports on the Pentagon's latest guidelines for press briefings that will, I'm sure, fix the problem at last. William Allen has given a speech refuting claims that the aircraft industry isn't cost conscious, because it is subsidised. "We do cut costs," he said. "Why do you think our planes keep crashing?" 

"Supersonic XF8U-1 Details Revealed" The Navy has released pictures of the new Chance Vought plane.   Some additional details of the construction are included in the article. 

By Airwolfhound - flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84242378

"Destroying 6 More Comets, RAE Tells Aeronautical Conference" RAE will test six more Comets to destruction in its water tanks as it gets ready to do a Britannia and a Viscount, while de Havilland will do its own tests on the Comet 4. BAE's John Masefield protested, arguing that this was all pointless since it was obvious that the Comet was too thin and not strong enough, and now the industry was swinging to over-caution, although, as the director of RAE pointed out, there wasn't really anything else to do with the Comets. US delegates to the Fifth International Aeronautical Conference mainly talked about production, although Bartram Kelly of Bell gave a talk about its planned tailless twin rotor helicopter, and Edward Heineman of Douglas about designing high speed aircraft, noting that slats, vortex generators, and yaw dampers were key to getting the flight characteristics of the A3D and F4D "from unsatisfactory to satisfactory." 

William Waterton reports from Paris that "French Fly Ramjet, Rocket Fighters" which is more about the Leduc testbed and the Trident, introducing what turns out to be a general review  of French and other European developments of which I particularly note the Alouette turbine-powered helicopter, as that's the thing that James says I should look out for as a field where real progress can be made in the immediate future. A box story notes that an overflight by Victors and Vulcans was announced to be at 594mph at 59,000ft, while Canberras and Lightnings made competitive short takeoffs and landings. 

The Air Force is moving a lab, Armstrong Whitworth has a new wind tunnel, Air Force procurement contracts continue to lag. 

L. J. Nuttall reports for Aeronautical Engineering that "Gas Turbine Improves Performance," which is a lengthy article explaining how gas turbines are better power plants for helicopters, which I didn't know was in any doubt! Four pages to hammer the point home. NACA is looking at "air dumping," which means ways of recovering high pressure air being "dumped" from commercial aircraft for reuse. Thrust and Drag points out that people are working on using telephone switching equipment to control Nikes, and the flap in Britain over the lack of ejection seats on some current British service aircraft, which is apparently all the Ministry's fault for not asking for them. 

Irving Stone reports for Production that "New Fighters Use Resin-Bond Honeycomb" Oh, Thank Heavens, a story about resin-bond all-metal honeycomb! It's in the F-102, you know. When it actually flies, I mean. It will be. (And the F-101). The specifications of the Hexcel Products material and that from Narmco is described at some length, but not enough to fill out the magazine, so we hear about the company's Fiberglas, too. Then Henry Lefer reports on "Converted Millers Speed Output of North American F-100 Wings." Simmons converted some old millers into planes for NAA. We then throw out any pretence that we're not running advertorials produced for the International Aeronautical Conference by running Clifford Co.'s encomium to its progress in oil coolers since 1940.

I. M. Ross reports for Avionics that "Field-Effect Transistor Raises Semic-Conductor Frequency Range"  A fairly long and lucid discussion of how field effect transistors work, a brief discussion of why this means that they will be able to  handle higher frequencies, and a disclaimer that the author cannot predict how they might be used in the future. and some very good graphics, too. 

Filter Centre reports that Librascope has a "shoebox-sized" digital computer to be the heart of an aircraft bombing/navigation/autopilot equipment; that Hansen Electronics has a "Do-It-Yourself" resistor kit, while GE has improved HF transistors made by the "meltback" process.
 

New Aviation Products has new aircraft and missile pumps operating at up to 10,000rpm, from Eastern Industries, two new amplifiers for aircraft cockpit and cabin use from Aviation Accessories, and a transistorised boost amplifier from Lear. Aviation Safety features a report on the 5 November 1954 Lockheed Lodestar crash at Glastonbury, Conn., which killed one, and was due to a structural failure, pilot error and an engine failure due to improper maintenance, although by who is unknown since the engines were bought surplus and logs were incomplete. 

Robert Hotz's editorial denounces "The Poisonous Fog of Censorship." The J57, Martin SeaMaster, Snark, and Rascal missiles are four tings that the public can see with their own eyes but of which the Pentagon still won't release pictures. 

 And now it's time to find out what The Engineer is covering in its issues of 17 and 24 June 1955!

We'll start with the inside cover and the feature that still doesn't have a name since they dropped "The Seven-Day Journal," which is quaint and old fashioned and perfect for a magazine about the latest technology news and also the latest Newcomen Society antiquarianism in the form of a two-part (so far) article about vertical-boiler locomotives, by R. A. S. Abbott. On the 17th we feature the opening of Armstrong-Whitworth's Mach 3 tunnel, complete with some technical details. Then it is a report on the export of internal combustion machines by the trade association (it's up, especially to Argentina, Iran, and the Soviet Union). The Reina Del Mar, a steamship passenger.cargo liner with full air conditioning and stabilisers, has launched in Belfast. The British Coal Association's annual report says that the Association is in good health and that it is sponsoring work on using slack coal in turbines, reducing air pollution, and fuel economy. Eight British firms are forming a nuclear power association to work on atomic power plants. 

On the 24th, we have the reports of the Coal Board, DSIR on food, and trends in inventions, from the Comptroller-General of Patents; and more light on the Government's position on atomic energy agreements and restrictive business practices. Restrictive business practices, the FBI tells the government, are bad, but it is a moot point because no alleged restrictive business practice anyone can point to is actually that. The "Agreement" on atomics is with the United States, which is unclenching on the matter. The trend in invention is towards computers and data memory storage.  

