Tinkertoy to Dexion: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, April 1956

By susiq5555 - ebay #120137669430,

permission granted [1], CC BY-SA 3.0,

 

"Tinkertoy" is the title because it is what comes to mind when I think about the building sets of my earliest childhood. (Next up are my rich cousins' Lego sets, please don't tell them I called them "rich.") I do not, however, have much of a sense of a Tinkertoy set, as opposed to oddments at the bottom of a toy chest. Tinkertoy Construction Sets are an American product dating to 1914. Their signature feature is the use of wood, which makes it easy to implement wheels and pulleys with child friendly components, but there were lots of wood construction sets. The issue here, it tuns out, is the non-wood one.

The departure point for today's appendix is  the use of Dexion components for field repairs of DC3s. 

 Dexion turns out still be a thing, although such is the state of Google Search today that you won't find them on the main page. essentially A "slotted angle steel strip construciton system," it rather reminds me of the various aircraft-building systems of the Twenties and Thirties that often had their origins in prefabricated steel building sets. But we did Nissen huts around here a long time ago. Dexion seems like an everyday product with a primordial use case and a secure  business plan, so I was a bit surprised to learn that  "it ran into difficulties" and "eventually ceased trading" story, in 2003. The Dexion trademark was bought out, by Swedes, perhaps, and the product is now made in factories in Germany  and Romania. 

The other inciting even this week is that quaint Danish general strike over the forty hour week. Not only is this sure to lead to a wage-price spiral and inflation, but now Britain's supply of butter and bacon is in trouble! And since there isn't much going on in Denmark to my knowledge except bicycling, which they have to share with the Netherlands, and Lego, we might as well go there. And the ever worthy Meccano, of course.

Postblogging Technology, April 1956, II: Colonial Inertia

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

A bit of Flight for you, and a whole bunch of British politics with Miles Thomas' resignation and conformation of the Canadian Pacific order for five Britannias. I'm not sure how that came out in the end? I may have egg on my face over this in the end, but it really does seem to me that the case against the Proteus has pretty much been made. I guess it's the shareholder's money, after all.

Extravagance or not, though, I see worrying signs of the opposite problem. Is the financing of the Aswan High Dam going to fall through? Tony Eden wants to go for Nasser's throat at the best of times, and I have my doubts about how long Jean Mollet can restrain himself from bombing Radio Cairo. I just hope that Nasser doesn't give them the excuse by clearing the Israelis out of their little wall around Gaza if the Dam's financing is withdrawn. 

A man in a business automation ad. Sign of the times

Look at me worrying about world politics when girls should be about fashion and fun!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, March 1956, I: Italy Didn't Have Income Tax Until 1973? Seriously?

R_.C_.,

Nakusp,
British Columbia,
Canada

Dear Father:

I hope that this letter finds you well and in full recovery. Do not worry about me just because Aviation Week (and Flight) are lacking this week. I won't regale you with the sordid details of the logistical issues that got in the way, but I will say that when it comes time to bind the current numbers of Aviation Week, they'd better have a January/February volume, or the librarians won't be able to lift it! 

At the very least, focusing on Fortune and The Economist instead of the trade press lets us hear the voices (on the right) calling for cuts in defence expenditure. Yes, I know that I am sounding shrill and partisan and womanly this week, but I hear far too much from James' friends about "pacifists and socialists" when these discussions come up! (Remember when Bevan was drummed out of the cabinet for saying that the emergency defence budget called for more spending than British output could support, and how Winston Churchill was allowed to announce spending cuts on the same argument just a few months later?) I am just glad to see Ike and Eden (or Rab, really) owning the cuts this time.

