Postblogging January 1943: The Most Inevitable Technical Appendix Of All

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Remember those housing start numbers from last time time. The reason I went and looked them up is that I made the mistake of skimming The Economist from the summer of 1947, and was about ready to slit my wrists in the bath. (Fortunately,  my CAD 1000/month one bedroom in Kitsilano doesn't have a bathtub. So yay for high rents through artificial scarcity.) Here's a Trotskyite, of all things, giving us the low down. The fact that The Economist was not known for its Trotskyite sympathies did not prevent its "American Survey" feature from confidently announcing through the whole of the summer of 1947 that by the time that next week's number came out, the bubble would have burst, and that stagflation would be upon us. And they  hadn't even invented "stagflation" yet! The author would just go, oh, there's something fundamentally wrong with the American economy, it's about to crash. Oh, and by the way, the cost of living is out of control! Recession+inflation, just around the corner!

So, yeah, the inevitable technical appendix. It's about jets, of course. 

The trope is that when an old scientist-technician-guy sits down to write his memoirs, there has got to be a bit where the Olds tell him that whatever he's working on will never actually work. There's places and times where I can see that conversation happening, but when you hear it in the context of aviation in the late 1930s, it's ....weird, is what it is. Computers are about the freshest technological progress there is, and I'm 49, and I do not remember a time when there were not computers --right down to predictions of self-driving cars** and artificial intelligence taking our jobs. If I were a 49 year old project manager in 1939, I would very distinctly remember the day that the first heavier-than-air plane flew. And I'm telling Frank Whittle/Hans Ohain that jets will never work? Seriously?

And, yet, jets did not work in 1939--45. Sure, Me 262s and even Gloster Meteors shot some stuff down. As with most of the technological developments of World War II that we notice and care about, the turbojet revolution was mostly in the pipeline when the war ended. 

There's probably some law of human nature here. Plenty of technologies were developed, field-tested and used during the war, but they tend to get the "But what have you done for me lately?" Treatment. Oh, sure, penicillin saved millions of lives, and the technology for mass producing it led directly to the massive postwar orange juice concentrate industry (seriously), apparently via the first experiments with Tang, but does anyone even remember that it was the production of penicillin, and not its "invention," that was the issue? On the other hand, if the technology was still on the way, its proponents had a fairly obvious reason for talking it up: it needed all the help it could get to win funding in the newly constrained postwar environment. All you have to do is look at the helicopter. The folk memory of 1944 is that everyone was promising that we would all be commuting in helicopters real soon.*** There were plenty of articles that said that, of course, but there were also plenty of "Let's be realistic about helicopters" articles. As it happens, it was the semi-trailer, reefer and shipping container that transformed postwar logistics, and while the shipping container has hired a publicist, the rest of it is all lost history.

So what would you have said if you were writing a "Let's be serious about jets" article in February of 1944?

Postblogging January 194Q: A Not-At-All Technical Appendix to "Postblogging January 1944, I"

Here's a bonus posting, because I'm on vacation this week and currently procrastinating. 

US GNP in chained 2007 dollars, 1939-1950. (St.Louis Federal Reserve.)

1939-01-01   1162596
1940-01-01   1264999
1941-01-01   1488930
1942-01-01   1770295
1943-01-01   2072020
1944-01-01   2237532
1945-01-01   2215925
1946-01-01   1959037
1947-01-01   1937567
1948-01-01   2018005
1949-01-01   2006981
1950-01-01   2181876

I've taken this out of the Internet's preferred table form because this way you don't have to squint at the squiggly lines and eyeball your estimate.  Fortune's "194Q" estimate is a 53% increase in GNP over 1939. Historically, using the 01/01/48 numbers for "194Q," I get 73.5%. Now throw in a swingeing federal budget surplus of 4.6% of GNP, per Lord Keynes'* numbers at Social Democracy for the 2st Century. Comparing the coming-out-of-recession 01/01/47 with the end-of-1939 01/01/1940 numbers gives 53%. That's not bad for a Stone Age economic writer, but throw in the pro-cyclic 1.7 billion dollar surplus and you get a worst-case historical "194Q" that significantly outperforms the projected, utopian "194Q" of 1943. 

I am utterly unqualified to draw a conclusion, but it seems to me that there is an "X" factor. It is not productivity growth, as that is already factored in to the "194Q" projection. Perhaps it is higher-than-expected labour force growth? But, if so, where are the people coming from? More likely, it seems to me, is a major excursion from the historical rate of productivity growth.  See why I am "unqualified" to draw a conclusion? I want to look at these numbers and see a major component of learning-by-doing coming out of a war time economy-of-knowledge transaction. (That is, "I'll fight for you if you'll let me fiddle with these here proto-computers.") I want to see that so bad that I think I am going to exclude my highly motivated analysis until someone else tells me that it's okay.

