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TOWN PUMP’S END

Saginaw gives it civic burial when new water finally conies in Twenty years ago the city of Saginaw, Mich, erected a $2 million water-pumping plant, but it made the mistake of drawing its water from the Saginaw River, where chemical plants and other factories dumped their waste. A way was found to purify the water bacteriologically, but it still tasted like aqua nausea. So for 20 years townspeople continued to use town pumps to get their aqua pura and stoutly resisted all efforts to raise taxes to pipe in a supply purer than the Saginaw River.

Then someone suggested they run the pipes 78 miles to Lake Huron and pay for it with higher water rates. The tax-conscious people of Saginaw approved. So on May 20 Saginaw, the last U.S. city of its size (pop. 97,000) that still had them, celebrated the passing of its 165 pumps. One was reverently deposited in a pink-lined coffin (above). People sent baskets of flowers, held parades, boat races and ball games in observance of the occasion. It was the happiest funeral Saginaw had ever seen.

Freak Airships of the Ancients Reputed to Have Flown

RECORDS of almost every ancient tribe will show among its traditions the legend of some member who achieved the miracle of flight, either through the use of wings or other devices more closely resembling modern airplanes. And the extraordinary part of it is that there are one or two instances, apparently well authenticated, which record flights that were actually successful.

Leonardo da Vinci’s glider, designed in 1490, very possibly would have flown successfully, equipped with some source of power other than the human legs which were supposed to keep it moving through the air. Da Vinci was the originator of the parachute and his conception of that device, while not so efficient as the modern ‘chutes, undoubtedly would have operated successfully.

In 1609 Pierre de Larrannes drew a picture of a flying fish airship of his own invention, reproduced in the sketch above. His intention was to derive propelling force from two men who sat atop the fish and moved it forward by long, sweeping strokes with feather-tipped oars. A third man near the fish’s tail was to act as helmsman, steering by means of a wheel which turned the rudder to right or left.

Tradition has it that seven years later, on March 10, 1616, a craft modeled after that of de Larrannes actually flew. Joseph Patinho and three companions were credited with having taken it aloft at Plazentia, Spain, and flown a distance of one mile to Coria. The story even goes into details of the landing in which Patinho and his companions were thrown off the contraption when it turned over.

Information is lacking as to whether the craft was made buoyant with heated air or hydrogen. It is possible that the invention of the balloon should be credited to de Larrannes. Most certainly there are sufficient details available to authenticate a flight of some character. The craft may have drifted down wind for a mile, but there seems to be little doubt that it actually flew.

Another ancient airship—which, however, made no flights—was the Persian flying car shown above, supported and propelled by four birds, one at each corner. The sketch is taken from a miniature and shows a Persian sportsman going hunting, back in 1600. He sits cross-legged on a cushion and leisurely fits an arrow to his bow as he descries flying game in the distance. Naturally this sketch is highly fanciful, but there were many similar ones during the period, testifying to man’s age-old yearning to be able to fly. Geese, ducks and similar large birds were usually drafted into the medieval artist’s pictorial conception of an airship, which rarely got beyond the stage of a drawing on paper. Needless to say, none of these contraptions ever got into the air, but it was out of such fancies as these that the airplane was finally developed.

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A Short History of Computing

A few weeks ago a master’s degree candidate in computer science confided, with an embarrassed laugh, that he had never seen a computer. His experience with the machines of his chosen vocation had consisted entirely of submitting punched cards through a hole in a wall and later getting printed results the same way. While his opportunities to see equipment are restricted due to his student status, there are also thousands of working programmers and analysts using large scale equipment who have no contact with existing hardware and will never have a chance to see any first or second generation computers in operation.

This is in sharp contrast with the way programmers worked in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Before 1964, when multiprogramming computers were introduced, the typical programmer had opportunities to come in contact with the computer if he or she wanted to do so. Prior to 1960, in fact, most programmers actually operated the machine when debugging their programs. These people learned of the computer as a physical device; the current programmer is more likely to think of it as a vague logical entity at the other end of a terminal. Thus, many large system programmers have the rare distinction of using a tool without knowing how it works or what it looks like. This is in spite of the fact that many important computer developments have occurred within the average programmer’s lifetime.

However, in the past year or two, dramatic reductions in the cost of minicomputer components and the advent of the microcomputer have returned the hands-on computer to respectability in two ways. First, it is now possible to justify hands-on debugging on a small computer, since the hourly rate of the programmer is higher than that of the machine. Second, the decreasing cost of home computing has fostered the birth of a new class of “renaissance programmers”: people who combine programming expertise with hardware knowledge and aren’t afraid to admit it. Renaissance programmers can learn much from the lessons of computer history; simple and inelegant hardware isn’t necessarily best, but it’s frequently cheapest.

In short, the stored program computer became a necessary tool only recently, even though various mechanical aids to computation have been in existence for centuries.

One of the first such aids was the abacus, the invention of which is claimed by the Chinese. It was known in Egypt as early as 460 BC. The Chinese version of the abacus (as shown in photo 1) consists of a frame strung with wires containing seven beads each. Part of the frame separates the topmost two beads from the lower five. The right-hand wire represents units, the next tens, the next hundreds, and so on. The operator slides the beads to perform addition and subtraction and reads the resulting sum from the final position of the beads. The principle of the abacus became known to Roman and early European traders, who adopted it in a form in which stones (called by the Latin calculi, hence the word “calculate”) are moved around in grooves on a flat board.

