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

Postblogging Technology, January 1955: Phreaking Over Fallout

R._C._.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada


Dear Father:

So, nothing much has changed in that I am back in glamorous London. (Joke! Rose Dolores is in the news. It turns out that Dolores Del Rios also used the "most beautiful girl in the world" tagline, though.) The letter is a bit different in that I am finally reunited with my magazines. I hope that you don't mind that I'm a bit shorter with Aviation Week than I have been in the past, but two things have changed. The first is that Aviation Week's editor since 1945 has just disappeared. Robert H. Wood's departure from the publisher's chair was announced by his deputy in the 21 January issue, effective 2 February, but Wood did not contribute an editorial for the next issues and I have no idea what became of him. I have no idea why this matters to me, but I feel sad. Second, I am very tired of treating advertising-disguised-as-editorial content seriously.

I've continued to read to James-James before bed, since it was such a hit at Christmas. After some experimenting I've hit on a book he likes, a wartime fantasy in which some siblings romp around on a flying bed. It's marketed above his age, but he seems to be enjoying it, and I am thinking about The Hobbit when we are done. Best to get him started on fantasy and science fiction early considering the work his mother is doing. (And by that I mean patent law, and not helping out around the studio.) Too bad about the old job. I know if I were at the desk I'd make sure those Australians buy the Avro Vulcan!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

PS: I guess we know how the world ends now: With clouds of Cobalt-60.

International Geophysical Year: A Scientific Appendix to Postblogging Technology, November 1954

 

Last seen around here playing Calamity James as an adorable autist, Doris Day sings "Que Sera, Sera," an incomprehensibly popular hit considering the other things people were listening to at the time, but certainly a compelling bit of music in its own right. For that reason I grant a full and free pardon to whoever named the Que Sera Sera, the that gave a name to the Dakota that flew in the Polar battalion of Seabees and the construction materials from which were erected, at the freaking South Pole in freaking 1957, Amundsen-Scott Station.

The International Geophysical Year of 1957 is pretty pivotal to the history of science and technology on account of Sputnik, but if I want to have material to Technological Appendix about in 2027/8, it might be best to leave Sputnik, and Vanguard, until they come up chronologically. But the point of my appendices is to follow up on things as they blow up in the postblogging, and, oh boy, the Antarctic has blown up this fall.

There's actually an International Geophysical Year reason for this, which is that people do everything  backwards and upside down in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Antarctic exploration year runs from November to roughly May, so November 1954 is only two Antarctic exploration years before the Big Show starts with Que Sera Sera landing att he South Pole on 31 October 1956 in what is already the second year of OPERATION DEEP FREEZE. 

Postblogging Technology, November 1954, II: Flying in the Grass

Because of boundary layer control

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

The cat is truly out of the bag after Senator Knowland's floor speech, of which I am glad that someone had the consideration to give us all of five minutes warning so that we could get well clear of our apartment before anyone was curious enough to look in at us. We are now in transit to Hong Kong with the understanding that we are not wanted in London until January. Which means last minute Christmas plans, if you haven't let James' room to a lodger yet.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, August 1954, II: Mambomania

R_.C_.,
Lake House,
Nakusp,
Canada

Dear Father:

You will see that I have, once again, not covered The Engineer and Aviation Week, and will, OF COURSE, be thinking that I have lost my copies again, and not at all about the fact that they are the most boring magazines I cover. 

What, you wonder, will be my excuse this time? Did I leave them on the train? Were they destroyed in some kind of robot uprising, as in the movie that Ronnie went to the other week? And why are the robots always uprising, when it seems like strikes and "go slows" are more effective in getting a raise in the amount of robot oil applied? After all, when you have a car, it starts out being very reliable, and then when it gets old, it just stops working one day and you have to take it to an expensive mechanic who perhaps fixes the exact thing that is wrong with it, but not the fact that the car is old. And I guess the car is happy with this, and never "revolts," because the breakdowns get it all that it needs. Until comes the day that you replace the car. But what if you can't afford to replace the car? Or what if you move to a place where the busses and subways are so efficient that you are connected to the world in a way that makes a car pointless, and everything you need can be delivered, and the only time you need a car (or a robot, I should mention, since I started out talking about robot revolts) is when you have to travel to meet elderly relatives in some very old town in the country. Wait, I guess that's not something you should do with robots, and my analogy is falling flat.

