Postblogging Technology, April 1956: Mirage Rising

R_., C_.,

Shaughnessy,

Vancouver,

Canada

Dear Father:

It is, of course, my fault that I forgot some issues while packing for our trip to Honolulu, but in my defence, they are small and easily missed! Perhaps all the advertorials in the lost numbers of Aviation Week will seep out into the air and into the minds of possible buyers. It's not like anyone would ever read them anyway.

Your son is a great deal more upset at the sudden apparently universal decision that the lesson of Kefauver's win in Minnesota is somehow that the Democrats will suffer for nominating a progressive in '56, unless, for some reason, it is Averill Harriman and not Kefauver specifically. As he points out, farm voters defecting from the GOP isn't a sign that the party needs to nominate the man who looks the most like the President they're defecting from!

On the other hand, it looks like Stevenson is going to win in California and go into the Convention on a winning note. On the other other hand, it will all be over soon, at least for eighteen months or whenever we start worrying about '58, and we can all agree to worry about something else, like WWIII starting in the Middle East.  

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The Iron Age Revival of the State, XXVII: Towards an Economic History of the Trojan Women

 

"That the topless towers be burnt/And men recall that face,/Move gently if move you must/In this lonely place./She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,/That nobody looks; her feet/Practice a tinker shuffle,/Picked up on a street./(Like a long-legged fly upon the stream/Her mind moves upon silence."

In spite of a good faith (says I, and would I lie?) effort, I woke up this morning, the last day of my vacation, without the spring numbers of The Economist, Flight, or Aviation Week. (Or Fortune, for what it's worth.) The library informs me that the situation is now remedied for Aviation Week, but it's a bit late to start working on April postblogging at this point! Oh, well. For a change I still have a full week of the month left. 

Fortunately, I am still digesting Robert Morrissey, and that Dark Knight guy has a movie out about Helen of Troy and her supporting cast. You might have heard about it. You might have seen Eric Cline dining out over it. You might have heard that the Late Bronze Age Collapse is in the news.

As usual, the Iron Age Revival of the State isn't in the news. Helen wasn't dancing the next morning. It might not be poetry to match widening gyres, but they still say that women's work is never done.

Postblogging Technology, March 1956, II: Delta Goes, Nixon Stays

It's too bad that there was no use or market for a high-speed delta wing fighter in the late Fifties and Sixties, and, if there was, Saunders-Roe was the ideal 
contractor to deliver it, since they were due for a win.  
By The Trempe See: http://www.1000aircraftphotos.com/Contributions/Trempe/TrempeInfo.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1785669

R_.C_.,
The Lakehouse,
Nakusp, B.C.
Canada




Dear Father:

As March melts into April here in the Bay City, I am bound to work when we are not tittering over the disaster overtaking Richard Nixon, as who doesn't want the worst for jumped-up L.A. parvenues? Do not get me wrong; I am sure that he will be the Vice-Presidential nominee in 1956 and he will probably be the Presidential candidate in 1960, but when Ike --IKE!-- stabs you in the back, what is there even left to say?

Which is quite enough politics, and since I have exhausted myself on family matters under separate cover, I will simply sign myself 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The Iron Age Revival of the State, XXVI: The Past Isn't Even Past

 

Something about how for every Southern boy, it's 3PM on 3 July 1863, and Pickett's Charge hasn't been launched yet and I'm not even going to continue with this line of thought about history not being past. The last week of June isn't a good time to be thinking about the Neo-Confederate capture of American government in the Anglosphere because 70 million of us are suffering through a historic heat wave, and a major British political party's solution to the problem is to let the oil and gas industry rip.  

It hasn't been terrible in British Columbia. My work week was disrupted by a heat wave, and everyone in Vancouver felt it, but it was, as these things go, a normal heat wave with cooling at night. We're seeing plenty of early signs of a food security crisis in the form of chronic and persistent shortages of seasonal crops like watermelon, asparagus, strawberries, and sweet corn, and part of that is down to weather; but it is also in large measure politics, and I guess we're back to the first paragraph. 

I was away visiting last week, but I was rewarded for my time off with a five day work week followed by a single day off (yesterday). I didn't feel like high effort blogging yesterday, and there's some business to catch up, specifically Eric Cline's book about the "collapse and survival of civilisation" after the "collapse" of 1177, which struck me as fairly low effort for most of its run, until the final chapter, which was on about the IPCC's take on Climate Change and Cilizational Collapse, as the bloody Wikipedia article is titled.