The use of precision instruments dates back to the Alexandrian astronomers. Like the mathematics of the period, however, the development of scientific instruments died away with the demise of the Alexandrian school. The Arabs renewed interest in astronomy in the period between 800 and 1500 AD, and it was during this time that the first specialists in instrument making appeared. The center of instrument making shifted to Nuremberg, beginning about 1400. By the middle of the 16th Century, precise engraving on brass was well advanced due in part to the interest in book printing.

Calendrical calculators used for determining the moon’s phases and the positions of the planets crop up in all the major periods of scientific thought in the past two thousand years. Parts of a Greek machine about 1800 years old, apparently used to simulate the motions of the planets, were found in 1902 in the remains of a ship off the island of Antikythera. The gears of the machine indicate amazing technical ability and knowledge. Later calendrical calculators, which were usually of the type in which two or more flat disks were rotated about the same axis, came to include a means of telling time at night by visually aligning part of the Big Dipper with the pole star.

Trigonometric calculators, working on a graphical principle, were in use in the Arabic period. Such calculators were used mainly to determine triangular relationships in surveying. The popularity of this device was renewed in 14th Century Europe; in fact, calculating aids of all kinds grew rapidly in popularity as well as in scope from this time onward, largely due to the difficulty of the current arithmetic techniques. Napier was continually seeking ways to improve computational methods through his inventions. One such invention, “Napier’s bones,” consisted of a number of flat sticks similar to the kind now used in ice cream bars. Each stick was marked off into squares containing numbers. To perform calculations, the user manipulated the sticks up and down in a manner reminiscent of the abacus. Of particular interest is the fact that Napier’s invention was used for general calculation at a time when many other devices were used for the specific determination of one measurement, such as the volume of liquid in a partly full barrel, or the range of an artillery shot.

Pascal invented and built what is often called the first real calculating machine in 1642 (shown in photo 2). The machine consisted of a set of geared wheels arranged so that a complete revolution of any wheel rotated the wheel to its left one tenth of a revolution. Digits were inscribed on the side of each wheel. Additions and subtractions could be performed by the rotation of the wheels; this was done with the aid of a stylus. Pascal’s calculator design is still widely seen in the form of inexpensive plastic versions found in variety stores.

In 1671 Leibniz invented a machine capable of multiplication and division, but it is said to have been prone to inaccuracies.

The work of Pascal, Leibniz, and other pioneers of mechanical calculation was greatly facilitated by the knowledge of gears and escapements gained through advances in the clock. In the 13th Century, a clock was devised for Alfonso X of Spain which used a falling weight to turn a dial. The weight was regulated by a cylindrical container divided into partitions and partly filled with mercury. The mercury flowed slowly through small holes in the partitions as the cylinder rotated; this tended to counterbalance the weight. By the 15th Century, the recoil of a spring regulated by an escapement had made its appearance as a source of motive power. Gear trains of increasing complexity and ingenuity were invented. Clocks could now strike on the hours, have minute and second hands (at first on separate dials), and record calendrical and astronomical events. Gears opened the door to wonderful automata and gadgets such as the Strasbourg clock of 1354. This device included a mechanical rooster which flapped its wings, stretched its metal feathers, opened its beak and crowed every day at noon. Later, important improvements in timekeeping included Galileo’s invention of the pendulum; and the accurate driving of a clock without weights or pendulum which led to the portable watch.

Although mechanical and machine shop techniques still had a long way to go (consider the 19th Century machinist’s inability to fit a piston tightly into a cylinder), the importance of mechanical inventions as aids to computation was overshadowed by electrical discoveries beginning with the invention of the battery by Volta in 1800.

During the 1700s, much experimental work had been done with static electricity. The so-called electrical machine underwent a number of improvements. Other electrical inventions like the Leyden jar appeared, but all were based on static electricity which releases very little energy in a very spectacular way. In 1820, following Volta’s discovery, Oersted recognized the principle of electromagnetism that allowed Faraday to complete the work leading to the dynamo, and eventually to the electric motor. It was not until 1873, however, that Gramme demonstrated a commercially practicable direct current motor in Vienna. Alternating current (AC) was shown to be the most feasible type of electric power for distribution, and subsequently the AC motor was invented in 1888 by Tesla. The value of electric power for transportation was quickly recognized and employed in tramways and electric railways. This led to improvements in methods for controlling electricity. Electric lighting methods sprang up like weeds during the latter half of the 19th Century. The most successful were due to the efforts of Swan in England and Edison in the United States. Work on electric lighting, the telegraph and the telephone led to the wonder of the age: radio. In 1895, Marconi transmitted a radio message over a distance of one mile, and six years later from England to Newfoundland.

As a consequence of the rapid growth of interest in the radio, much work was done on the vacuum tube. Lee de Forest discovered the principle of the triode in 1907. Until the development of the transistor, the vacuum tube was the most important device in computer technology due to its ability to respond to changes in electrical voltage in extremely short periods of time. The cathode ray tube, invented by William Crookes, was used in computers for a few years prior to 1960. It faded temporarily from view but returned in 1964 due to advances in technology that improved its economic feasibility as well as its value as a display tool. In 1948 Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley developed the transistor, which began to replace the vacuum tube in computers in 1959. The transistor has many advantages over the vacuum tube as a computer component: it lasts much longer, generates much less heat, and takes up less space. It therefore replaced the vacuum tube, only to fall prey in turn to microminiaturization. Of course, the transistor principle didn’t go away, but the little flying saucers with three wires coming out of their bases did.