Oops. Sorry, politics! To compensate you, charming pictures of grandchildren under separate cover.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, February 1956, II: Working Class Atoms

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada


Dear Father:

A typically foggy winter here in San Francisco sees me with my magazines almost all sorted out just in time to celebrate the atomic age, held back in Britain by its obsolete industry and the stifling weight of atomic tradition. That's not how our distant forefathers gathered plutonium! Seriously, it's what the Americans are saying now that it is clear that Calder Hall will beat American commercial atomic power generation into service by a year or several. Unfortunately, the printer's dispute has kept The Engineer from going on and on about it, as it would surely love to do. I, on the other hand, will not go on and on, as I have documents to review. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, January 1956, I-And-A-Half: A Peaceful Year to Come

 

1:39, though the talking heads do manage some explanation for why  you're listening to this. 

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father: 

I see as I put this in the packet that I have mixed up my notes and sent in the wrong issues. What can I say? It's been a busy week, with a flying trip to L.A. and back. In way of apology, all that I can say is that you're not paying for this, and you're not getting your news from me. I always like to read Uncle George's old letters, especially from the old days, before the war, and I'm always upset when he misses a month (or a year --what was going on in 1931?) and so by extension I am mad at me. There was quite a bit of news at the end of the month, and I will catch you up briefly next week. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, January 1956, I: Why Would You Risk All This Progress With Adlai?

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Where in some boring parts of the world the story is having to book a last minute flight into Vancouver because of catastrophic and avoidable flooding in northern California and Oregon, we needn't lose focus on the real news, which is that someone is talking Tony Eden down in London, and the President's latest appearance in Key West implies that the GOP might have to run Nixon against Adlia, eww. And while it might seem as though Fortune has gone political in an even more unhinged way this month, it is actually the fact that there has never been so much progress, and we'll lose it all the moment we vote for "groupocracy."

On the bright side, we're currently not invading Jordan or atom bombing Peking, and ElectroData has landed on my desk because I am known to have an interest in the College Boy. Sybil Rock is a delight! On the bright side, I'm not going to have any trouble making my hours. On the less bright side, I think I have children?

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, December, 1955, II: Peace On Earth and Sick Presidents. (In 1955!)

We've done this before, but Pogo has never been more relevant.

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Once again I am writing to the man downstairs. It seems a bit silly, but I also feel blue and somber and like somehow marking the occasion of Victor's death, which has hit James even harder than it has me. 

Test flying is dangerous work, and we have lost friends before, but this is the first of them to be killed on a plane that James was not sparing in describing as a pointless death trap. You have to swallow a certain amount of bile when your warnings go disregarded, and it is not like Victor is the last man this silly contraption will kill. 

I suppose this what we deserve for living in a country that turns out not to need a President at all, after apparently living through almost two centuries labouring under the illusion. At least as long as the Cabinet consists of good Republicans, the country flies autopilot!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, December 1955: A Heart-Warming Christmas Time

R_. C._,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Hopefully this, and the Christmas post accompanying, will reach you before you leave for Santa Clara, where I will see you for our a dinner which I'm sure will be as jolly as the Geneva Conference. (If I can b be Molotov, Grace has to be Dulles!)

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Minesweeping: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, November 1955

 In a perfect world where everyone spent their time following the paparazzi who follow me around, you all would have learned not to take my complaints about my work schedule too seriously. The last time I did this, I was getting ready for a grueling week that did not, in fact, emerge, thanks to the timely deployment of my entire paid time off bank. But! In the last week I had split days off, always bad for my productivity, and an exciting variety of shifts that made it worse. I ought to be reporting this in a "view from thirty thousand feet" sort-of tone, in that the reason that I'm not posting my December technology postblogging this morning is that I started a new Baldur's Gate 3 run yesterday instead of working on it. But my excuse for that is tired, etc. 

On the bright side, I'm a little over half done, and have a long weekend for Easter followed by a vacation week. So! Don't cry for me, post-Peron Argentina set on a bright course of democracy for all.