On the 17th, we have L. B. Escritt, "Design of Surface-Water Sewers By Table" is slightly misleading, because the article is mostly the tables he has worked out to calculated how big sewers should be to drain the surrounding area, depending on how much pavement, and so on, there is. Then we visit the Plastics Exhibition, which turns out to be mostly all the tools and machines you need to make things out of the plastic you've got from the refinery. And since that doesn't fill out a page, we get an update about "Adoption of the Universal Screw Thread by British Industry," which is going well, but needs more work, discussed at a conference this month, and Thank Heavens for the solid and boring work of standards councils, institutes, and bureaus! A feature article on the 17th is devoted t othe "Standard Class '9' Locomotives with Franco-Crosti Boilers," specifically describing the new boiler design at great length because of their very interesting feature of using an economiser arrangement in which exhaust gas is used to preheat feedwater. "Hydro-Desulphurisation Plant at Stanlow Refinery" explains how Royal Dutch Shell has solved the problems that prevented previous hydro-desulpherisation plants from working properly, mainly getting the gas to go through the catalyser at low pressures. All of this is a warmup for the 17th's piece de resistance, "25ft Vertical Boring and Turning Mill." I'm sitting down to bore you, which is why I don't have to be 25ft tall! It is by George Richards of Birmingham, has a control panel, and is quite big, all the details you expect these days. The British Medical Research Council is quite pleased with its cyclotron.  The South African Railways have sprung for some 2000hp electric locomotives for suburban service.
 

On the 24th, besides continuing series, we have J. R. Ellis, "Notes on Carpet Graphs," which are for graphically evaluating air flows, and a detailed look at the new Mach 3 wind tunnel. The usual: Giant  motors, tiny tunnels, lots of math to make sure that the results are relevant at larger scales, especially at the ends. We also attend the inauguration of the Haweswater Aqueduct, the Conference on Automatic Factories (lots of computers), and the ongoing laying of the Atlantic Telephone Cable.

Metallurgical Topics looks at the aging of mild steel (what to look for to determine how quickly a steel part will age), continuous casting of special steels (a Uniex pilot plant is working), steel castings for high temperature service (experiments at Sulzer), engineering applications of electrodeposition (a whole conference worth of papers), and material for condenser tubes (effects of pollution on feedwater at LA).  

All these articles need a picture of a multistory machine and
a neat little control console. There's probably some semiotics 
work to be done. (Worker/manager?) 

Leaders

"Progress on Nuclear Power" Britain needs nuclear power because it is running out of coal (and it has atom bombs), but the jury is still out as to whether it will be economical everywhere. "Government Intentions" looks at parts of the Queen's Speech relevant to engineers. They seem tied to the new atomic power business combination! There is the the matter of air pollution, and "combinations" that "restrain trade." Letters, on the 17th, are devoted to  historic locomotives. 

On the 24th, The Engineer shares its opinions of "Automation,"and "Defence Priorities." It turns out that automation isn't about transfer machinery or machine tools, but rather electronics! Atomic freighters and atomic submarines are silly and should not be defence priorities because reactors are big. What the Navy really needs is more big aircraft carriers and antiaircraft missiles, not even more atom bombers, as the deterrent force is already enormous. 

Below the fold on the 17th, The Engineer visits the "Fifth Congress on Large Dams" and the "Business Efficiency Exhibition at Olympia."  Typewriters and copiers are for efficiency, but so are time-and-motion studies. On the 24th, we hear about "Extensions to the Willoughby Lane Gas Works, Tottenham." Everything English is quaint! Even gas! . . . I'm not sure where to go from that. The Coal Board's gas turbine, or Ruston's, actually, which is running on coal dust, is worth a visit. So is the Sawbridgeworth Pumping Station and the Castle Donnington 132kVA substation and the opening of the Water Pollution Research Laboratory of the DSIR at Stevenage, Hants. Work continues reducing airborne jet noise, and the magazine hosts an article on "The Computer: Electronics' Contribution to Production," by R. H. Booth, which helpfully explains what all kinds of computers and their associated control systems are in three pages. We don't visit, but hear about, the Aluminum Centenary Exhibition, the Technological Irradiation Group at Harwell, and the Newcomen Society's Summer Meeting.
"Twin Screw Steam Tug Barana" is launched. Advertorials for an electrically-activated discharge valve, tube bending machines, laboratory heaters for Kjeldahl and Soxhlet Tests, precision wire-round resistors, and sub-micronic filters are hosted, but on the 24th only a power arm drilling rig. For both weeks, American Survey is devoted to the "Colorado-Big Thompson Project," a dam/irrigation work on a typically American scale, although we find room for a proposed monorail system for LA and the falling price of titanium, and, on the 24th, to welding titanium in a controlled atmosphere, since if you do it in regular air it absorbs gasses and becomes brittle. Industrial and Labour Notes is devoted to the effects of the rail strike and its aftermath the next week, on iron and steel, problems on the docks, rising engineering employment,  rising exports, and the guaranteed annual wage in America. Ominously, on the 24th it finds room for productivity and "human relations in industry." Five Launches and Trial Trips on the 17th, five more on the 24th. A steamship tanker, three motor tankers, and a steam cargo liner, then two motor liner,s a fruit carrier, and two motor tankers.

(Built by Burntisland, built 1955, lost to fire 1975, mainly hauled fruit (citrus?) from the Mediterranean back to Britain.)