If it qualifies as an analogy. So the point is that I am missing two of the regular magazines in this week's letter because the robots have been on strike for months, and not because I left them on the train again.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, June 1954, II: We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us

R_C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

And that's the end of my month. If I may dwell on the political for a moment (Moi? Never!), this really is Pierre Mendes France's moment, and I cannot help a smile on my face and a lift to my feet, even more than when the Capital deal went through. (We'll leave aside the question of whether they can pay for their planes.) He has a vision for Europe, and he is going to close out the Tunisian and Moroccan adventures as well as Indo China. Newsweek seems to have capitulated to him, describing him as a Dewey Republican or such. I hope he'll have a chance to apply his vision to France, although the times are running against his economics, with the Anglo Saxons catching up with the Fourth Republic's Government-by-rentiers. On the other hand, Ike seems too sick to run in '56, which means that Stevenson will have a good chance, and we might see the back of the odious Dulles brothers. (Not that the prospect of seeing McCarthy and Allen Dulles tussling doesn't do my heart good.) James is predictably disappointed that there aren't more signs of the party rallying to Kefauver, but I will take what I can get. 

On the other hand, London is a bit giddy right now, so maybe I'm just being infected by the optimistic mood. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, February 1954, II: E ola mau ka 'ōlelo Hawai'i!

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Well, here it is the end of February and no Comets have fallen from the sky, so I guess all is forgiven. I see that Vickers has a newer and bigger Viscount in the works. Do you suppose that TCA will buy it too, with the way that the Viscount is stirring things up? 

It's what I'm assuming, if you're wondering about that big buy of Vickers stock. There is no point standing on the sidelines worrying that the dividends that the London Stock Exchange is splashing around will be the death of Britain if you're not in the middle taking your profits! We can always reinvest them in Hawaii, which is sure to be a state any day now. Although, as Newsweek points out, it might be getting less reliably Republican, which could stick a spoke in the wheels. 

Hmm. Giant modern airliners, Hawaiian investment. Two things that do go together. How are your friends at Canadian Pacific doing?

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

A Technological and Muck-Raking Appendix to Postblogging Technology, December Titanium

 

By Anynobody - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18445244

Titanium is, we keep hearing, going to be one of the major structural elements in the North American XF-108 Rapier supersonic interceptor. We hear a great deal about how much of it is being used in the DC-7; and while the XF-108 will be cancelled, fifteen A-12s, 3 YF-12s and  34 SR-71s will fill some of the gap. 

Another thing we here today is that a shortage of American titanium led to the surreptitious import of  Russian titanium during the 1960s, so that the Soviet Union was spied upon by planes made with the Motherland's titanium. And as if that weren't enough to make for a story about oopsy-themed metals instead of planes, we have the sour suggestion that the real reason America is dragging its feet over titanium is that all that newly-built magnesium infrastructure would go to waste, and this finally makes the story of "Mag-Thor," or magnesium-thorium alloy, the slightly radioactive  structural metal so widely used in the early years of the Space Race, but mostly on "New Look" weapon systems like the Bomarc missile, one of the great cringing embarrassments of Canadian industrial and political history of the last century, make sense. For Dow-Corning to make adequate excuses for the titanium shortage, there had to be a competitive magnesium product. 

Postblogging Technology, December 1953, II: Girls Who Won't Say No

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

Norah Docker for woman of the year, 1953!

I guess the day had to come when I wasn't done writing one of these until after I was snug in my room and waiting for whoever it comes on the Twenty-Eighth. The ghost of the Park Royal Boxing Day Sale? Anyway, I'm going to drop this in the courier box so that everyone else can see it. Now this is the part where I mention a winsome event in my life and that of your grandchildren. So did I mention that I saw Field-Marshal Montgomery on the plane? I did? In giddy tones when I got here a week ago? Drat. I've got nothing else. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Boom: The Space Race, 1

 

Everyone has a first public event they remember, and for me, it is the live television broadcast of the landing of Apollo 9. I was a bit young as these stories go, and this might have something to do with the fact that, as it turns out, this was four days before my fifth birthday. I was far too young to remember the two events sequentially, but heightened attention to the one  might have leaked over to heightened attention to the other, I dunno. The point here, such as it is, is that I will have my 60th birthday this year. I try not to blather on about work around here too much, so I won't go into the details of why I am not getting all the paid time off that the contract says I get, just to note, once again, that it has to do with the lack of younger workers at my place of employment and in the Canadian economy in general. Hence the clever double meaning of the title of this series, a reference to the baby boom as well as to the "space race" that culminated on 20 July 1964. Do the two things go together? I sure think so right now!