Our current King reached the apex of his active naval career as the commander of a "Ton-"class minesweeper, one of the enormous class of minesweeper/minehunters built in the mid-Fifties. Timing is right for the ships, and the Prince is in the  news, even if it's hard to get a picture of him in his service uniform that isn't camped by Getty Images. Relevance, 1955-style! 

Shiny!

Or so I say, holding a poker face. In fact, as hard as it will be for visitors to this blog from the distant future to believe, we're in the middle of a global crisis brought on by an American attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran conducted in spite of four decades of acknowledged American naval mine warfare deficiencies. The Persian Gulf is narrow and shallow, its entrance strait particularly so, with Iran controlling its northern shore, and vast quantities of shipping, and in particular, oil tankers, pass through it. Warhawks in Washington have been pushing for an attack on Iran for this entire period, without much self-awareness in general (at this very moment as I write, an interview with John Bolton is up at Vox to the effect of "But not like this!"), but historically very conscious of these deficiencies and a solid record of trying to solve the problem with magic battleships. That is, "Littoral Combat Ships," and not "battleships," but "magic battleship" is more euphonious. 

How did we get here? Mine warfare is hard is how we got here.

Postblogging Technology, November 1955: Even the Moderate Adlai Stevenson

The Ballad of Davy Crockett hit the Top 10 twice in 1955, by two different artists. Leaving the historic Crockett aside (JFC he was a Shawnee, deal with it). "Justice was due every Redskin band." What do you even do? RIP Estes Kefauver.

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada


Dear Father:

The idea was good, but the material wasn't up to 
it and they took it too far. 

Fall is here, and I have to say that, as materialistic as it sounds, it is very nice to be making good money and not from a family allowance. James had leave, and we took the family up to Napa in our very nice new 405. (Fortunately the neighbours take it for granted that it is family money, and I don't correct them, because I am a liberal, but I am also a hypocrite, because it is just safer that way.) 

We saw the Ks for the first time since their return from Europe. I regret to say that all does not look entirely happy on the domestic front, but there is the thought that they will do it for the children, and one might hope that misery will lead to a great novel. One's fingers are crossed. We also saw, in a more bohemian way, V., who is making quite the splash on the science fiction literary scene, if not precisely the money. He pretends Bohemian diffidence, but I'm sure that he would be more comfortable being diffident with more money! On the bright side he introduced us to some friends, wild-eyed vintners, if you can imagine, and leaving us half-convinced that there's a reason to be wild-eyed about California wine. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, November 1955, I: The Path of Duty

First week at Number 1 started 26 November. Princess Margaret isn't exactly a working class hero, but I bet she's vibing to this right now!

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

After the excitement of playing secret agent for a few weeks, I am afraid that my life has turned into that of a junior associate doing her best to get her billable hours up and having to watch her children being raised by someone else. 

Since elsewhere I'm on about the history of Route 40 and the French and Indian
War, here's another reminder that there is no such thing as the crest of the 
Appalachians. This is about a day's walk from Gnaddenhutten. 

I have to confess that the thought of turning in some masterpiece of corporate "raiding" and half-retiting on my laurels was very attractive. Otherwise, it will be hard for James and I to spend anywhere near as much time together as we would like. Hawaii and San Francisco aren't that far apart, at least for dashing airmen, but trans-Pacific dashes can be wearing for any of us. At least he is not in Washington flogging the SeaMaster on. And, yes, if we want to give little James-James and Vickie a little brother or sister, it would be best to do it before James is put aboard an atomic aircraft!

We are not thinking about moving from Palo Alto, although thank you for your offer. The house is nice, and the train is punctual and a good time to do some paperwork --at least in theory!  


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Fiasco: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, October 1955

 i)

ii)

iii)

(Photo credits are Navy, Air Force, and a Vickers-sourced advertorial that  I consider to be public domain. Look, you pretend that it's journalism, I pretend that it isn't proprietary.) 

Three technological objects, three fiascos, two countries, two lessons, one post!

Postblogging Technology, October 1953, I: It's Just A Cardial Infarction! Walk It Off!

