Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.
We've been treated to three technology stories worth following up on this last week. The first, which should be the most pressing, is the loss of the third Avro Tudor airliner, which, incredibly, is not the end of the Tudor's time on the cross, with the Llandow disaster still to come. Second, Farnsworth Television has just been caught in a little fib. Somehow, the Fort Wayne, Indiana company has managed to lose money making televisions, and the NYSE takes a dim view of companies that issue stock to cover losses without mentioning the losses in the prospectus. ITT will buy out Farnsworth in 1951, but, as near as I can tell, the takeover will be put in motion a bit sooner than that. Third, in contrast to the sordid tales of two unrelated business failures, Columbia has just introduced its new 33rpm long-playing vinyl record format, which will soon come to dominate the industry. I wouldn't say that these are related stories, but they do belong in some kind of compare-and-contrast discussion.
Thanks for your kind concern. I am bearing up, I think, considering that I shot a man two weeks ago. Like you said, we tried to bring Mr. A. into the picture, since a foreign sailor found floating in the Bay is a matter for the spybusters, especially after we arranged a "tip" about his Green Tong membership. Unfortunately, the FBI immediately stepped in, with someone coming around to his office to tell him that he better keep his nose out of it, just like in a movie! This wasn't the end of it, because of course A. isn't without his own influence. I'm a little flabbergasted to report that no less than Shirley Temple was invoked. You'll note below that she was in Washington for the Inaugural, and of course she and A.know each other. The really flabbergasting part is that she knows ME! I am frankly beyond words that teenaged-me met Shirley TEMPLE(!!!!!) at a family gathering and didn't realise it! It says something about Temple that she can work a room so slickly.
Ahem. Close encounters with Hollywood stars in incognito aside, the upshot is that A. will be allowed to take over the case as soon as the Hoover Report leaves the front pages, so alphabetically-named agencies can step all over each other's feet again. In the mean time, everyone assumes that if you find a Tong man floating, it's because another Tong man's bullet managed to hit the target. (Insert hilarious joke about Tong men not shooting straight.)
So, anyway, I mean, it's an urgent matter to me, but I've flowers and an apology wired from Shanghai in my room, which is either a bum steer or something is up. (The girls think they're from Reggie, and are wondering what he could possibly have done.) What could possibly be so sensitive about the Oregon Scandal seventy years on???
In other news, the millionth (okay, third) Avro Tudor to be lost is now history. I hear that James is telling everyone in sight that this is what you get when you let Don Bennett into your business, even though Bennett was out of BSAA well before the loss of Star Ariel. He is, however, creating a stink in the dailies about it being all due to "sabotage." What kind of maniac would sabotage an air liner? The suggestion that it is Avro's incompetence won't do, so I suppose we're all going to settle for blaming the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
Yours Sincerely,
Ronnie.
I'm a little surprised that the Tudor losses in the "Bermuda Triangle" don't get more play in the legend. In the mean time, I'm not going to let you forget some good old Marv Wolfman/Steve Gann goodness.
In this modern age of computer-assisted scheduling and twenty-four operations,you can be sure that if you mention that your schedule violates the ten-hour-between-shifts rule (I know the rule; it's just you have to do it to claim overtime), you are likely to get a worse one. I won't trouble you with the gory details, but I've lost most of my days off to a blur of disrupted sleep. If, therefore, this post smacks of a certain economy of effort, well, hey, at least I was able to write a big post last Sunday!
That being said, there are issues here that deserve addressing ahead of whatever happens next with Brexit, and a measure of resonance with the postblogging.
Last time, we saw The Economist urge Sweden to give up on the inflationary, high-investment programme. As it turns out, that was just plain bad advice, establishing that poorly-informed and partisan pundits really can make a difference. It's even more interesting when you contrast Sweden's Hugh Dalton-ish "trente annes glorieux" with Britain's Stafford Cripps-ish era. Initial budgetary returns reporting in the same number showing revenues disappointing to the low side, spending to the high, might be the first frost of winter.
Might be. After all, Britain did pretty well in the "trente annes glorieux," too. Today's interest lies in another glorious thirty years, the 1713--43 of Cardinal Fleury and Horace Walpole, guarantors of European peace and the Sinking Fund.
The question is whether this might have been a reverse "thirty glorious years?" That is, did the "return to normalcy" in financial affairs during the long peace between the wars throw the earlier economic expansion into reverse? Did the War of Jenkin's Ear save the Industrial Revolution?
That's the speculation, anyway. Let's see how far it can be supported. Warning though. I'm writing this at 5 PM Friday night, I'm a little bleary, and I'm expected at work at 7 tomorrow morning, so don't expect any luxuries like proof-reading here.
I'm sure that you will have heard from Wong Lee, and thank God for him, as I'd be waiting my turn at the gas chamber at San Quentin if not for him.
I can't believe I'm still alive, and I owe that to you. I am certainly not the kind of girl to carry an automatic --with a muffler, no less-- around with her, and I certainly wouldn't have been watching for a "tail" if you hadn't pressed the issue. But there he was, and he followed me into the lady's restroom at Happy's, down across from the archives building, and was about to plug me through the stall door when I got him first. (Yes, I used that compact trick, though frankly I never believed that the putty would stick it to the ceiling like you said.) I chose Happy's to clear my tail because it connects through the char woman's closet.
Wong Lee's man went through the body's pockets before they dumped it in the harbour, and says the shooter is off a Shanghai-registered freighter, and no doubt the police will deem this a Tong matter --true enough. The question is, which Tong. Although the answer to that seems obvious, I thought we had an agreement that they would stay out of California if we stayed out of Shanghai. And, yes, that seems like a poor trade now, but that doesn't mean that they should be trying to edge their way back into the state by shooting me.
Pardon me, I've got to hyperventilate until I pass out.
Since I'm in the very earliest stages of putting together Postblogging Technology, January 1949, I: Uhm, Something Clever I Hope, thanks to Lameen for starting an easily followed hare!
Besides, with Brexit speeding rapidly towards the next thing that happens, what better time to return to the theme of European immigrants overrunning sea-girt Albion?
By Tom1955 - Based on an extract of a small part of the map of Berwickshire in Philips Handy Administrative Atlas of Scotland, 1900 (out of copyright), which was then editted and enhanced to show Coldingham. Previously published: No prior publication, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50014872
That's Coldingham, Berwickshire, Scotland, a little off centre courtesy of the Atlas of Hillforts site, via a piece of Microsoft software that's trying to compete with Google Earth. (Which reminds me of a new phrase I learned a few months ago. "Good hustle, Redmond.") It's off-centre because the hillfort in question is at St. Abb's Head, a brisk pre-lunch walk from Coldingham proper.
By Emoscopes - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4155435
St. Aebbe's Head has been associated with St. Aebbe of Coldingham since at least 1200, when an official history of the Palatine Bishopric of Durham claimed that, at the time that a cell of Durham was established at Coldingham proper, there was a cult of St. Aebbe at St. Abb's Head. The Venerable Bede tells us that St. Aebbe, daughter of Aethelfrith of Bernicia and sister of Oswald, King in the North, founded "double monasteries" (monasteries for monks and nuns) at Ebchester and then at a place that he calls Urbs Coludi. Since "Coludi" is a British name, it follows that the "Urbs Coludi" is an antediluvian hillfort, or possibly a spectacular coastal setting similar to Lindisfarne. It is then inferred that the name got tired of the draft and wandered inland a bit to Kirk Hill in Coldingham village, where Coldingham Priory sat until its secularisation during the Reformation.
So Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics gets a full page review in the 27 December issue of Time. I'm a bit worried that it'll hit Newsweek mid-January, and we'll miss it, and there's an important point to be made. With President Obama recently in the news warning brain workers that they'll all be out of a job real soon now due to artificial intelligence and stuff like that, I don't want to miss the moment!
"Engines and production machines replace human minds; control machines replace human brains. A thermostat thinks, after a fashion. It acts like a man who decides that the room is too cold and puts more coal on the stove. Modern control mechanisms are much better than that. Gathering information from delicate instruments (strain gauges, voltmeters, [illegible] tubes) they act up --and more quickly and accurately than human beings can. They never get sick or drunk or tired. If such mechanisms are properly designed, they make no mistakes.
When combined in tightly cooperating systems, such machines can run a whole manufacturing process, doing the directing as well as the acting, and leave nothing for human operatives to do. Technologically (if not politically), whole automatic factories are just around the corner. Squads of engineers are excitedly designing mechanisms for them."
. . . [Modern calculators are] "built chiefly of electron tubes which give a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer when stimulated by means of electrical impulses. This is roughly what the neurons (nerve cells) of the human brain do . . . The modern industrial revolution is . . . bound to devalue the human brain at least in its simpler and routine decisions . . . The human being of mediocre attainments or less [will have] nothing to sell that is worth anyone's money to buy."
The binary "'yes' or 'no'" bit suggests an awareness of digital computing, but in another part of the story, Wiener compares insanity in human brains to instability in machines.
(The bridge is bipolar!)
My takeaway from that is that Wiener is not giving up on his analogy between analog computers and human brains. "Cybernetics" is going to go down with the analog computing ship, clearing the way for many cycles of digital computer enthusiasts warning that "artificial intelligence is going to take your jobs."
With Shockley, Bardeenn and Brattain also in the news this month, it's time for another cut at how that came to happen, and some social commentary on top.
Not much of a note to cover, as chances is that the streetcar will deliver me in time to feed and tip the courier for you. Don't mind me! I love to play the host in your kitchen, and the boys that Wong Lee chooses for these errands are so sweet and polite! And I honestly can't wait to be in a house, a home, and one that I can think of as belonging to my family, if you will pardon my presumption. With people that I love, anyway. I'll have more to say about that soon, perhaps. Right now, I have only inside rumours that I will be living the student life for three years more. Official word comes down at the end of next month . . .
Oh! The letter. I've written it anyway, out of a spirit of completeness. Besides, I received the most ridiculous threat the other day at the city archives, where I am following up on some loose ends in regards to the old Oregon scandal. If they do find my body floating in the Bay, at least the world will know my opinion of Jane Russell. (Except that I forgot to give it. Never mind, I don't speak ill of the dead, and every time I see her act . . . )
Also, yes, I know that the streetcar doesn't go past your door, and that your neighbours will look askance at a girl carrying a suitcase down your street, where only taxicabs are meant to go. On the other hand, before they can look askance, they'll have fight their way through their ornamental gardens to the point where they can see the road. Perhaps askanceness will be reported to them from the groundskeeper's men via the butler.
You'll notice a story below where I try to claim credit for the soon-to-be-Alma Mater (x1) for a quite exciting story (inside word has the "semi-conductor" set bound for a very quick Nobel). Well, yes, Shockley did not go to Stanford, and his colleagues don't even know how to spell "California," but the Shockleys are Stanford people, and it is the Stanford campus where all the scientists and engineers are running around and saying that he deserves a Nobel. So there!
Yours Sincerely,
Ronnie
In 1948, a twenty-year old house that has just seen the last of its children leave, was built in ---1928!