Even if they don't, this blog obviously can't ignore the space race, and this is the first occasion in the progression of the technological postblogging where it seems appropriate to give the space race its own series. Notice how I've cleverly begun the enumeration of this series in Arabic numerals? That's so I'm not working out the Roman notation for "47" at some point in the probably not-so-distant future. 

A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, November 1952, II: Around the Gyrotron

 The biggest industrial and technological story of this week is the collision of ongoing talk about civil defence or continental air defence with ongoing planning for OPERATION CASTLE, in which the BRAVO test blast of 1 March 1954 will demonstrate the feasibility of noncryogenic, "dry" hydrogen bombs. It will also detonate with two-and-a-half times the predicted yield, and catch Daigo Fukuryu Maru within its unexpectedly large fallout radius. With its usual maladroitness (I seriously  do not get the Eisenhower revisionism school at this point), the Administration tried to cover up the enormous screw-up and blame the crew of the trawler at a very delicate moment in American-Japanese postwar relations, and possibly leading (not a Japan expert!) to the confirmation of the postwar "pacifist"  constitution, and certainly to Godzilla. Would we have otaku culture without Godzilla? I don't know. Probably. 

Hydrogen bombs are a few things. First, they make civil defence seem vaguely ridiculous. Second, they need even less precise aiming than the previous generation of mere atomic bombs. Third, they can be lighter than that previous generation. People have been talking about intercontinental ballistic missiles since before the end of the war in Europe. Hydrogen bomb-tipped missiles actually make sense, because with an error of 3 km at the delivery end, you can still aim at "Moscow" and blow up all the strategic tarets in the Moscow vicinity, along with the rest of Moscow. That being said, ICBMs are a lot harder to build than to imagine. In the rough sketch of a plan for the future of the British nuclear deterrence that developed within its aviation-technical community after WWII, the ICBM would be preceded by an intermediate range ballistic missile. In April of 1954, the outgoing Minister of Supply in the Churchill government, Duncan Sandys, pushed through the concrete realisation of this schedule: the BLUE STREAK, a somewhat more advanced counterpart to the American Thor and Jupiter missiles that would deploy in underground bases in 1964, following several generations of life extensions for the V-bomber fleet and preceding an all-British ICBM that would never be ordered.

Today we are not talking about the BLUE STREAK so much as its guidance system, and we have been led to that discussion via a technology which was not used in it, the "tuning fork" gyroscope. My inspiration for this was taken from an article in Aviation Week about this new "gyratron" or "vibragyro," and an offhand mention of the fact that it had been tried by Smiths in the Smith's Automatic Pilot, SEP2 militarised as  the RAF Mk10. The Sperry vibrayro of 1953 doesn't appear to have gone any further. The idea was revived by Westinghouse for the space programme in the 1960s, but it wasn't until they were made piezoelectric that they became common in such vital gyrostablising applications as electric skateboards. 

So instead I'm going to talk about the technology that was used, and the concept of the BLUE STREAK as a total weapon system.

Postblogging Technology, November 1953, II: Calamity White

R_C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada


Dear Father:

I know that you're going to call me a flighty girl for saying it, but the biggest technology story of the week is a silly movie from a producer who obviously hasn't a clue what he or she (but let's be honest, it's a "he") is doing: Flight to Tangier, in which the studio's money was staked on Jack Palance as a romantic lead. The movie itself, a CinemaScope, Technicolor production for flat screen, 3D or widescreen viewing, is just an amazing statement on the progress of the technology of film making over the last few years. If you can credit television with anything, it is for getting the studios to drop some money into something besides' actors' salaries. I'm thinking about this a lot because of the amount of time I am spending up at Bray, and I know that the studio doesn't exactly spell "sophisticated" to anyone who isn't impressed that I have Eva Bartok's autograph. I don't care. More money is being spent on making bad movies look good (and sound good, too, how did we get beat out to be the first with video tape?) than anything else besides going fast. It's going to matter some day! And not just for those of us making money by smuggling silver. 
 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, November 1953, I: Kulturkampf