By the way, I swear that I did not make up "Professor Wilfred Brimley," (EDIT: "Wilford Brimley") "Wheeler McMillen" or "Ladd Haystead" up. Though I'll cop to wondering if Haystead's column was taking the wind out of Eliot Janeway.

Edit again: Googling around for a historic series of housing starts, I found this. Image, because I'm lazy.

It doesn't inspire complete confidence, in that this is preliminary to a study that tries to use Census data to revise pre-1945 housing start data up by as much as 50%, but even if the comparison to the previous highs of the 1920s is rendered suspect, there is enough here to show the way that housing starts spiked, as suspected, with the end of the war and remained high through the "technical depression" of 1945/6 and fails to reveal the impact of the 1948/9 recession. Single-residence construction does not seem like the obvious place to look for a war-caused skills/technology boost, but, classically, the light construction trades have absorbed a very large proportion of veterans, and there is plenty of technological change to implicate here. I'm thinking bulldozers and plywood.

*I'm thinking that this might not be the real Lord Keynes.

Postblogging Technology, January 1943, I: Will There Be Marmalade in 194Q?

My Dearest Reggie:

Material is piling up, and I have to write you anyway, to brace you for some business in special cargoes that I must ask you to arrange. Special delicacy, I hardly need observe, is required in the matter of border "rebirths" in war years, especially with an enthusiastic amateur FBI informant under foot every time he can get up from Burbank. So, then, here is the first of my January newsletters! 

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Nor can I say that I have not had an eventful few weeks! In taking up  my brush last week, "Mrs. J. C." dropped a little reference to the city of broad shoulders. Well, I have been to the one that never sleeps, in fast company. It was very nearly too much for me, who am set so permanently in my ways. Fortunately, and I have had a few days to retire early and sleep late and let my hair down. (That is this month's obligatory "permanent wave" joke out of the way. Never let it be said that I do not keep up with the trends.) This Sunday,  I slept until the smell of marmalade boiling began to percolate upwards. Judith has been teaching the art to our young housekeeper, and I, I am carried away with memories of things long past.

In the matter of our friend, mentioned by "Mrs. J. C.," you know much and will have guessed more from my mention of special cargoes. Needless to say, the very volume of the rumours demonstrate the need for discretion! You will know that he has an acquaintance, quite as erratic in person as he may seem from a distance, who boasts of breaking his own contract with the assistance of those to whom he oleaginously refers as "men of respect." You may rightly suppose that our friend's vanity would only be assuaged when he could make a like show, and that this is how I came to owe a favour to one of Grandfather's little brothers. The actual business will be done by "Cousin H. C.'s" lawyers, of course. 

And engineers. I cannot expect "Mrs. J. C.'s" solid but essentially feminine mind to grasp something so technical, but I remain firm on this. We can solve our friend's most pressing problem in the courts, but we can only deliver the kind of life that he would like to lead through "research and development." He is a very, very rich man, so someone will do it. Why not us? I await a favourable report in the matter of your Christmas present via Bill and David soon, although the actual work has been delegated to a White Russian of the Mukden emigration, who is more intimately obligated to us.

The Siege: Victory of the German Maidens

So there was a thing at the Modern Languages Association annual conference this year. It was about adjunct teaching blah tenure lines blah interviewing blah. Blah. My take is that, strip the precious specificity of academia away, and you're seeing a fairly typical problem of the politics of skilled labour.

Wait? You don't consider professors teaching English at a university  to be "skilled labour" in the same sense as the honest hands of toil making cool things with Very Big Machine Tools? 

A photo essay on cognitive dissonance: 

1: Cause:

2: Effect.

The "Help!!" sign is just about the definition of a shortage of skilled labour, and the skill in question is close reading. True, it is shelf schematics, as opposed to Beowulf, and it is so that buyers will know what is going to be on the shelves when they make their purchase. SAMS work doesn't have as much social capital as lecturing the children of judges and doctors on Point Grey -to put it mildly!-- but any adjunct in this country would kill for the lifestyle of our company's roving SAMS expert. 

In the face of the triple crisis of higher education, employment and demographics in this country and on this continent, it is worth contemplating the intractable mystery of skilled labour in our modern economy. Somehow, we got the story of skilled labour radically wrong. Our story is that an increased supply of skilled labour will drive the economy forward. When in fact, it just...

Oh. Wait. That's not a mystery at all.

Seventy years ago, labour worked differently. Voracious factories absorbed every hand they could, and then some more, and the Flak batteries in the park were crewed (in part) by the League of German Maidens. 

And in Belfast.. . In Belfast. . 

"In the county Tyrone, in the town of Dungannon

Where many a ruckus meself had a hand in

Bob Williamson lived there, a weaver by trade

And all of us thought him a stout-hearted blade.

On the twelfth of July as it yearly did come

Bob played on the flute to the sound of the drum

You can talk of your fiddles, your harp or your lute

But there's nothing could sound like the Old Orange Flute.

But the treacherous scoundrel, he took us all in

For he married a Papish named Bridget McGinn

Turned Papish himself and forsook the Old Cause

That gave us our freedom, religion and laws.

And the boys in the county made such a stir on it

They forced Bob to flee to the province of Connaught;

(The Clancy Brothers???)

Anyway, in the land of anger and hate, there was this:

Wikipedia (also below)

Postblogging December 1943, II: Towards A Cold War

Wing Commander R__. C__., RCAFVR, O.C.
L__. House,
Isle of Axholme,
Lincolnshire, U. K.

My Dear Sir:

Father of my Beloved: I take up the brush in my feminine hand on no occasion of sad news, but rather because fortunate winds are blowing. That friend of whom you have been previously advised, had an acrimonious dispute with his employer over a New Year's engagement. It was the breaking point in their relationship, and he is now definitive that he wants out of his contract. He  appealed to us, as we were warned  he might, on the basis of blood and obligation incurred so many years ago. Because our friend is so much in the public eye, he can scarcely be seen visiting lawyers, or even have lawyers visit his hotel room. Your beloved cousin, my Uncle, has gone East to arrange meetings with H. C.'s lawyers and plot our next step, but it will take some time. 

 Uncle remains intent on resuming his correspondence in February, naturally enough. Indeed, he is attempting to draw our friend into his beloved electrical engineering investment scheme, and may have more news on this in his next.

Let me also assure you that James and I are also well. Your wife may have informed you that she summoned Judith back from Pasadena instant upon her arrival in Santa Clara, and she certainly did not leave California until I was under a watchful matron's eye. It seems like rather a fuss to me, but she and Judith are so stern, and so motherly, that I cannot bear to defy them. Nevertheless, Judith and I did accompany James on his trip to Tacoma, which, by the way, went very well indeed. I shall append an amusing story about it once I have finished doing secretary's service to Uncle.

We do, however, have news that may yet cast a shadow over your heart if the war winds on too long. While James is here on the West Coast for the duration of his assignment only, we have resolved that I will not be crossing the Atlantic again this war, and we have begun to prepare a residence en famille. The old house, unfortunately, is far beyond the available resources of material and labour. Moreover, even if we could repair it, it would only distress Great-Uncle's last days. Fortunately, the old coach-house will do quite well enough for three (for now), at least once the stables have been converted into something more domestic.

The only drawback is that the work is quite visible from the road. The locals are understandably curious about what the owners of 'Arcadia' intend, and less understandably opinionated about how matters should proceed. One of my contractors has amused himself by setting up a hand-lettered "Suggestion Box" at the gate. Oh, the rural round....

One final familial note. Let me see: I need a coining from Uncle's rather threadbare pseudonym system. Will it suffice to say that Miss "V.C." is the daughter of Mr. "N.C." of Chicago for you to know a young lady whom you last saw in pigtails? Well, pigtails no longer, and her father is wide awake to the implications of the high rejection rate of his product by the Army.

From Miss Ewe's Holiday

Chicago may continue to be windy and broad-shouldered, but this is one branch of butchering-to-the-world that is well past time to be retired into a shadowy investment trust. So now he reconsiders his social-climbing choice not to send his daughter to the Poor Clares, and I have the rather large charge of teaching her proper literary accomplishments. This is rather much to pack into a senior year, but the thought is that we might enroll her in Stanford, as I shall be Santa Clara for at least another year, war or no war. The agreement is that Miss V. C. will be allowed to believe that she is being prepared for missionary work unless and until she deduces the family secrets for herself.

Now, as I have mentioned, filial duty requires that I continue to prosecute Uncle's campaign to persuade the Earl, through you, that it would be a mistake to sink money into poor Cousin H. C.'s steel plant and "prefabricated house" schemes.

Postblogging December, 1943, Technical Appendix, II

Edit: Bulwark seems to have been lost due to spontaneous detonation of ammunition, not propellant.

To this day I remember Chris Friedrichs (warning: UBC's security certificate for this site has expired) telling us that now that we were graduate students, we would appreciate being able to be in the library right up to Christmas, while undergraduates scattered off to home and hearth. 

Nowadays, the UBC libraries are closed during Saturnalia. 

Which is why the second technical appendix for December postblogging appears first. It has nothing to do with my losing precious research time exploring the 40 or so "Esquisse pour servire a l'histoire du Rome" inserted, apparently randomly and by an unknown hand, into the map pocket at the back of the library's 1876 Desjardins. In the spirit of the season....

That said, even without having covered the Fortune article yet, it is pretty clear that refrigeration needs a post, especially as I am going to link it to the Battle of North Cape. And by "needs a post," I mean, "needs multiple doctoral dissertations in economic, social, cultural and gender history." But that ain't gonna happen. So instead here is a discussion of the history of explosives, which is important because the transition to modern explosives required storage in temperature and humidity-controlled conditions that, in turn, led to state security-related investment in HVAC technology ahead of the rise of the cold chain logistics that has so clearly transformed our lives without being much investigated, although Jonathan Reese's book looks like an interesting first step.

So: the link to the Battle of North Cape? North Cape is the somewhat grandiose title for Bruce Fraser's successful mousetrapping of the battlecruiser KMS Scharnhorst on 26 December 1943. By keeping fast capital ships in Norwegian ports threatening the Russian convoys, the Germans were able to stretch Allied naval resources, with knock-on effects extending from the Eastern Front to the Pacific, until, as must inevitably happen, they ran out of capital ships.  Losing Scharnhorst --somehow-- was both inevitable and painful for the Germans, and an incremental step towards victory for the Allies. 

That's the top down view. Bottom up, it comes down to steam conditions, fire control solutions (1,2,3), volume of fire and progress in organic chemistry. (Noting that I got Robert Neville confused with James H. McGraw, Jr.)

The steam condition thing is interesting. Scharnhorst was very fast for its size due to operating with 850F steam, and, like its heavy cruiser contemporaries, suffered repeated machinery breakdowns because of it. So is it possible that the fatal blow that slowed it down at North Cape was inflicted internally, by steel failing in the wet blast? It's a wild-assed theory that I raise because of its salience to issues that do matter.  (Here's Antonio Bonomi promoting it.)

For fire control, we can notice that it was Bruce Fraser who  headed the team that designed the Admiralty Fire Control Table, and Bruce Fraser who won the Battle of North Cape. There's a lot going on here in the nascent history of computing, and I am not going to dissent from the common analysis that the radar stuff matters more than a weird little pneumatic computer, but there it is.

For volume of fire, I link to my posting on Jutland, the battle that the Royal Navy lost by letting institutional imperatives trump safety considerations, and the historical profession muffed by missing the well-publicised cause of the battlecruiser losses in favour of talking about "technological decline." Take what you will from that. The point is that Duke of York's ammunition chain was designed to make it mechanically impossible for a deflagration to propagate unchecked from the turret to the magazines. This was the right thing to do: even the most vigorous lip service to safety is still lip service. It is unfortunate that the resulting loss of fire opportunities keeps getting laid off on "unreliability," as though safety precautions were unmanly or something. Slow we are to learn.

So, ammunition storage is the previously-mentioned entre to the issue of the extremely rapid propagation of powered HVAC up and down the cold chain and of air conditioning on parallel lines. This takes us back to the introduction of the first 'modern,' artificial explosive, nitrocellulose, the explosive that was also a plastic!   I have talked about modern explosives, indirectly before. Specifically, I notice that I supplied the footnote, but not the discussion! As I move towards the climax of the munitions war, so it is time to get that stuff on the internet.

The Fall of France, XI (And Books That I Have Read): The Foresight War

Look! It's a postcard image. Probably of a different Agneaux than the one in the "Norman Switzerland," but think of it as signifying the relationship of 'foresight' with the two battles of France, anyway.  Uploaded to Google Maps by user ch'caf, if I am understanding the Panoramio credit properly.

In 2004, Anthony G. Williams, "military technology historian," could stand the psychic pressure of words and ideas no longer. So he wrote a book. 

It is a self-published book, and has some weaknesses, but considering this "if-you-liked-The-Foresight War-you-might-like-this" book was brought out by Random House,  I am going to cut Anthony G. Williams. His focus on military technology is no secret (his website), and the conventions of the genre dictate that you can only write a book about how a modern day person mysteriously transported back in time Changes Everything if you put in a novel format, with the classic of the genre, Lest Darkness Fall suggesting that you can go light on what in other subgenres can detract from the meat of the story. (You know, kissing and fashion and girl-cootie stuff.) 

So it's not like I am going to pick on Williams because his characterisation is weak. Nor am I going to pick nits about the story. (A junior academic wakes up in a semi-furnished flat one morning with his clothes and laptop. He gets up, sees the Crystal Palace, and realises that he has mysteriously travelled in time to 1934. Naturally, he heads off to see Henry Tizard and convinces the Government's official scientific advisor of his bona fides with his digital watch --as opposed to everything he's wearing-- and toute de suite we're on to re-fighting WWII. 

I am going to pick on him for something else. The Battle of France is kind of highlighted here, but the Blog Author is reaching for one of those Hey-Look-At-The-Important Issues-This-Book-Inadvertently-Raises posts. Which will hopefully be done in time for him to spend some time in the library. I hope I get there, and that the psychic pressure of ideas does not lead me too far astray.