R_., C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

Here I am, your favourite daughter-in-law, dashing off a late one from an undisclosed location in our dear very own Santa Clara County. It's so convenient being a native daughter when you have to propose a very private meeting place in a very public setting! I have just had a lovely discussion with some very nice, if awkward, engineers, about the troubles they are having with a manager whose initials might or might not be "Shockley."

Honestly! I took this job to do patent law. (But, then, the President didn't take the the job to be heartless, unlike his Vice-President, and look who is going to be our President now!) Unless I am being unnecessarily about Ike's "mild" heart attack. At least my dark humour gives you a bit more of a sense of how we are feeling right now down in these United States. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Has Anyone Mentioned That Einstein Was Jewish? A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, September 1955

 

If you are of a certain age and a nerd, you may have encountered the idea that the "spindizzy" reactionless drive of James Blish's City in Flight novels were actually a real thing that Norman Dean was demonstrating to various smart people in the science fiction world. It was probably someone about that age who wrote Spindizzy for MobyGames, which was a big release in 1986 and drives nostalgic interest in its theme music that blends into electronica more generally and dominates an internet search for "spindizzy." 

I did eventually sort out what Newsweek's nonsense about variations in the speed of light was about, and the link between this pseudoscience and the Dean Drive was made, although not until the early Sixties. Some of the people involved then went on to promote the Reagan Administration's SDI. Fun times!

Even some of the crackcpots hat John W. Campbell promoted
in Amazing were embarrassed to be associated with him,
but Norman Lorimer Dean was not noe of those guys.

 

But before it derailed, there was real science, and to make it even more fun, the real scientist who did the real work eventually derailed himself and became a big Einstein critic of the "relativity is like moral relativism," which used to be bad and opposed to Western Civilization, which is maybe not where we are right now, I can't keep track of the ongoing "start a new car wreck to distract people from the old car wreck" approach to politics they've got going on down there these days. 

Maybe in the interest of sanity I can expose some long-gone unsavouriness in the course of discussing some actual history of science and technology, after the jump. 

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?

"Power To Cheap To Meter:" A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, August 1955

 

The now-closed Dounreay fast breeder reactor in Caithness, Scotland

I had to watch one of those "You should totally buy AI because it can actually do stuff" ads to get to this clip. 

Anyway, the experience of postblogging technology is always weird because it's the most direct and easiest way to encounter that classic historian's disconnect between the popular history that solidifies around an event, and the actual events. Guys! There was no Sputnik surprise! Everyone  knew that the Americans and Soviets were going to launch satellites during the (eighteen month) International Geophysical Year and that the Soviets were talking about an earlier launch date than the Americans. I don't think I've come close to unpacking why it was said to be a surprise, but we've got two years to go on that one. 

 "Power too cheap to meter" is a quote from Lewis Strauss, speaking in 1954 to the National Association of Science Writers. Strauss has not been well treated by history, and I am not here to be contrarian, but he went on to offer water as an example of something that progress had made "too cheap to meter," and from that perspective it's at least a plausible bit of prediction. Had he chosen to talk about about long-distance telephony, he would come across a regular prophet! For that matter, he turns out to have been a lot more wrong about predicting extended lifespans. Unmetered power turns out to be further away than ever, but at least there's a road to this outcome. The Wiki goes on to explain that the "statement was contentious from the start . . ." pointing out that, even in 1954, the AEC was not boundlessly optimistic about the future costs of nuclear power, and that one researcher found "dozens of statements" to that effect. Strauss' son seems to have hijacked the conversation by proposing that Strauss was talking about fusion power, something that we've seen as problematic at the Geneva Atomics for Peace conference, where Strauss comes out with a more typical blunder, trying to keep American fusion research secret for no particular reason. But, of course, "power to cheap to meter" comes out of Geneva very directly in a way that has nothing to do with either conventional atomic power or fusion: Breeder reactors. 