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

An update from London, where yours truly continues to look for something to do that isn't swanning around film studios like a crazy investment-minded great aunt. Maybe I'll write a science fiction novel. It doesn't look that hard! Your son has not had any more chances to indulge his particular passions, because he has been attending one meeting after another in London about making sure that British radars play politely with American radars. Which, he says, "If I was interested in all this stuff I would be in television and making ten times as much money." SIGH.  

Your grandchildren are fine, not neglected in any way. It's just that I have plenty of help. The only reason Nat is cooking for us is that there isn't room to turn around in the kitchen due to the way that the building got a wall kicked in courtesy of Herr Goering, so the help doesn't eat here. Don't worry, though, Harry MacMillan has promised to pop over and fix it personally, so the place will be back at its full Edwardian grandeur by the time we leave next summer.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, March 1953, I: Death of Stalin

R_.C_,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

What an exciting few weeks it has been. And what a terrible time to be a weekly news magazine with the slow turnaround of The Economist, which is now all the way to the middle of the March with no idea who might be running the Soviet Union. Not only has Stalin's tyranny run its course, but so, almost, as not only law school but one's own delicate condition. I know that you are all impatient to know my arrival date, but I am finalising plans for moving out of the house and putting the furniture in storage, and exactly how that goes will determine the train I finally catch. I look forward to seeing you all, and am grateful to have a familiar home to go to in this hour. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

PS: You may have noticed all the pink in the picture attached. 

Postblogging Technology, February 1953, II: Too Good To Be Forgotten

R_. C_.,
Shaugnhessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

I think I would be on and on about either feminine complaints or politics if I spent overlong with this, so best wishes, my love, and what a complete shambles the Eisenhower Administration has been! "Car dealers for New Dealers." 

Hah! Also, oops. Sorry. Like I said, better not to spend too long on this.  

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, January 1953, 1: Cold, Cold Heart

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

I hope this finds you well, as I am not. I could say that it is because of my condition, but it is not. I could say that I am sick at the news (or rumours, anyway) out of the Soviet Union. But  while I am, that is not the cause. I could blame Aviation Week for missing delivery dates and reversing the order of my usual readings. (Don't ask why, it made sense to me when I did it.) I could stamp my girlish feet at the library for unaccountably continuing its Christmas break through an extra weekend without so much as a sign on the door, which seems like an outrageous thing that could never happen in 1953, and certainly not in the bright, shining future of years from now. 

But that is not it, either. The truth is that I was up late playing canasta and so finishing this letter has led to me putting off dinner, and I am famished! I am, accordingly, off to remedy the situation and maybe some jambalaya? And now I am depressed again, at the tragic death of a musician you've probably never even heard of.  

Your Loving Daughter, 

Ronnie

A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, June 1952: SAGE, Whirlwind, Simplicity

 

Wikipedia says that Kelly Johnson's current campaign for a "simple" fighter, inspired by "a series of interviews with Korean War fighter pilots," is going to lead directly to the F-104 Starfighter, which is going to gobble up a large proportion of American Mutual Defence aid at the expense of the Lightning, which was no big loss, and the Buccaneer, which was. In retrospect it seems absurd that the F-104 beat out the Blackburn product in the ground support role. Of course, it turns out that Lockheed edged out foreign orders in the fighter and turboprop transport sectors on the strength of massive bribes, and it is this overwrought demand for the Yankee dollar that the MSDAP was obliquely addressing in the first place. 

The question here is what "complicated" looks like, and the answer is the Starfighter's predecessor, the F-94C Starfire, a "first generation . . . all-weather, day/night interceptor," which renders into the English as "Oops." And I say that as a Canadian with a patriotic attachment to the CF-100, but there's a reason the pilots nicknamed it "the Clunk." 

319 Squadron USAF, flying F-94Cs, deployed to Suwon Japan in January, 1952, so Johnson would have had a chance to interview pilots and RIOs flying the latest Lockheed product. 