(The short week is why Postblogging March 1956, II, isn't up yet. There may then be delays in July over library issues, and I still won't have an aviation magazine next week, as Aviation Week managed to fill up a whole volume with the January-February issues, and I have no idea what was going on with Flight in the spring of 1956, what with the labour trouble in the British printing industry.) 

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, I: The Work of a Dozen Engineers

R_., C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

The February blues are upon the city by the bay. Yours truly is coping with consent decrees and the many ways of turning germanium and silicon into husband replacements, as I pointed out to James when we discussed the many traumas of kindergarten. (He'll be on leave at the end of the month, and it's poor May-May who has to deal with the storms and gales of the pint-sized social life.) But it is never untimely to point out to your hubby how he is on the verge of being replaced by a pile of wires. 

Oh. Oh. At work. Never  mind, then!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Supplementary Postblogging: What Did Happen in Late January 1955?

 To Whom It May Concern:

The total archive of these papers, in their tiny parchment and cribbed family code, covers almost a hundred years and five correspondents, is packed in two-and-a-half steamer trunks, and has been moved back to Arcadia now that the roof is fixed. They would not fit in even that much if the scheme of writing monthly, semi-monthly, or sometimes even weekly letters had been carried on continuously, so I shouldn't feel ashamed of myself for getting mixed up last month, but I do. At some point we will know just how important the last two weeks have been, perhaps once the Fourth Republic has fallen or Dwight Eisenhower, or, any of Adlai Stevenson or Estes Kefauver or Richard Nixon or Joe McCarthy (I refuse to believe that the American electorate will pull the lever for Bill Knowland after a full campaign) are elected President. On the other hand, I'm not sure the reader will care. This is supposed to be a kind of investor's newsletter, highlighting the Progress of Science, as our first correspondent was wont to capitalise.  Well, some of the most important technology of the last ten years has involved the projection of motion pictures and the recording of music, and the most important technology news has pertained to Air Force budgets, so it is hard to set hard and fast limits.

On the other hand, now I'm just going to give you a quick rundown of what was in Newsweek, because it's the weekly with the best pictures. (Which will go into the trunks as photographic flimsies bleached of all interest for the future reader, but at least you, the reader of 1956, if any, will see the clipped originals, or, better yet, get your own copy.)

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

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.

Jordan River Is Deep and Wide: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, November 1956

 

So we are sorted at work about how this humble blogger is going to be plugged into our current workplace "the retail emergency is forever" scheme:

Saturday: 6-230; Sunday, 10-6:30 "Need experienced people in the mid shift on our busiest day," until Saturday at 3PM, at which time it was changed by text message to 6-2:30: Monday, 6-2:30: Tuesday: 6-2:30: Wednesday, 1:30-10 "The DM will visit tomorrow, we need the department in good shape." It's good to be wanted at work, but if I asked you to guess what I did on Thursday, and you answered, "Managed to sleep for six hours, then sat on the couch eating stale chips and watching Youtube clips, taking a break every hour to nap," you would be right! As it turns out, I wouldn't have been able to finish it on Sunday morning, either.

And this is why this post is largely in response to things Newsweek will cover in our next installment of postblogging, which was about one quarter done Saturday afternoon when I gave up and went out for dinner.  

Math time:

+

=

The point of this week's technical appendix is that some people say that British Airways ruined the British aviation industry by rejecting British planes, and some people say that British aviation ruined British aviation by forcing the Britannia on British Airways. In the spirit of the Internet these days, I'm going to present the case that it's actually "both"! And along the way I'm going to drag in some infrastructure projects of the mid-Fifties that are also having a continuing impact in a little part of the world that I like to call "the Middle East," which you probably haven't heard of. We're very geographically educational around this blog! 

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?

Another Thing About Balloons: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, August 1955

 So if the Soviets said, in the summer of 1955, that they were going to launch an Earth satellite in September of 1957 as part of their contribution to the International Geophysical Year, and their progress was fairly public, and they actually proceeded to launch said satellite, where exactly is the "Sputnik surprise?" One way to answer this question is that the button for enabling Google's contextual links feature has moved down to the text box, and that I accidentally clicked it, and it added the links in the first line, and, really, their sheer inanity says it all.