Oddly enough, one of the most fundamental devices in the early history of computing predates the electronic computer by more than two hundred years. The punched card was first used to control patterns woven by the automatic loom. Although Jacquard is commonly thought to have originated the use of cards, it was actually done first by Falcon in 1728. Falcon’s cards, which were connected together like a roll of postage stamps, were used by Jacquard to control the first fully automatic loom in France, and later appeared in Great Britain about 1810 (see photo 3). At about the same time, Charles Babbage began to devote his thinking to the development of computing machinery. Babbage’s first machine, the Difference Engine, shown in photo 4, was completed in 1822 and was used in the computation of tables. His attempts to build a larger Difference Engine were unsuccessful, even though he spent £23,000 on the project (£6,000 of his own, and £17,000 of the government’s).

In 1833 Babbage began a project that was to be his life’s work and his supreme frustration: the Analytical Engine. This machine was manifestly similar in theory to modern computers, but in fact was never completed. During the forty years devoted to the project, many excellent engineering drawings were made of parts of the Analytical Engine, and some parts of the machine were actually completed at the expense of Babbage’s considerable personal fortune. The machine, which was to derive its motive power from a steam engine, was to use punched cards to direct its activities. The Engine was to include the capability of retaining and displaying upon demand any of its 1000 fifty-digit numbers (the first suggestion that a computing machine should have a memory) and was to be capable of changing its course of action depending on calculated results. Unfortunately for Babbage, his theories were years ahead of existing engineering technology, but he contributed to posterity the idea that punched cards could be used as inputs to computers.

Herman Hollerith put punched cards to use in 1890 in his electric accounting machines, which were not computers, but machines designed to sort and collate cards according to the positions of holes punched in the cards (see photo 5). Hollerith’s machines were put to effective use in the United States census of 1890.

In 1911, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company was formed, which changed its name to International Business Machines in 1924. In the period between 1932 and 1945 many advances were made in electric accounting machines, culminating in 1946 with IBM’s announcement of the IBM 602 and 603 electronic calculators, which were capable of performing arithmetic on data punched onto a card and of punching the result onto the same card. It was Remington Rand, however, who announced the first commercially available electronic data processing machine, the Univac I, the first of which was delivered to the US Census Bureau in 1950. In 1963, just thirteen years after the beginning of the computer business, computer rental costs in the United States exceeded a billion dollars.

Univac I was not the first computer, even though it was the first to be offered for sale. Several one of a kind computers were built in the period between 1944 and 1950 partly as a result of the war. In 1939 work was begun by IBM on the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, Mark I, which was completed in 1944 and used at Harvard University (see photo 6). Relays were used to retain numbers; since relays are electromechanical and have parts that actually move, they are very slow by modern standards.

In 1943, Eckert, Mauchly and Goldstine started to build the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), which became the first electronic computer using vacuum tubes instead of relays (see photo 7). The next year John von Neumann became interested in EN I AC and by 1946 had recognized a fundamental flaw in its design. In “Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument,” von Neumann pointed out the advantages of using the computer’s memory to store not only data but the program itself. Machines without stored program capabilities were limited in scope, since they had to be partly rewired in order to solve a new problem (as was the case with EN I AC). This process sometimes took days during which time the machine could not be used. If rewiring of such machines was to be avoided, instructions had to be entered and executed one at a time, which greatly limited the machine’s decision making capabilities. Machines with stored program capabilities automatically store not only numeric data but also the program (which looks like numbers and can be treated like numbers) in memory. In short, stored program instructions can be used to modify other instructions, a concept that leads to programs which can modify themselves. It is the von Neumann stored program concept which is universally used in modern computers from the smallest microcomputer to the largest number crunchers.

The growth of the missile industry in the 1950s greatly stimulated the progress of computers used for scientific work. The nature of missile data handling at that time was such that work loads were very high during the week or so after a firing and virtually nonexistent in between. Computers were too expensive to leave idle, which led managers to look for other work for the machines. Business data processing grew from these roots to its present status, accounting for the lion’s share of machine usage today.

The latter part of 1959 saw the arrival of the transistorized computer. As a consequence of this innovation, air conditioning and power requirements for computers were reduced. Several new computers in that year were announced by IBM, Control Data Corporation, General Electric, and other manufacturers. Among the IBM announcements were the 7070 general purpose computer; the 7090, a high speed computer designed for a predominance of scientific work; the 1401, a relatively inexpensive computer aimed at the medium sized business and the 1620, a low priced scientifically oriented computer. The fantastic growth of the computer field continued through 1961 and 1962 with the announcement of more than 20 new machines each year. In 1963, continuing the family line from the grandfather 704 (as shown in photo 8), the IBM 7040 was announced. This machine embodied many of the features of the 7090 at a reduced cost. In the same year at least 23 other computers were announced by several different manufacturers. In 1964, IBM announced the 7010, an enlarged and faster version of the 1410, and the 360, which came in many different sizes and embodied many features not found in previous computers. Control Data Corporation announced the 6600, and General Electric their 400 series. The IBM 360/370 is typical of a trend in computer manufacturing which is currently followed by most manufacturers: upward compatibility. In the years prior to 1965, every manufacturer spent huge sums of money on research and programming support for several types of computers; several went out of business doing so. Likewise, computer users spent a lot of money to develop their systems for a particular computer only to find it had been superseded by a faster, less expensive machine. As a consequence, the deadly management decision of the period was, “Do we get the cheaper machine and spend the money on reprogramming, or do we risk staying with an obsolete computer and losing our programmers to the company across the street?”

Current developments point to a new trend away from the bigger machines. The combination of lower prices for components and programmable read only memories is attracting many manufacturers to the field of minicomputers and microcomputers. The current trend is clearly toward the personal computer, with TV game microprocessors leading the way.”

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MODERN SCIENCE DECIPHERS Ancient Love Letters

By R. DeWITT

MILLER FOUR THOUSAND years after a man wrote a love letter, a bookkeeper, a chemist, and a scholar got together and deciphered the missive of adoration.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what happened. The story goes like this.

Ever since scientists began digging up the contents of Babylonian wastebaskets, they have been trying to work out some simple system for preserving and deciphering this ultrapersonal correspondence.

Of course, the secret of cuneiform writing on clay tablets, with its odd-looking, wedgelike marks, was discovered years ago, but that was just the beginning of trouble for the archaeologists. In the first place, the clay tablets were likely to be ruined be- fore they could be read, and in the second place, it took so long to decipher even one tablet that it looked as though our civilization would be dead, and forgotten too, before that Babylonian correspondence was figured out.

Babylonians did their “nail” writing by jabbing the triangular point of a stylus into small pieces of wet clay. Sometimes, when the letters were of particular importance, they baked the tablets, but usually they merely dried them in the sun.

After these tablets had been in the ground for a few thousand years, they began to get soft and squishy. When they were dug out, they were in danger of being mashed before the scholars could decipher them. Even when they were dried successfully, they were often covered over with mineral salts.

Then somebody thought of calling in a chemist. The chemist experimented with homemade tablets, and then came to the conclusion that it was possible to finish the Babylonians’ job for them. In other words, he devised a method whereby the tablets could be removed from the excavation, dried in the sun, specially packed, and finally baked in a modern electric furnace.

Next, the chemist fiddled with acids, and finally found that certain acids would remove the incrustation of salt without injuring the tablets.

But there still remained the problem of the slowness of translation. Now one of the biggest difficulties in this work was the fact that the Babylonians used so many signs that no normal scholar could carry them all in his mind. That meant endless time spent thumbing through the pages of reference books.

Recently, when he was getting tired of looking up Babylonian signs, Dr. Carl S. Knopf, of the University of Southern California, had an idea. He suddenly realized that the problem wasn’t one of archaeology, but of business efficiency.

So he consulted a bookkeeper, and together they worked out a visual index system by which the meaning of any sign could be found almost instantly.

Thus a combination of chemistry, bookkeeping, and scholarship has recently opened the door to the personal lives of people whose civilization lies deep beneath the desert sands.

On a tiny bit of clay a naive and baffled lover writes to his sweetheart: “To Bibea: May the gods for my sake preserve your health. Tell me how you are. I went to Babylon but I did not see you. I was greatly disappointed. Write me the reason for your leaving, and let me be cheered. For my sake keep well always. Gimil.”

But if Gimil’s love letter gives the impression of having been written today, many Babylonian commercial documents embody an anti-forgery technique which surpasses anything that modern civilization has ever been able to devise.

After a Babylonian document was written on clay and signed by the witnesses, it was covered with a clay envelope. Then the document was written a second time on the outside of the envelope. This also was signed and witnessed.

As it was—and still is—impossible to fit a new clay envelope on a tablet after it is dry, these documents were forgeryproof. If there were any question of the outer inscription having been tampered with, it was only necessary to break open the envelope and examine the inner tablet.

The Babylonians also had a unique method of solving the problem of how a generally illiterate population could sign the documents which were dictated to the scribes. The solution was “signature cylinders.”

These tiny cylinders of stone or shell, about an inch high, were carved with scenes from daily life. Each person had his own scene. To sign a document, it was only necessary to roll the cylinder over the wet clay, thereby impressing the scene. As the figures were cut in reverse, this custom probably represents the world’s first attempt at printing.

Among the endless pieces of Babylonian private correspondence, there is one which reads: “To the king my lord, your servant Ashur-Mukin has ordered me to transport in boats the colossal stone bulls. The boats are not strong enough and are not ready. But if a present be kindly made to us, we will see what can be done about it.”

It took 4,000 years and the help of modern science to bring that bit of graft to light.

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The Pain Seeker

by Clifford Alien, M.D.

The bizarre story of the man who gave his name to the sex deviation masochism.

The term masochism—the condition wherein pain or humiliation is necessary for sexual satisfaction — was taken from a real person. It has become so lodged in psychology that it has been impossible to displace it by algolagnia (interest in pain) and similar words invented by specialists.

What sort of person was this who gave his name to such a deviation? How did it come about?

The gentleman whose name formed the origin of masochism was Count Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. It is not easy to find out a great deal about him because there is no biography about him in English.

An English writer, James Cleugh, has written a short account of him which gives a certain amount of material.

He was descended from a family, originally Spanish, which settled in Prussia in the sixteenth century. Two hundred years later they moved to Galicia, now a province of Poland. His father was Chief of Police in the city of Lemberg, and married a noble Polish lady of the family of Masoch. The Emperor allowed him to combine the names into Sacher-Masoch; his son Leopold was born in 1836.

The boy seems to have been brought up mainly by a peasant nurse who entertained him and presumably herself, by telling folk-tales which she had learned from peasants telling stories ’round the fire. These stories were often blood-curdling and full of horrors. Little Sacher-Masoch must have felt shivers of delicious fear when he heard all these monstrous tales, and heard of people suffering horrible pain.

We do not know how much he saw of his parents, but he did state in later life that he was very impressed by his paternal aunt, who was a woman of aggressive and commanding nature.

She was also somewhat imperious and cruel. He told how once, when asked to put on her slippers, he kissed her ankle. He was rewarded by a sharp kick in the face. This seems to have provided him with a lesson which he never forgot.

At another time he was in her bedroom when she returned unexpectedly, and he hid in a cupboard. He saw her making love with a man other than her husband. This also may have influenced his later behavior.

When he was 10 years old, he witnessed an unsuccessful revolution, with much actual bloodshed. Later he had an exactly similar experience in Prague. This also may have affected his outlook. He was educated at Prague and, at the behest of his father, studied law. Later the family moved to Gratz, and he was granted the degree of Doctor of Law at the University.

Sacher-Masoch discovered that he had a literary gift, and started writing history. But soon he commenced publishing the novels upon which his reputation rests. Unfortunately they are strongly toned with his attitude towards sex, and so have become notorious for the longing to be hurt which is synonymous with his name.

His sexual life demonstrates his urge to be hurt, and his desire for his loved one to betray him with another man. At first he was involved with a very masterful woman, the wife of a doctor, who was 10 years his senior and who had given birth to 2 children. She was Anna von Kottowitz. To his delight she was unfaithful to him and bullied him unmercifully. Unfortunately her unfaithfulness resulted in her contracting syphilis, which was then quite incurable, and there the affair ended.

Then he met another woman, Fanny Pister, who went with him on a trip to Italy. He traveled, at his own request, as her valet. She treated him very badly, to his great delight, and made him do the most menial and humiliating things.

This affair formed the basis of his later novel, Venus in Furs, and in it the lovely Wanda made her lover sign a contract that he was her slave. Such a contract was actually signed by Sacher-Masoch and Fanny Pister before they went to Italy. Indeed, he was very fond of such contracts.

This affair broke up and he had various love affairs, first with a young French actress, by whom he had a child, and then with other women, all with the same masochistic elements.

Eventually he married a woman named Aurora Rumelin and lived with her for some years. They had children, but she grew tired of his constant appeals that she should be unfaithful to him, and his repeated demands to be flogged.

All this time he was earning his living by his novels which all contained the same sort of things which he demanded in real life: flogging, humiliation and degradation.

After he parted with Aurora Rumelin, he had a prolonged affair with a German secretary, Hulda Meister, with whom he was living when he finally became insane. He appears to have developed this mental illness when he killed a kitten, and told poor Hulda Meister that he had discovered the delights of murder.

As a result of his psychosis he had to be confined in a mental hospital where he finally died in 1905 without recovering his sanity.

Was Sacher-Masoch a great nov- elist? I fear that one must state definitely that he was not. His characterization was poor and his stories seem to have been constructed merely to allow him to indulge in his pet deviations, which he describes with all the coy delight of a spinster telling one of the awful things which the girl next door does when her parents are out.

His most famous novel is Venus in Furs. In it he wrote: “I have said more than once that pain has a rare charm for me, that nothing impassions me so much as the tyranny, the cruelty, and, above all, the infidelity of a beautiful woman. . . . From what I can see, that lends something commanding and imposing to a woman.”

“At an early age I was developed and excited in this sense, for at 10 years of age I was given the lives of the martyrs to read. I remember I read with a horror, which was a veritable ravishment for me, how they languished in prison, were stretched on the rack, pierced with arrows, boiled in pitch, thrown to wild beasts, crucified, and endured the greatest atrocities with a sort of joy. To suffer, to bear cruel tortures, seemed to me henceforth a species of pleasure, and particularly so if these tortures were inflicted by a beautiful woman; and it is thus for me and for always, all poetry and all infamy were concentrated in women.”

He continues like this for 192 pages through various floggings and bitter-sweet humiliations.

Undoubtedly, since the novels of Sacher-Masoch were popular in his time, this sort of thing appeals to a section of the population. Now it has been replaced by the detective tale in which the hero is beaten up by thugs and left bleeding in the gutter, the secret agent tortured to make him reveal what he knows, and so forth.

Why did Sacher-Masoch delight in writing the sort of stuff which he did? There is no doubt, if one can endure studying his work, that he undoubtedly enjoyed his literary output, perhaps because this enabled him to give his fantasies some sort of reality, even if only on paper.

I think that his fantasies were linked back to his childhood experiences and by his writing he was able to give release to them. Unfortunately we do not know much of his childhood, but we can deduce a certain amount from the facts which are known.

For instance, his father was Chief of the Police and in those days the stern father was the ideal. The Chief of the Police would, no doubt, be even more overbearing than most and the small boy was probably terrified of him. No doubt his father beat him if he disobeyed, and this idea of being beaten must have entered his mind at an early age.

We know nothing of his mother but he seems to have been influenced by his stern, imperious, cruel paternal aunt who kicked him in the face because of a childish caress. Moreover, he stated that he saw this aunt committing adultery with her lover while he was concealed in her room. Can it be this which gave him such a strong impulse to make his mistresses betray him? It seems that it may, at least, have reinforced some deep-seated urge to be treated in this way.

The horrible folk-tales told him by his nurse and revealed again in the pictures of martyrs being burned and flayed alive, must have directed his fantasies strongly towards punishment, betrayal and cruelty.

Yet there was probably even more to it than this. We know that our instincts and emotions which accompany them, are biologically arranged for us to deal with the outside world. When we are angry we attack, when frightened we run and so on. Now hate and anger are meant to be directed to some object which, unhindered, we will kill or destroy. But when that is impossible we tend to turn the anger back on to ourselves.

A researcher has found that when an ape in a cage wished to attack another ape in a cage out of reach, the ape which wished to attack and could not, bit itself. A frustrated human being will, in the same way, turn the anger back on to himself and wish to be hurt.

This was the sort of thing which had happened to Sacher-Masoch and which suggests that every masochist is a sadist at heart. In the last sad episode in Sacher-Masoch’s life he killed a kitten, perhaps even accidentally. But this was a revelation to him. He suddenly discovered that he could become just as sexually excited by hurting other living things as by being hurt himself. At once he started to praise the delights of murder. He wanted to go on killing. He had to be shut up in a mental hospital for the safety of others.

The essential difference between the sadist and the masochist is that the sadist turns his destructive impulses outwards, and so is a menace to society. There is always the danger that sooner or later he will kill somebody. The masochist, on the other hand, turns his impulses toward himself, and so wishes to hurt himself. Hut this is not a very safe solution and there is always the possibility that his defenses may break down.

Sacher-Masoch lives on only through the deviation which bears his name. If he had written novels along more normal lines, describing the lives and loves of his heroes and heroines, and the happenings of ordinary people, he would have disappeared from literature as surely as the other minor novelists who lived at that time.

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Dr. Allen, Consultant Psychiatrist to the Dreadnaught Seamen’s Hospital, Greenwich, London, and to the English Ministry of Pensions, is author of “A Textbook of Psychosexual Disorders,” “Modern Discoveries in Medical Psychology” and “The Sexual Perversions and Abnormalities,” and co-author of “The Problem of Homosexuality.”

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U.S. Buries 6 Billions in Gold

Protected by water, gas and electricity.

Uncle Sam guards six tons of yellow metal from gangland and foreign foes.

by Ollie M. James

WITH utmost secrecy, Uncle Sam has buried the largest gold cache in history —192,000,000 ounces of the precious yellow metal worth $6,000,000,000. Where he has buried it, however, is no secret.

The lock box for the lion’s share of the world’s gold is a treasure chest that is a marvel of modern engineering. Located at Fort Knox, Kentucky, 30 miles southwest of Louisville, the vault is equipped with every burglar-proof device known to science and is bomb-proof and gas-proof.

Rising two stories above ground on a concrete base ten feet deep and padded with tons of re-enforcing steel as a precaution against tunneling, the building has walls of steel coated with layers of cement of secret thickness; water pipes that can immediately flood the whole building in case of emergency, and steel plates surrounding the inner vaults that set off deadly fumes as soon as a blow torch is applied.

But the most powerful protection will be the United States Army’s only mechanized cavalry unit with its squadron of Christie cars—11-ton fighting monsters able to travel 55 miles an hour over any terrain. With an elaborate air defense, Fort Knox will be a tough nut for any big-scale gang foray or an invading foe to crack. Treasury officials point out that, even if the gold was reached, its removal would be a tremendous task. Provided that an invading force could: successfully fight its way ‘through the Appalachians, reach the treasure house and rifle its vaults, it would take an army of 120,000 men, each packing 100 pounds of gold, to remove the 5,714 tons of metal.

Although constructed in the most modern manner, there is a touch of the medieval in the two water-filled moats that encircle the strong box. In addition, the whole is surrounded by an electrified ten-foot steel fence, guarded by sentries 24 hours a day. Concrete pill-boxes, bristling with machine guns, are set at each corner of the building, and a dome on top of the treasure house contains more machine guns as well as powerful searchlights.

Transfer of the gold from unsafe coastal depositories to Fort Knox was no simple matter. Fifty armored trains, each with more than 100 soldiers aboard—with thousands more strung along the route, aided by secret service men and police—moved the nearly six tons of gold from New York, Philadelphia and other cities.

The new fortress-vault at Fort Knox cost $468,000 to build, including the cost of 660 tons of re-enforcing steel and 600 tons of structural steel. Even plus the $100,000 mailing expense, Uncle Sam figures he is getting off cheap.

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MAPS Spur New HUNT For Kidd Treasure

by HAROLD T. WILKINS
Author of “Modern Buried Treasure Hunters”

I AM laying plans to land on a mysterious island in a far eastern ocean, to which a modern and seaworthy steam, or Diesel engined yacht will transport an old sea captain and navigator and myself many thousands of miles across two oceans from the quays and wharves of London and New York.

On that elusive island, which, contrary to the old tradition about Captain Kidd’s hidden treasures, is neither in American or Caribbean waters, is an eerie valley, called by Kidd himself “DEATH VALLEY.” The island’s approach is through very dangerous coral reefs and shoals, which have been the grave of good ships and men ever since and, doubtless, before the days of Captain Kidd, hanged as a “bloody pyrat,” felon at Execution Dock, Wapping, in May, 1701.

One passes through the grim portals of Death Valley to a range of hills, and, guided by the charts of Kidd, one reaches caches wherein have lain, for more than 260 years, the loot of Portuguese and Spanish galleons bound from China to Europe, or sailing from Manila to Mexico. The treasures must be rich, indeed, seeing the extraordinary pains which Kidd took to hide the secret now penetrated for the first time.

The story of how I found these new clues to an old mystery, which has baffled lawyers, old Colonial governors, British statesmen and Colonial-American politicians is a strange one. It is easy to be skeptical, and quite natural, seeing the tales propagated about Captain Kidd and his millions.

I ask the reader to fancy himself at the levers of some Wellsian time machine of the fourth dimension, turning back the finger on the dials to the year 1701, in the month of May. He must also fancy himself sitting at the controls of this machine in the summer of 1932. In that year, I was invited by a gentleman—a complete stranger to me—to look at an old sea chest and a few charts on ancient, yellowing and mottled vellum. There were, too, a number of ancient pistols and dirks and a few pieces of eight forming exhibits of one of the most amazing pirate museums existing in any country of the world. I saw the charts and the chest, and a bureau of the days of Dutch William, King of England and New England, “with the provinces of Boston and Massachusetts Bay.” In a flash, I realized that here were clues pointing straight to one of the most sensational treasure hunts.

As I looked at an amazing chest, and saw its inscription—here reproduced—and heard its history and “pedigree,” the years rolled back. I saw a vision of Newgate gaol in old London, of the year 1701. The glint of the sunshine of a May morning was striking through an aperture in the massive walls of a prison cell onto the figure of a remarkable Scot, sitting with his head bowed in his hands, and resting his arms on a table. His shoulders shook, though not with the physical cold and deadly chill of the old condemned cell for felons. Here was the man whom King William III had called his “true and trusted friend,” and had given a sword as a memento of the royal friendship.

Deserted by his friends, he had been convicted of joining the pirates whom he had been commissioned to fight. He awaited Jack Ketch, the hangman.

Outside the prison was a market, and every now and again the man inside could hear very faintly, the shouts of butchers offering housewives mutton and beef. He didn’t pay much heed! He had plenty to think about. Suddenly, there came a rattle of a massive lock. The small-pox pitted turnkey ushered into the cell a chocolate-hued, pig-tailed fellow whose hairy, ruddy countenance looked as if it had been pickled in the brine of icy, hurricane seas in northern latitudes and then burned to brick color in the tropics.

The man opened his cavernous mouth to complain of the deadly cold in the cell; for it was warm and summery outside the stone walls. His teeth were black and snagged like rocks off Cape Horn, and you might have sworn he was a bosun, so like were his tones to the bellow of a fog-horn trying to beat down the howling roar of a gale.

“Come, Ned Ward!” shouted the prisoner, “sit ye here,” indicating the hacked table, with its black bottle of Jamaica rum and its horn mugs.

“May my soul be blasted, if I am not glad to see ye. Hang care and kill a cat, man, what’ll ye drink?”

Ward, the bosun, opened his lips to reply, but before he could get out a word, the captain had brought his great fist down on the table with such a resounding crash that the . turnkey came running back to look through the spyhole of the cell.

“May I frizzle in hell,” he roared, the veins standing out in his throat, “but unless the great lords, whom I served in this affair of the Eastern Ocean bestir themselves right soon, his Majesty King William will have forgotten to reward his faithful servant with a reprieve, and I shall die with my two feet in the air, on top of the waterish gibbet at Wapping. Are they meaning to wait until the lads with the silver oar have led me and those false-swearing rogues to Execution Dock, before they will pass me a reprieve.

He flushed and was silent.

“Here, Ned Ward,” he broke out again, a new and more serious look in his eyes, “it were well to be prepared for what may happen. I am leaving thee my sea chest.”

Ward’s eye glistened. Truth to say, he labored under the slight imputations of chance friends in taverns off Cheapside, that he had been a privateer, or worse. They glanced sidelong at his gold earrings stamped out of a piece of Arabian gold of the Grand Mogul of India. So, perchance the captain had good reason for his adjuration.

“Mark me well, sirrah, if ye break open that chest when I am gone, I will return from the grave and haunt ye to the day of thy own death. . . .”

His mood changed again to a reflective cast.