He would have  heard all about the basic problem with this generation of aircraft, which was their marginal uselessness. Instrument flying and radar interception require two crew, and extensive electronic impedimenta. This gave them marginal performance at interception altitude, particularly the F-94C, which was  heavily dependent on an inefficient afterburner to get the necessary performance boost. This meant that they have only a very short window to gain a firing solution before the pilot has to wrestle the plane into a not-stalling trajectory. That meant a "fire control system," which was not a novel concept at the time, and worth developing in its own right from an industrial strategy point of view, but leading to carrying even more weight, and also Fifties-era electronics, into the air. The Hughes E-1, and later E-5, which combined a radar, a computing gunsight, and, as we heard in the first installment of June techblogging, a crude heads up display for targeting. Clearly none of this would be practical in a high performance single seater, and the MiG-15 was doing fine in the air defence role by depending on GCI. The F-104 ended up with a spartan set of avionics by the standards of its competition, notably the Lightning's AIRPASS. It never mattered in the least on account of operators declining to fight any major wars with F-104s, but one has to wonder if it was the right decision.

It also, of course, places a heavy reliance on the ground side of "ground controlled interception," about which I am going to talk today. No history of Twentieth Century technology can ignore SAGE. 

Postblogging Technology, June 1952, II: Smart Money On Taft

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

All I can say is that Washington is a very strange town which has very strange people in it. Today, Reggie and I met no less a person than Senator McCarthy, in company with B. and a surprisingly circumspect Koumintang general, and I have to say, the company the Senator keeps! (Not even including B.!) I think the general quickly regretted it, as with friends like that, as it is said. B. has rather grandly flounced out of the CIA and into a journalism job, where he is saving the world at Mencken's old paper, although how long that is likely to last is anyone's guess.

And not a word about your son, your daughter, your grandson. All I can say is that, whatever his faults, B. is a lot more interesting than I could ever be! And you will be seeing us in August, although the last word is that, in spite of the shutdown, Reggie will be working, as the Navy wants him to fly some sub-hunting gadgets.  

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, March 1952, 2: Deflation Now!

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

A few more details below from Aviation Week about our cousin's blockbuster plan to merge Kaiser-Frazer and Convair. As I said on the phone, I am pretty sure that this is Edgar's doing, even if it seems flamboyant enough to be an Uncle Henry project. That gives me a bit more confidence that it will go t hrough, but it seems like a lot will depend on what is actually going on at Willow Run. The news of the "first" Packet reminds me of the "first" B-24 to come off the lines mid-war, after a similar delay. The fact that we have breaking news of more Air Force contracts being shifted to Detroit is  just going to sharpen the knives if production falters. Edgar probably looks at this as a way to impress and one-up his father --that's  my keen psychological insight!-- and as far as the world is concerned, this is about Uncle Henry. And as far as the world is concerned, Uncle Henry is a flim-flam man.  

What I'm saying is, in my opinion, and as usual, Uncle Henry is a fine fellow and I would lend him the shirt off my back, but not a penny of investment money. How you take that is up to you. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, December 1951, I: Christmas Truce

 

R_. C_.,

Arcadia,

Santa Clara,

California

Dear Father:

In the end, Reggie did decide to go to the memorial, so your phone call did some good, after all.  I hardly knew the 124283 crew, so I was sentimental for a completely different reason. Wong Lee came down to drive us to the club, and not only did we catch up, I got to watch him practice his "evasionary driving!" I have no idea what ONI makes of the crash at this point, but I have to note that they  haven't released a flight number, so it was probably best to make sure we didn't lead the Examiner to the ceremony!  I don't think it would be good for anyone's career to have a Hearstling crash the memorial! the memorial!  Reggie was pretty blue until the band struck up "Ghost Riders in the Sky," which really broke the ice! In the morning, well, no, in the afternoon, by which time he'd finally begun to shake his hangover, he went down to see Bill and Dave. (I think they're cooking up something in the electric guitar way.) 

So I think we are over the hump as long as the Hungarians are nice and release their Dakota. (And, no, I have absolutely nothing on the grapevine about that. There's talk it might have been dropping spies for Tito? Which would be a bit of a hot tamale, let me tell you!)

Looking forward to seeing you on Christmas Eve, and also to handing this to you in person, which is why I am being a dreadful security risk and writing it in English.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie