Postblogging Technology, September, 1955, II: Ike in '56!

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

You might be happy to hear that I have been branching out from pouring over patent tenders to wining and dining Bill and David. While it might seem as though the partners are taking advantage of my connections, I see it as me taking advantage of the partners! It is nice to be working a bit closer to home, though, as I am feeling more than a little guilty about how little I am seeing my children. 

You'll notice a lack of aviation journals. The Farnborough issues of Flight have vanished into the postal never-neverland. On the bright side, an October number of Aviation Week has managed to track me down at the Palo Alto address in defiance of all probabilities. Maybe circulation remembers our long correspondence the last time I couldn't get my magazines here?

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Ray Milland's last directorial effort?

Letters

Everyone is impressed Sergeant Lloyd Pate for not embarrassing the country while he was a POW in Korea. William P. Roberts of Beaumont, Texas thinks the doctor draft won't work because the Pentagon can't afford to pay doctor money. A reader embarrasses himself by pointing out a mistake that isn't a mistake, the editor not realising just who gets embarrassed when this sort of thing gets printed. William Douglas of Rapid City thinks that the uranium boom is the best thing that ever happened to South Dakota, and I'm sure he's right. A. W. Plummer embarrasses himself by explaining relativistic physics to Newsweek in connection to a line about spaceships whizzing around at thousands of times the speed of light, when Newsweek was just quoting a speech by H. E. Canney of Bell Aircraft. No wonder Bell can't sell a fighter! In contrast, Giles Miller, Chairman of Lynchburg National Bank, thinks that he is correcting one of the speakers at the Copenhagen conference when it was actually Newsweek. Barbara Fox and Newsweek think that New England Civil Defence Director Chet Curtis did a great job with all the hurricanes. Ed. C. Martin of Birmingham, Alabama, writes about the article about Dale Carnegie to the effect that he had just run the first Dale Carnegie course for Negroes in his home city, and thinks that his class are a credit to their race. Mrs. Frank Harrison and Bert Schreiber remember how Jamaica ginger abuse led to "Jake Legs" peripheral paralysis in the Twenties, mainly in Mississippi, which . . . I'm sorry, I've already abused South Dakota and Bell Aircraft, and that's my limit. Newsweek marks its special education issue by flogging its various class subscription deals. 

The Periscope reports that HUAC is about to reveal a Communist cell within the U.S. government that was still active as recently as 1954. GOP strategists say that Truman is doing their work for them by goading the President into running in '56. I am squeezing my pen so hard right fighting the urge to say something not very lady like. STOP TALKING ABOUT IKE MAYBE NOT RUNNING IN '56!!! (GOP strategists are also digging into Henry Morgenthau's papers and predict that they are going to find electoral GOLD! Possibly. I hear the man is Jewish!) Democrats also think that Secretary Benson's claims about whittling down dairy surpluses don't stand up to scrutiny. The President is setting up an oversight committee for American intelligence. The Commerce Committee isn't going to probe the television industry after all because no-one wants to do it. "At least two of America's major three low-priced cars" will have more than 200hp next year. Some day, someone is going to offer Americans low-priced cars that are actually low priced. Some "left-wing American college students" are getting around passport controls to visit the Soviet Union by doing underhanded things, and it's a disgrace!  Gracie Pfost might run against Herman Welker, William Cramer against George Smathers, and Foster Furcolo might run for Governor of Massachusetts. Averill Harriman is telling people that he will publicly back Stevenson in '56 but won't object to an effort to draft him. "Scientists now disclose" that the Navy's 250t atomic-powered flying boat will have eight engines. A "security snarl" is  complicating attempts to coordinate the Observers Corp with Air Defence Command, the Pentagon can't put pictures of the new Soviet heavy bomber in a recognition manual because they haven't been cleared for security. The Air Force might wind down B-47 production now that it has 1500 of them, and Canadian and U.S. officials are taking a close look at the Canadian "Heller" anti-tank rocket, which might be an answer to those masses of Russian tanks. The French secret service is hot on the trail of a smuggler syndicate moving American arms to North Africa, France's puppet Sultan of Morocco is demanding a half million before he'll go anywhere, Germans are complaining about defence costs, Adenauer's visit to Moscow will be one big party, no-one cares about Trieste any more, and British intelligence officials say that the 640,00 men that the Kremlin claims it will be demobilising will actually be sent to military farms in Kazakhstan. Where Are They Now reports that Lydia Lopokova is retired and living on her country estate, and that Tomikatsu Amano is a sportswriter now. 

 

By Karl Gustavo - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116735519

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that the Republican leadership will support Ike even harder next session. The President will push the Upper Colorado Reclamation through, cut military spending and taxation, and raise farm price supports.

National Affairs

"Integrated Schools: The Slow Grind" The South is a very bad, very racist place. The Supreme Court said that desegregation should proceed with all deliberate speed, and for "some officials," that's a license to take twenty years. In the latest embarrassment for security clearance checkers, the Army has gone beyond just revoking its dishonourable discharge to Sanford Waxer to publicly apologising to Waxer's alleged Communist contact, Dr. Alfred H. Kelly of Wayne University. I'm a bit disappointed that it is because Dr. Kelly "led the fight to expel American Youth for Democracy from campus," and not because sanity prevailed and it was decided that university professors were allowed to be "contributer[s] and supporter[s]" to American Youth for Democracy, but every little bit counts. 

The article also has Kefauver as Jackson and Mundt
as Wild Bill Hockock, but those ones are normal.

"The 'School for Survival:' Headlines, 'Explanations," And the Facts" Stories that Colonel Burton McKenzie's seventeen-day course on survival for shot-down bomber crews involves torturing the crews like the Communists would torture them are true, but it's actually fine. And at the bottom of the section there's a nice photo of Sharon Kay Ritchie, Miss America 1956,and yet more "Ike will definitely run in '56" and "Maybe Adlai won't win the nomination in '56" bumpf. STOP IT!!!! Mississippi has promised a quick trial for J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, the accused in the murder of Emmett Till. Follows a special story about television in politics. Could a charismatic politician who looks good on TV but is actually bad for the country be elected President? People are worried! 

 Representative Joe Holt had a bad experience in Moscow. On the one hand it sounds harrowing. On the other hand, it's Joe Holt. (Who is allowed to go to Moscow, unlike "left wing students.") Admiral Radford and Harry Truman are arguing in public over whether the President's defence cuts are bad for security.(Truman is all over the place right now being partisan.) General Spaatz's box feature isn't even in a real box this week. If he's not going to make the effort, why should Newsweek? General Spaatz explains that the USAF is actually more powerful than the Red air forces due to its power and leadership even though the Reds have some good planes and engines right now.  Ernest K. Lindley, on the other hand, uses Washington Tides to call the defence cuts "Untimely." Whatever they do to security, they are bad for the economy, and if the Administration is serious about balancing the budget, they will be severe, as $1.7 billion cut that no-one knows how to make, on top of several cuts already in the last two years. 

International

Newsweek polls international statesmen on the question of whether "We can trust 'The Spirit of Geneva.'" The predictable answer is "Maybe yes, maybe no." On the one hand, the Reds are a mortal threat and we have to be armed to the teeth. On the other hand, defence cuts lead to tax cuts! Adenauer's visit to Moscow is still a thing that is happening and a giant party! The "crisis in Cyprus" is spreading and is a threat to NATO because Turkey and Greece are fighting over it. The Security Council has told Israel and Egypt to knock it off in Gaza. General Burns suggests an "effective physical barrier" along the Gaza frontier to separate the two forces. The Israelis are for it, but the Egyptians aren't, because it would formalise a frontier they don't recognise. Red China continues to release American detainees a few at a time to increase their impact, which is bad. The United States  has been forced to allow a small number of Chinese students who want to return to Red China to consult with the Indian Embassy, leading to suggestions that it is dumb not to recognise Red China. It will take all of America's diplomatic skill, it says here, to prevent UN recognition of Red China until after the midterms. France and Morocco are moving towards full independence still, and you're still not allowed to say it because the Right in Paris will have to bring down Faure's government, and they don't want that, either. Jakob Malik is a hit as the Soviet ambassador to the U.K. due to his affable public presence. Now he's turned on the lights at Blackpool, which has obvious sinister implications. 

Who knew this was a thing? Also, the Youtube ads that ran before the video were for A&W Canada and Disney's Freakier Friday. Good job, Algorithm!

Flooding in Pakistan, a successful Communist politician in Nepal, and a box story about Malcolm MacDonald's appointment as British High Commissioner to India round out the section.

Canada gets a Canadian Affairs header! (No notable Canadians are having affairs.) A Red agricultural delegation has spared Ottawa the embarrassment of an official apology for their appalling treatment by "'new Canadians' during their tour. Said "'new'" Canadians included Ukrainians from the Laurier emigration. The Canadian government will spring for the capital to build the Trans-Canada Pipeline through northern Ontario, roughly $350 million, ensuring that it goes ahead if the Federal Power Commission will allow Canadian natural gas to be exported to the U.S. Midwest.

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that the Pentagon is strongly resisting further budget cuts, that the Administration is tightening up rules on foreign bids for U.S. government contracts but not banning them outright, as some in the Administration want, and that stocks and auto dealer inventories are up, just like the discount rate. 

"Expansion: With or Without Tax Help" The Commerce Department and SEC have teamed up to find that U.S. industry has invested $150 billion in business expansion since 1950, that 1955 investment will be 4% above 1954 and not 4% below, as predicted, that steel is the biggest investor and rails the most unexpected, that it's not  hard to understand the trend but it is notable that it is happening in spite of industry still not getting the depreciation help that it has been demanding for years. The big trend in autos for '56 is attempts to make them safer, with collapsing steering columns, padded dashboards, stronger door latches and seat belts. However, some auto executives warn that putting safety features in will just discourage buyers by reminding them that cars are dangerous. Newsweek visits some capital goods trade shows and concludes that the trend to automatic machine tools will lead to greater production and higher employment. 

A box story describes all the investigations that the Democratic-controlled Congress will be springing on industry leading up to the election. It's all antitrust, mostly, although Paul Douglas is going to look at automation and Olin Johnston wants to know what happened with alien property seizures from WWII. Products: What's New reports an "atomic sterilizer," which is for food, not B-52s, from Applied Radiation Corporation of Walnut Grove, California; a new firefighting foam from the Agricultural Department, and an electrical coil that burns away bacteria, cigarette smoke, and the like, to remove odors, from Oxy-Catalyst of Wayne, Pa. Messerschmitt's three-wheeled car has an American distributor.   Henry Hazlitt explains that if progress requires the Federal Government to invest in schools land roads, then progress is bad and it says so in the Constitution, in the invisible ink that they have a special lamp to read over at the National Review bullpen. 

Science, Medicine, Education

Among IGY activities announced during a coordination congress in Belgium last week are an Italian plan to artificially stimulate auroras with radio beams and an American plan to land a plane on the South Pole plateau. (It turns out that the South Pole is on a plateau, and quite a high one, at that, because it wouldn't be nearly cold enough if it were at sea level.) If everything goes as planned, a lucky fifteen man American team will pioneer a permanent manned base there, one of ten (American) bases to be built in Antarctica during the IGY. Astronomers are cutting the second by 2 microseconds to fit it to a universal constant of some kind, and are also claiming to observe minute variations in the speed of light. James chimes in from Hawaii to point out that, if true, this is a much bigger deal than Newsweek thinks it is. Then he gets that worst kind of math-y where it's all so intuitive you can explain it over the phone. No, you can't! 

A biography of Sigmund Freud out this year makes the case that you should look at the Freudian movement and give it a big eyeroll. The rest of the world's ahead of you, Ernest Jones! It's actually quite a long and informative review that helps us understand why my parents' generation were so "hung up" on Freud. The promised feature on prep schools is quite long and has a pictorial of ravishing colour photos of prep schools and the sheltered and privilege--- (Ronnie looks at her high school diploma, abruptly shuts up.) 

An entire feature that doesn't seem to need a header explores the Red peace offensive in the international press. 

Press, Newsmakers  

Confidential is being sued for making stuff up, the Hearst syndicate is reshuffling top executives for unknown reasons, Westbrook Pegler won't go die in a corner for some reason, and Periscoping Press manages to contain itself with proposed new magazine and TV news show launches. 

P. G. Wodehouse, the Churchills, Charles Wilson, and Sir Jacob Epstein are in the column for the usual reasons. Hedy Lamarr and Michelle Farmer-Amon are in it because they are pretty. Sato Hiroshi is in it for being a dirty old man, and Parisians for giving up cafe space to more parking on the Champs Elysees. Paul Muni and Edwin Johnson are recovering from illness, Ty Cobb is divorcing, Aline Bernstein, Graham Edgar, and Cardinal de Jong have died, rounding out the celebrity/personal news for the week. 

  The New Films

Trial (MGM) is an important and powerful and meaningful film because it shows that while racism and lynch mobs are bad I guess, the real civil rights villains are those Communist agitator attorneys who stick their big Jewish noses in. The African Lion is a documentary from Disney about lions which sounds anodyne, sorry, no, it turns out that the lions want to collectivise the gazelle herd. Universal has lots of biopics on the books for the next two years, and To Hell and Back kicks things off with Audie Murphy, as played by Audie Murphy. 

Books is tired of Time getting all the middlebrows, so clocks Peter Quennel's Hogarth biography recently noticed by The Economist with the difference that Newsweek springs for some lithography, and reviews Riccardo Baccheli, albeit in translation, and Confessions of Felix Krull. I think John Atkins' biography of George Orwell counts as highbrow? On the one hand, Animal Farm, on the other hand, literary criticism and "small" novels. Periscoping Books is also tame this week, noticing upcoming books about the Prussian Army (Gordon Craig), and by Kenneth Roberts and Evan Hunter. 

Raymond Moley is winding up his annual American road trip in California, where he is aiming for something readable by looking at the fight within the GOP, so that the column can't just be dismissed as tiresome partisan birdcage lining. Nixon and Knowland are great and Governor Knight is terrible. 

The Engineer, 16 September 1955

Leaders

"Agreement on Economics" The British Employers' Confederation has released an exhaustive study showing that the problem with the British economy is that workers want to be paid too much. 

HMS Tiger

"Defence Questions on the Horizon" Somehow Britain has a defence budget just a bit more than a tenth of the American ($34 billion versus £1.54 billion) and probably only aircraft will be able to deliver hydrogen bombs for the next fifteen years or so, after which bombers will be impossible. Perhaps bombers will launch missiles, but probably after that it will be some kind of ballistic missile, and since you want to keep that sort of thing far away from me, the Royal Navy should build a fleet of atomic missile battleships at that point. Right now, aircraft carriers do a little of that work, and besides they are needed to keep the sea lanes safe, and since Britain has lots of carriers, the urgent need is for cruisers instead. 

The Blackburn Blackburn

A Seven Day Journal reports that the Centenary issue of The Engineer next 4 January will feature a list of centenary British firms, so get your notice in now! The Road Traffic Census for 1954 shows the number of trucks continuing to rise, more private autos, fewer bicycles, almost no horses. The Associated British Combustion Ltd luncheon heard that the future was oil, and that oil firing allowed greater automation, and that this would not lead to falling employment, but would lead to fewer manual labourers and more technicians. The World Bank's annual report congratulates the World Bank on its good works, mostly power plants in South America. The Cornish Engine Preservation Society had their annual lunch recently. The IME invites paper proposals for a 1957 conference on "The Properties of Materials at High Rates of Strain." Robert Blackburn has died at the age of 70.

What's wanted here is some Highland
scenery, not a black and white of a brick building.
By RobChafer - Own work, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5159298

Coverage of the "Engineering, Marine and Welding Exhibition" continues with the second installment. There are boiler mountings, safety valves, lubrication injectors, steam windlasses, fuel feed components, actual engines from Dorman, a model of HMS Eagle, refrigerator components, flow meters, a Fiberglas lifeboat, dynamos, piston rings, welding equipment, x-ray equipment, among other exhibits. 

"North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Schemes" reaches No VI, Part III with  a survey of tunnels and aqueducts associated with the Tummel-Gary Scheme. Diagrams, including one of a flow scheme, and one photo, of a pump house. 

W. H. Granville and R. L. Moore,  "America's Approach to the Road Problem." The authors are with Road Research and visited the United States last fall. As they point out, 75% of accidental deaths in the United States are road-related, compared with 20% in Britain, and for most people, including the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (involved because so many servicemen are killed) that is actually a problem. The article that follows is almost entirely about the mechanical engineering problem of car accident occurrence and survival, although discussions of pedestrian behaviour and driver training are appended. Car doors opening and ejecting passengers is, interestingly, as much a problem of body design as anything else. 

J. D. Pearson, "Development and Future of Turbine Engines for Airline Aircraft" is a precise of an annual scholarship lecture. Pearson works for Rolls-Royce, and much of the lecture defaults to discussion of the Dart, a fine engine but of another era. (The Derwent, famously brought to prototype in just seven months, had 9000 parts, the Dart has 12,000, and the RB109 has 20,000.) The explanation of turboprop workings makes it easy to understand why early attempts to scale them up failed. Greater fuel economy through higher compression will therefore be much harder to achieve with turboprops than with jets, even though this is the key figure of merit for turboprops. The hope for this kind of engine in the future lies in its good climb characteristics and excellent thrust reversal, making it suitable for short hops between secondary airports. I have a sinking feeling about Vickers' Viscount replacement! 

Letters

F. H. Smith writes the kind of silly letter you expect from an (Hon.) F. R. Ae. S. Literature has a review of C. C. Pounder's edited monster of a book, Diesel Engine Principles and Practice, A. J. Young's An Introduction to Process Control Systems, and A. G. E. Robiette's Electric Melting and Smelting Practice. Pounder's selection of sections seems uneven, Young is excellent, Robiette is behind the times on theory, and the publisher has been sloppy in putting the book together. 

Coverage of the "SBAC Flying Display and Exhibition" continues with No. II, mostly a discussion of the two new engines, the Orpheus, Conway, and Eland, although we hear about instruments, including the SEP 2. The Precision Engineering branch of Short Brothers has a nice static display of their work on magnetic ferrite, which seems highly suitable to aircraft electrics, but has required much metallurgical work to bring into use. 

R. J. Sherwood, "Industrial Health Service "Sherwood summarises his career in occupational health at the Slough Trading Estate. They certainly poisoned workers in some remarkable ways in the old days, and sometimes there were ambulances and uncomfortable offices.

"British Association Meeting at Bristol, No. II" The Engineer attended sessions on motorways, particle accelerators, soil mechanics, and "luminous flame radiation." 

Now it is time to pay the bills with some advertorials: Churchill-Sturm has some nice variable-speed hydraulic drives imported from the U.S. Shipley has a piston gudgeon pin hole drilling machine, and the Frankfurt Battelle Institute is recently opened and capable of doing much useful work, with potential sponsors invited to inquire. Potter's Insulation has some nice insulators. These are tastefully arranged around an announcement of the ICE conference on stress and displacement in structures, opening next week, and the official report on the derailment at Sutton Coldfield, found to be due to excessive speed due to driver error. 

Industrial and Labour Notes precedes American Section  this week. The former catches up with the very slight increases in unemployment within the overall very low unemployment (0.9%) British economy, takes a wary look at wages and labour disputes, and discusses the Industrial Health Survey now beginning. The latter looks at the "Dual-Cycle Boiling Reactor" exhibited at Geneva, which is definitely progress on the regular boiling water reactor but only competitive with conventional power plants at high load factors. The Section visits an aluminum reductions work in Montana, sees an ultrasonic bond meter, and visits the first American commercial atomic power plant, in Milton, New Jersey, which runs on the byproduct of the test engine for the USS Seawolf. Launches and Trial Trips has only one, a French steam collier.  

 Letters

Mamie Mania is real, says Captain William Paul Babcock. What are the odds of a Babcock heir going into the navy? Several farmers write in to say that the decline in farm incomes is real. John Rosenfeld of the Dallas Morning News sure liked his favourable mention! Several private weather forecasters write in to complain that they weren't mentioned in the story about private weather forecasters. Several correspondents are quite taken by the beard Kirk Douglas has grown to play Vincent Van Gogh and Ulysses, and, confidentially, so am I. But it's Kirk Douglas, so come on! Arthur Momand writes to correct a pretty basic mistake. He was the won who write and drew Keeping up with the Joneses. Many correspondents write to describe just how much they enjoy The $64,000 Question. Newsweek tells us how pleased Miss Jesse Herriott of your own city was to find the current Newsweek in every hotel she stayed in during her recent round-the-world trip. Edward Guest also likes Newsweek. 

By Fotoafdrukken Koninklijke Luchtmacht

The Periscope reports that draft eligibility will be extended to fathers soon, that the Cyprus situation may lead to a Greece/Turkey shooting war, Adlai Stevenson '56 blah blah, income tax cut in '56 for sure, Lyndon Johnson will be back from his heart attack in the spring,  the Pentagon's new "Hawk" guiided missile, which can hit a low-flying target, will come off the secret list soon, the Navy will take its first draftees since 1949 next year, the Marines have wriggled out from under Wilson's manpower cut, it is shameful that 120 Americans have decided to emigrate to Red China, Radio Moscow is pro-Peron, Chancellor Adenauer will visit Madrid after Moscow, many foreign dignitaries are visiting Egypt because of how tense the East-West standoff is getting there. Fritz Grobba, Hitler's Middle Eastern spymaster, is now working for the Soviets in Moscow. Foreign Office experts are worried that Saarlanders will vote to rejoin Germany. Diem may not want an election in South Vietnam, but he is all for  a "national" plebiscite to get rid of the Emperor. "Evidence reaching West Berlin" is that the East Germans are making espionage equipment like forged passports in their prison camps. That doesn't make any sense? The Soviets have put in a contestant for the Nobel Prize for Literature for the first time since 1901. Where Are They Now looks up Clara Clemons Samosoud, who is long since retired, and lives in a motel after selling her Father's (Mark Twain's) mansion many years ago, and Ronald Leroy Overecker is a part-time life guard in Santa Monica and full-time playboy because his  "Baby Leroy" money allowed him to retire at the age of 3.

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that Geneva German unification Communism bad. If I stick my head under the blanket, will these "stories" go away? 

National Affairs

 Who will the farm belt vote for in '56? This deathless question leads off, because after all the election is only fourteen months away! Meanwhile some Republican strategists have decided that they need a counter-egghead strategy to go head-to-head with Adlai Stevenson. To which Karl Mundt counters that there is no room for eggheads in the GOP, and the Democrats say that they have good news for Karl Mundt. But if Lord Woolton could dig up some pro-Tory intellectuals, say the strategists, surely we can do the same! The Air Force is looking into its "School for Survival" to see if there's too much torture going on at the torture school, the Ohio Turnpike is big news and ready to open, and the heat-and-smog wave is very bad back east. 

"You Can Quote Me" Hmm. The dateline for this issue is, let me remind you, Monday the 26th. The President had his heart attack the previous Thursday. So it seems just a bit embarrassing to be running a story about ow the President's genial and bouncy mood confirms that he's running in '56. I'm almost tempted to put this letter on the shelf for a few days to see next week's coverage. Newsweek catches up with a family of fourteen children in Durand, Illinois, which  had eight of them come down with polio in a single week, and Rodney Dee Brodie, the surviving Siamese twin of a head-separation surgery, who had a health crisis last week but seems on the mend,  a runaway elephant in South Carolina, and two more Southern states which have admitted Coloured students into their universities (Arkansas and North Carolina.) The box story worrying that Americans are getting "soft" turns out to be the Presidential fitness initiative. In other Presidential indiscretion news, his speech to the Air Force Academy calling for five year bachelors' degrees, more emphasis on math and physics, and more free two-yere community colleges has met with a mixed reception. George Leader said mean things about Ike during a Democratic Party fund-raising dinner and it's the biggest scandal ever. Carl Spaatz's box column doesn't get a box again as he returns for the second issue in a row to explain that the United States can only stay on top in the air by staying on top in the air, and also ICBMs and atomic planes are neat. The population of the United States is 165,495,000, up 2.8 million from last year and 9.5% since the 1950 Census. Ernest K. Lindley theorises in Washington Tides that all the nice things the Soviets are doing for Finland might cause one to hope that the Soviets are trying to be nice. 

International

Adenauer. Is. In. Moscow. Communism. Is. Bad. But, yes, the Finns are getting Porkkala back. And the last Soviet occupation troops in Austria are pulling out, and taking a shamefully large amount of stuff with them. 

"The Reds are Trying to Brew a 'Holy War" in Israel" says a boxed story that describes how thousands of Red agents are spreading the word that a Russian/Chinese Moslem volunteer army would show up to take part. Also they are offering arms deals and hosting state visits. Malaya is a very silly country of silly people and it is silly that they're going to be independent soon, but what can you do? (The story basically repeats for Cambodia a bit further on.) Various American detainees released by Red China have had various different responses, including Walter A. Rickett, who must have been really brainwashed, since he's still saying that he was spying for the United States. French Morocco's "Unending Crisis" is unending in the sense that it is taking a few months for the French to make a face-saving exit. Apparently Faure's plan is for the Moroccans to kill all the crazed colons, because the French Army can't. Everything is to blame for Britain's latest current accounts/national budget crisis except Rab's tax cuts. A Munich probate court has ruled that Adolf Hitler is definitely dead and that his estate can be liquidated. Sweden is ending alcohol rationing, and the declaration that Sinkiang will be an autonomous region of China might be the de facto cession of the region to Russia. 

Latin American Affairs reports on the "Civil War in Argentina" which is no mere coup. It says here. Perils of running a weekly newsmagazine, part two. A story about the fruit growers' strike in Costa Rica sends the unmistakable message that if Costa Rica doesn't end it now, it's going to find itself just as Communist as Guatemala right before the coup.

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that People who are worried that the boom is developing feets of clay are wrong. There's not going to be a recession until after the election, silly! Japan's economy is "ailing," and no-one wants to lower tariff barriers to  help them. The Hunts are looking for oil in Pakistan. 

Cleveland gets a special feature in Business ahead of the opening of the Seaway. Uncle Henry's real estate play in Hawaii gets a story. Henry Hazlitt isn't satisfied that the Federal budget will be balanced next year, and wants it balanced this year, instead because all that government money is being spent on bad things and taxes are too much. 

"East-West Trade: Is It Just Talk?" Probably! 

Science, Medicine, Education 

"Stir in the Skies" After four years of secrecy, NACA officially announces the "area rule," which is a way of designing supersonic planes. In other science news, popular UFO debunker, Lincoln La Paz, is back in the news saying that the yellow-green fireballs seen in recent months over the Western states might be "intercontinental missile[s] of  ice," which could be, and evidently are(!) being fired at the enemy in peacetime, and their provenance denied, since ice melts and is invisible to radar, Dr. La Paz incorrectly supposes. 

Since everyone is in Russia anyway, here's a story about medicine in Russia. It sounds pretty good, crazy theories aside. It looks like the new antibiotic, Helenine, works on polio.

Georgia Tech is letting women in. According to the attached photo, it's just one woman, and she's pretty. Sounds about right! A. L. Rowse is helping the world with its "too many American dollars in America" problem by coming over to teach in Urbana for a year. The jokes just right themselves, etc.   

Press, TV-Radio, Newsmakers

Commercial television in Britain means commercials and lowbrow shows. Modern TV westerns are much more modern and adult and serious. Periscoping TV-Radio reports that competitors to The $64,000 Question are in the works, and might offer more money. Ed Murrow will do sit-down Presidential interviews in '56 on Person to Person, and NBC's Elder Wise Men has interviews with Hoover and Nehru lined up for the fall. Name me one wise thing Herbert Hoover ever did! Perry Como might be NBC's answer to Jackie Gleason. 

Homer Bigart, Edwin P. Hoyt, Freda Kirchway, and Jack Bisco have resigner, quit, or been fired from various top newspaper jobs. Periscoping the Press mentions Robert Farrell's atempt to revive The Brooklyn Eagle and Brenda Halser "branching out" from Olympic swimming and journalism to dub for Gina Lollabridga. 

Kefauver, Robert Kennedy, and William Douglas are in the news because they are on vacation in Russia. Khrushchev, Ward Morehouse, Rita Hayworth, Tommy Manville, and Lucky Luciano are in the column for the usual reasons. Babe Didrikson is in it because her cancer is in remission, and Arthur Godfrey because he is increasingly obviously off his rocker, with yet more stunt flying allegations from the CAB. The original J. C. Penny is very old but still alive. Barbara Ann Scott is married. Milton Eisenhower is married. Cecil Clark Davis, Robert Butler, Leo Amery, and Andrew Weir have died. Amery's single sentence obituary finds room to mention his son's execution for treason. which will certainly never be obscured or forgotten. 
 

Movies

A review of Republic's A Man Alone appears without the New Films header and is extended to be a full page meditation on the pitfalls and successes of actor-to-director transitions, since it is directed, competently, by Ray Milland. Umberto D. is a very serious Italian import. Allied's The Warriors is another medieval oater, Fox's The Left Hand of God is at best a vehicle for Bogart. 

Books

 What better way to apologise for all the middlebrow content last week than a feature review of a Thomas B. Costain novel, The Tontine? We've already heard about The Notebooks of Major Thompson, no need to repeat. C. V. Wedgwood's The King's Peace is some big history from a lady historian, and more volumes are to follow to get us through the entire Civil War period. (English, that is.) Oliver Gogarty's latest book is just like all the others, far too good for the reviewer to need to tell us anything about what's in it. 

Raymond Moley's road report concludes that the country's roads are just fine, so forget about all that interstate nonsense. If everyone would just slow down, things would be fine!

The Engineer, 23 September 1955

Leaders

"Nothing Venture" People should worry less about atomic power's capacity to go wrong, because unless its economics can be demonstrated, it will invite no investment capital. This is perhaps related to the announced first British conference on atomic power, noticed separately below. 

A Seven Day Journal celebrates the career of Victor Pask of the CEA on the occasion of his retirement, notes a new electrodeposition factory in Huddersfield, announces the imminent opening of the second annual convention on materials handling at RAF Hartlebury, proposals for an amended system of traffic signs, and covers the announcement of an exhibition on fuel efficiency sponsored by BOAC in Manchester next month.

Coverage of the Engineering, etc., exhibition continues with AEC and EEC diesel ship engines, Harland flogging its "Rotovalves," lubricating equipment, radiators, pumps, a mini-exhibition on aluminum alloys, an electric plotting machine standing out from other Dobbie displays, yet more engines, and generators.

"North of Scotland Hydroelectric" continues with a more lavishly illustrated installment about the turbo-alternator sets to be installed at the Tummel-Gary power house. To fill out a page, Submarine Cables gets an advertorial set away from the others, perhaps because they sent in a nice photo. To further illustrate the civil engineers are important too, a later feature highlights the opening of the Weir Wood Reservoir in Sussex, which sounds like the sort of place where druids nail sacrificial kings to oak trees and dissect them with golden sickles. A feature on French Electric Power Developments has the powerhouses in tunnels that appeal to the children in all of us. 
   

 "Production of Copper Tubes" ICI is one of our oldest advertisers, so it gets a special advertorial too, three full pages on its new copper tube factory at the Kirkby Works. 

Letters has one from Nigel Seymour about city traffic hoping that the American practice of running freeways and expressways through cities continues, and no more level grade intersections are built, and a much shorter one from Antony Vickers lamenting the effects of inflation. Literature has quite a long review of H. F. Storm, Magnetic Amplifiers, and a shorter one for W. C. L. Lemon, Plant and Process Ventilation. The former briefly summarises Storm's theoretical approach. 

"German Machine Tool Exhibition, No. I" finds the Germans as interested as anyone in automatic machining. 

Coverage of the British Association Meeting in Bristol continues with summaries on the aviation sessions The Engineer attended, on fuel economy and aerodynamics, with an emphasis on wing forms for near-sonic and supersonic flight, and the Structural Engineering session, and one specifically on automatic processes. 

Advertorials appear in their more normal location for Becham's prefabricated factory structures of precast concrete, Ford's automatic overdrive transmission, the Television Authority's commercial television transmitters at Croydon, G. W. B. Furnaces' electric furnaces for spheroidising steel tubes, and a heavy duty electric sander-grinder. "Spheroidising" is a kind of steel in which the steel solidifies into spherical globs within the piece, but this is confusing because this kind of steel is liked in ball bearings, which are another kind of sphere! 