Another is to post this clip of Tom Lehrer making fun of  

well, everybody, really. America, maybe. This is an extremely well known clip because just about everybody is embarrassed by the fact that a Nazi war criminal ended up in a prominent role in NASA. And then there's the ICBM and Huntsville, Alabama connections. Let's just not talk about it, m'kay? And then of course it is his rocket that is the only one available to put a satellite in orbit in the fall of 1957, or, as it happens, the winter of 1958, because the Navy's Vanguard program had ended up even further behind, somehow. 

The upshot here is that the United States had three separate space/intercontinental programs ongoing in 1957/8, that all three of them were behind, and, as per the topic of this week's appendix, the Air Force's rocket was, to coin a Fifties-style neologism, a ballissile, specifically the SM-65 Atlas. 

Postblogging Technology, August 1955, II: Plane On Ice

(Per Newsweek of 1955, the theme of Porgy and Bess is that American racism isn't as bad as they say.)

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

The last Renata cherries are off the market here, the peaches are ruined, it's raining,  the roof is leaking again, and James is off to his squadron. Summertime is not easy! And the worst part is that we only have a week to go, because I have to go down to San Francisco to look at our new digs and meet the partners, who seem very pleased to have someone with a track record of staring at patent applications all day, albeit admittedly in the service of selling turboliners, rather than making vast sums of money defending and prosecuting patent violation cases. At least I got to wear a nice flannel plaid to market in Nelson, which you would ordinarily not do in August.

But we did get Canadian polio vaccinations, and I guess no-one ever offered to cancel September. And, even if they did, I voted for the other guy. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, August 1955: Open Skies

R. C.,

Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Smaller than Sputnik, but solid state. NASA. No spying, 
pinkie swear!

The slow task of reassembling my subscriptions continues, with an all-British collection this week, just in time for Canada to abandon the Old Country in favour of  the United States, which I am sure will not be a problem notwithstanding the warnings from down Vancouver way that since Canadian rivers run south, except where they don't, we all shall be induced by easy fits of relaxation to join the United States to enjoy all the advantages of efficient transportation. 

Looking around Nakusp and comparing it with Kamloops, I certainly see the advantages of being on a river that flows into the United States, the innocent young mother said, innocently! 


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

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. 

War Balloons and Satelloons! A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, July 1955

 

That's "Fu-Go," not "Fugu." Those wacky Japanese! So I hope that the readers have been as struck as I have been by The Periscope's ongoing obsession with balloons. Since the column has been talking up balloon-carried H-bombs as an Air Force project, this isn't necessarily all about the Skyhook programme, but Periscope is definitely on that case, too, with its talk of the programme setting an altitude record soon, and reaching 250 miles altitude, which is why you should never have a third martini when you're having lunch with your sources. I mean, there was a time when cementing your name in history as the dumbest nepo baby ever was a potential achievement, but nowadays we've got Larry Summers. In conclusion, why even try?

The walk along the new lakeshore in downtown Nakusp. The Upper Arrow is mostly too cold for cherry trees to fruit, though.

Just go somewhere that's a ferry from anywhere and wait for this whole "Western Civilisation" thing to blow over. Bring some books. And lots of flour, Spam, peas, and lard.  You'll be fine.

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, April 1955, II: Streaming and Peppermint Bombs

Fortune is going to get you Philistines into abstract art even if it takes another
25 years

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

The much predicted election is upon us. I cannot see "my" side winning, but I have to confess to some trepidation about the nation's choice this time around that goes beyond the partisanship of us wooly-minded young progressives. Anthony Eden is not, quite frankly, in his right mind. I expect the cabinet to restrain him, but I am also worried that he will run right over the men I am depending upon. Rab Butler hasn't the strength of character to stand up to Eden, and MacMillan is too deferential. If Eden hits on some disastrous policy that appeals to the 1923 Committee types, what is there left? 

Or I could just relax and enjoy the optimism of this new Elizabethan Age. (Except, yikes, inflation!)

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, April 1955, I: I Don't Even Know What Secrecy Is, Any More

R_.C.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

I'm having a bit of a mix-up with my magazines, which I am sure I will have sorted out next time. In the mean time, enjoy a review of the news over two weeks in which the Chief of Naval Operations is allowed to just make stuff up and plant it in the press, an MP isn't allowed to complain about an actual security violation, and the Atomic Energy Commission outright lies about the United States having atomic warheads for guided air-to-air missiles. 

Unless WWIII does break out. I can't rule it out, but I'm writing on the 15th, and I will be going to bed well before midnight, so I may wake up to find us in the midst of the final global battle between the imperialists and the Socialist Soviet of Workers and Peasants.

Your Loving Daughter, 

Ronnie