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doesn't give them the excuse by clearing the Israelis out of their little wall around Gaza if the Dam's financing is withdrawn.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, 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

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: 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

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

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?

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!

The Salk Vaccine and the Fuck-Up: A Medico-Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, June 1955

(Author's Note: I'm trying out the Google auto-link insertion Blogger "beta feature" to make for a "more engaging reading experience." I wasn't impressed by the first paragraph, and have not used it below the fold. You decide whether it has added engagement.  However, I left Youtube on play after posting the clip that I intended as some kind of ironic comment about being out of touch with the medical world, and for the millionth time in my life, "the algorithm" tried to make me listen to Celtic Women. How many times do I have to hit the back button when I hear the opening bars of "Tir na Og"? The answer is "forever," because the algorithm isn't set up to gather that data. We can talk about technical feasibility, but infeasibility leads to more views of Celtic Women, and you have to be a saint not to dip into the conspiratorial line of thinking at this point. Technology and culture means resistance!) 

I'm diffident about the medical side of technological history because I don't feel as sure-footed there as I do with the hard sciences [insert reader eyeroll here], but the Salk vaccine is a pretty darn important science story, and the Salk vaccine contamination at the Cutter Laboratory is comfortably the biggest science story of June 1955 unless you want to try to make the British election/rail strike or the Le Mans crash into science/technology stories. (I've done the second and am tempted by the first, but it would just be me harping on about declinism again.)

Disney Cartoons and Some Thoughts About Computing in 1955: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, July 1955

 

Lady and the Tramp is that movie with the spaghetti. Per the proffered selection of Youtube shorts, people also remember the Siamese cats. According to the Wikipedia summary, they're the villains. Also, the movie's plot sounds like everything wrong with Disney in the Fifties, but that can't be news to anyone who hasn't been catatonic since before Steamboat Willie. (Ooh, bed sores!) It turns out that it was a technical achievement, though, the first animated movie made with CinemaScope, which is a significant part of why the movie is so well loved today. The plot might be insensitive, sentimental, and shallow, but the whole thing is gorgeous. Gorgeous is what CinemaScope is all about!

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

Yes, it's that movie. 

R_. C_.,
Lake House,
Nakusp,
Canada

Dear Father:

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

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

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

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

R_.C._,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

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

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

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Philco, Roger: A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, April 1955

 

Not to be indelicate, but what the fuck happened? 

As Philco ("Philadelphia Electric Company") launches the marketing campaign for its Transac computer line in 1955, it was celebrating twenty-five straight years of leading the American radio industry by volume of sales. Curtiss-Wright, named for Glenn L. Curtiss and Orville Wright, started as a patent pool holding virtual monopoly rights over American aviation, from which foundations came a major aircraft company and one pole of the virtual duopoly of American aircraft engine manufacturing. The Douglas DC-7, currently winning the sales that will, it turns out, end the British airliner resurgence, is flying with four Wright R-3350 Turbo-Compounds, essentially demonstrating that, as far as long distance commercial flying goes in the mid-Fifties, there is basically just one alternative.

Today? There's still a Curtiss-Wright, sort of, but no engines, no computers. And it took barely five years. 

Phil Silvers, not Sergeant Bilko

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

UB.109T: A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, March 1955

 

So my boss is on his annual pilgrimage to the Old Continent to show everybody that he's a big shot in Canada, and we're training yet another ambitious young man as a future produce manager, as we do because the company totally has a skilled labour continuity plan that involves systematically identifying talent and nurturing it. "Nurturing" in this case tends to mean humping oversized orders around the back room, because our automated perishable ordering system is proving the brilliance of our plan to use AI to replace skilled labour. (Look, it's obviously not the computer's fault that we use the same produce code for two distinct kinds of carrots, but manually straightening out the order and inventory every day is precisely the kind of fiddling that AI was supposed to get rid of!) The upshot is that yesterday was my second day off in the last eight and I was not exactly filled with energy on what had to be a laundry day anyway. 

Which is fine, because this is the month that Flight grudgingly fessed up to an explanation for why the United States has the Matador, and we don't. We have the UB.109T, or RED RAPIER. So why have I chosen a Bomarc for my thumbnail?

Because.

On 31 March 1958, the Canadian electorate got its long-awaited opportunity to send Canada's Natural Governing Party to the benches, electing "Prairie populist" John Diefenbaker and his Progressive Conservatives by a swingeing 53% to 34% popular vote majority. Diefenbaker proceeded to reign over the Party for an immensely destructive decade-and-a-half. Anyone who has read as much contemporary Newsweek as I have and wonders whether my narrator's cynicism is anachronistic is referred to my Dad's collection of old Brothers-in-Laws albums to illustrate one fairly common reaction to Dief the Chief.  One might even draw larger conclusions about contemporary events if it were desired! 

Although as far as aerospace defence issues are concerned this would be a red herring. Cancelling the upcoming Avro long-range supersonic continental interceptor was an unfortunate necessity, and the fact that the Bomarc was insane has nothing to do with the fact that Diefenbaker was also crazy. And since Wikipedia has pictures of Bomarc and not RED RAPIER, there you go.