Industrial and Labour Notes looks at increasing iron and steel production, NCB figures that show coal production efficiency increasing but not enough, Anglo-German talks on fuel, management in the mining industry, the trade unions and automation, revolving funds for industry, officer electins in the TUC and yet another "design centre for British industries." American Section visits a gas-electric turbine built for the Bureau of Yards and Docks by Clark Brothers at very considerable length. Launches and Trial Trips has three British, two steam oil tankers and a refrigerated cargo motorship.

The Engineer, 30 September 1955

Leaders

"A Machine of Precision" K. J. Cook's Presidential Address to the Institution of Locomotive Engineers tries, again, to put to rest the notion that steam locomotives are primitive. They are not, but he is sad that when they go, so will the great railway shop works that built so many of them, an industrial model not suitable to diesels. 

Former Stanton site, Nottingham Post

"World Trade and Britain's Share" While Britain does not need to be the biggest exporter ever in the world, it does need to balance imports, primarily raw materials, and this makes exports to the raw material producing countries vital, and it is here that German competition must be met. 

A Seven Day Journal reports on the BTC's plans for a new vehicle and track testing facility, the tenth annual "Unipede" conference's banquet and other activities (world producers and distributors of electricity, if you don't know the acronym), yet another fuel efficiency session by yet another sponsor, extension of the coke works at Stanton Ironworks, and regrets the death of Arthur Watson of same. 

N. E. Frost's paper on "Crack Formation and Stress Concentration Effects in Direct Stress Fatigue" commences serialisation in this issue with typesetting leaving a quarter page usefully filled by a review of the thirteenth edition of the IEE's Wiring Regulations, leaving a full page spread for a reprint of K. J. Cook's Presidential Address mentioned above, as "The Steam Locomotive: A Machine of Precision," which is interesting at least from the point of view of giving a good historical account of all the developments which have made precision machining in railway workshops possible. 

"German Machine Tool Exhibition" continues in this number, with space left over for "Resignalling of Camden Town Junction," a short article evidently provided by London Transport and illustrated by an unlikely picture of a middle-aged man at the control console in the Camden Town station in what looks like, but surely isn't, an evening jacket. 

P. C. Dannat, "Electrical Equipment of a Four-Stand Strip Mill in Monmouthshire" is an interesting look at the very heavy electrical engineering required to work a hot continuous  strip mill. 
 

Metallurgical Topics for the month are structural changes during creep, the propagation of hair-line cracks, and a comparison of surface hardening by gas flame or induction. 

Letters and Literature 

John F. Shipley writes to make fun of diviners prospecting for minerals, while Wuppertal Stadtwerke is very pleased with the mention of its suspended railway in a recent issue. I feel as though a review of O. S. Nock, The Railway Engineer is a bit pointless, as by now if you know the subject, you know O. S. Nock, but perhaps this is the history of early railway engineering you want. 

J. S. Baldwin sends in an article about the "Ahmedabad 'C' Generating Station" that is an advertorial for their next project in very thin disguise, but separated from the main body of the advertising articles, which this week concern themselves with screens, tool bit holders, a germanium rectifier, an "aircraft runway drying machine," some welding equipment, the National Gas Turbine Establishment, and the Apprentice Training School at Crewe, by a precis of the annual report of the British Electricity Authority. Electricity production and consumption is up, and prices, but only barely. The 275kV Grid continues to expand, and top men are deeply involved with the coming of atomic and oil power. You may object that visits to the NGTE and Crewe aren't advertorials, but these organisations have bills to pay, and business to solicit. (NGTE is particularly taken with its work on turbine inlet geometry.)

A conference on structural testing is announced, and E. T. Moss's "Design of a Raw Sugar Silo" is relegated to the dead end of the magazine, and empty space plugged by Whitcomb's "area rule" paper, which seems to impress The Engineer less than Newsweek. BSI has standards for the welding of low carbon strip steel, and Continental Engineering News visits the German oil industry, and an impressive-looking steep gradiant endless conveyor. Industrial and Labour Notes covers the improvements in British exports noted in the latest Board of Trade report, the continuing rise of British industrial production and productivity, up 6% over last year, announcements of steel industry expansions, and a look at price and wage claim trends, which are perhaps more sideways than people seem to think. Well, prices, anyway. American Scene is mainly devoted to the New England floods, although it does visit the nuclear power demonstration at Arco, Idaho. The Corps of Engineers, taking into account the increasing severity of storms in recent years, is reviewing its ongoing flood control plan, formulated in 1936, and still incomplete. The NBS' latest venturer into automatic manufacture is a machine for potting electronic components, and we very briefly visit the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. Four British Launches and Trial Trips, a motor cargo and self-trimming collier, and steam oil tankers and a mixed passenger/cargo refrigerated steamer.  

An addition to the five ship "S" class order for Clan Lines to meet a Peruvian contract. 
SS Pizarro was broken up in 1974.