Satellites, Satelloons, and Golf: A Technological Prologue to Postblogging Technology, August 1955

 

"Dirk Boh-Garde"

So I discovered, while trying to re-order some of my requests from the library, that the ASRS definitely doesn't have my email address, or isn't bothering to send me, specifically, emails, by the simple expedient of noticing that the catalogue was listing my Flight retrievals as being held for pickup. I have physical copies of Flight, Newsweek, and The Economist in hand, and I may have missed the pickup windows for retrieval requests for Fortune and The Engineer, so God knows when I'm getting those. (Online subscription for the Aviation Week archives seems to be re-enabled, although I'd prefer to have physical copies for image quality and because it is cheaper.) More importantly, due to my boss getting his three-times postponed vacation this week, I worked 6-2:30, 1:30-10, 8:30-5, and 5-1:30 schedules this week, and was either washed out or lazy this weekend. 

Anyway, here is a  technological prologue instead, because between Eisenhower revisionism and post-revisionism and the announcement of a planned IGY American satellite launch on 29 July 1955, there's a pretty good reason to run one!

Source: https://www.original-political-cartoon.com/cartoon-gallery/buy/caption-displayed/385/

Historians' views of the Eisenhower Administration have . .  . evolved. Better known as a late-era Modesty Blaise-relief cartoonist, Neville Colvin, a newly-arrived refugee from the "stifling atmosphere of Fifties New Zealand," captures the contemporary view of Eisenhower for Fleet Street. Uninterested, or even lazy, but with a lashing of malice barely under control. This is a thoroughly worthless First Executive. While the Britain, having given the world a senile dotard and a meth-head in succession, is not the country to point fingers, there's a sense that the United States has lost eight years. In contrast, writing in 1986, Robert J. MacMahon reviewed a decade of "Eisenhower revisionism" as being most successful in overturning "the traditional interpretation of an inept, bewildered President overwhelmed by his formidable secretary of state." Although "it can be fairly said that the majority of case studies have not sustained Eisenhower revisionism," because the revisionists "have elevated process over policy," we can at least agreed that foreign policy, at least, was "orderly and rational." I'm a bit surprised that MacMahon never gets into the President's health, but, anyway, about that---

 Satellites. 

Postblogging Technology, July 1955, II: Cherry Time

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Mon only looks drawn because it's a 25 hour day keeping
the kids from knocking all that kitsch over. 

I am pleased to report that my husband, children, and I are enjoying an idyllic Arrows Lake summer, and that the Nelson Public Library carries The Economist and Newsweek, but that Notre Dame's collection of thinly-disguised advertorial collections is woefully deficient, and wherever in the postal universe my magazines are, they aren't here. I am sure that they will turn up shortly, but everything in life is short except deadlines, however self-imposed, so I am going with what I have got and am then off to contemplate what to do with even more fresh cherries than we can eat raw. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

PS: Upside Down Cake!

Postblogging Technology, July 1955: Vaccine Experts Disagree

R_.C_.,
The Lake House,
Nakusp, B.C.
Canada




Dear Father:

In perhaps the most unexpected development in the history of this correspondence, I forgot to pack some of my magazines for the trip, most notably the Newsweeks, and all I could find in Nelson was Time. (For my hypothetical readers in twenty years time, I am addressing this to the gentleman in the bedroom in the landing downstairs because I wanted to write this for you. I hope that you feel appreciative, or at least guilty!) even though 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, June 1955, I: Crash Not Crash

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father: 

As we continue to pack up and decide what we can't possibly live without in San Francisco (or Hawaii), some things just get overlooked, which is my excuse for not booking and confirming travel plans. We will be at the docks at Galena Bay at 5PM Pacific on the 5th. We have decided not to try to rent a car on Revelstoke, so make sure there is someone to pick us up if you don't want us to have to hitch a ride with a farmer! 

Your Loving Daughter, 

Ronnie