“I mind me, when those damned plotting rogues broke open my chest when I was aboard the old Adventure Galley at St. Mary’s Madagascar. . . . But I was ready for ‘em!—the blasphemous dogs!—I barricaded my cabin with bales of prime East India goods and had all my pistols well primed and loaded to keep ‘em out when they would try to break in, in the dead o’ night. And keep ‘em out I did, mutinous dogs, but withal, they broke open my chest which was lodged at Edward Welche’s, four miles away, and took all my store of plate and gold—10,000 ounces—and near 400 pieces of eight, and all my papers and my journal! They it was who dragged me from the mighty protection of my commission under the Great Seal of England, down, down to the gallows at Execution Dock! . . . Rogues who could not keep what they had got, but must needs rob another and swear his precious soul away . . . And now, behold, I am left to the tender care of Jack Ketch, like any common thief. Abandoned by all I served and trusted!”

The tears ran down his ruddy cheeks and stained his white cravat as he laid his head in his hands. The turnkey tapped Ward on the shoulder and tip-toed away with him, bearing a heavy oak sea chest, clasped with four bands of iron and padlocked. Carved deeply on the lid was the date “1699″ and the words: “CAPN. KIDD HIS CHEST.”

For this was the man who had committed his sea chest to the bosun’s keeping.

Ward, duly warned, forbore to brave the vengeance of an outraged ghost until, in due time, the terrible old man of the sea, Davy Jones, gathered him, too, into the famous locker. The chest of Capt. Kidd remained in Ward’s family until, about a century later, a certain Captain T. M. Hardy, he who supported Nelson’s dying body aboard the Victory at Trafalgar, acquired the chest from the grandson of old Ned Ward.

About 1931, a very old lady, resident in a pretty seaside town on the south coast of England, decided to part with certain heirlooms. The old lady was the oldest living descendant of Captain T. M. Hardy, later Sir Thomas Hardy, G. C. B., and, so one is told, chanced shortly before she died to overhear a remark to the effect that “when the old girl dies, we shall come into all these relics.”

“Oh, shall we? We’ll see about that!” said the spirited old lady. The consequence was that Kidd’s chest made its appearance in an antique shop, accompanied with its “pedigree.” It fell into the hands of an ardent collector of pirate relics who is a friend of the writer.

One day, someone fingering the chest chanced to touch a nail on its side near the bottom. This nail, exactly similar in appearance to others studding Kidd’s sea chest, seemed to be loose. Also, two other similar nails deeply sunk into the wood on the opposite side of the chest were likewise loose. A false bottom was revealed! And lo, on the underside of the false bottom was a treasure chart of an island in a certain remote sea— not the Caribbean or American waters, cunningly hidden for more than 200 years after the examining judge of the Admiralty and the masters of Doctors’ Commons of the obsolete court of Oyer and Terminer for trying pirates, who sent poor Kidd and other pirates to Execution Dock, have rotted into dust!

This treasure island is well drawn with a pen, in red and black ink—for be it recalled that Captain William Kidd was a good hand with a pen and could compose an effective letter—on an oblong piece of yellow vellum, or parchment. On the north side of the map—which is orientated with compass bearings—is a lagoon, while a coral reef is marked on the south. A number of crosses denote caches of “Arabian gold,” moidores, jewels, sequins and pieces of eight, and these marks are dotted about among trees, a small hill, and a range of hills. At the foot of this treasure chart, a legend, printed in block letters by the hand of Captain William Kidd, directs the hunter to step out so many feet by a compass bearing, which will bring him to a big tree, when he will swing round to another point on the compass and head straight, for certain rocks, when—blank feet by blank feet by blank—will be something well worth investigating- with picks and spades!

Right at the bottom of the parchment chart are the magic initials:

“W. K. 1669.”

Unluckily, however, the name of the island is not stated by Captain William Kidd. It is almost certain that, as he wrote in his eleventh hour letter from the cell of Newgate prison to Robert Harley, Speaker of the House of Commons, such information would be given only on condition of a reprieve. He gives no latitude or longitude— nothing save the name of a certain very wide sea.

The mystery unraveled itself further in the summer of 1933 when the collector called at a shop in the same town and was shown a heavy oak bureau that had belonged to Captain Kidd. The collector was looking at a runner, or way-road, supporting the lid of the bureau, and something less than one-third of an inch in circumference, when he observed that the runner had been engraved with the words:

“CAPTAIN WM. KIDD ADVENTURE GALLEY 1669.”

He suddenly exclaimed, and pointed to the end of the runner. Looking closely at it, he saw that the end had been sealed with a grey wax which, when he tried it with the point of a penknife, was as hard as iron. It was with great difficulty that the collector and the dealer broke up the seal and probed the interior of the slender wooden rod. There was something inside! They drew out of the tube a small piece of parchment-vellum, rolled up tightly into a cylinder. The vellum was yellow with age, and on it, drawn in red and black ink, was a skeleton island shaped exactly like the treasure chart on the inside of the false bottom of Kidd’s old sea chest. The bit of vellum had evidently belonged to a legal document of Mrs. Sarah Kidd, wife of the captain, for it bore a truncated phrase in 17th century legal handwriting:

“of me Sarah W . .”

The skeleton island, too, had been initialed, showing that it must have been drawn in or about the year 1691 when Captain William Kidd, “gentleman of New York,” married Mrs. Sarah Oort, lately a widow. But whereas No. 1 detailed chart indicated no name or sea, the skeleton chart bore on the north side the name of a certain remote sea, thereby for the first time throwing gleam of light on what all historians know is the “dark” period of Captain Kidd’s career, of which nothing is known. That period lies between his probable birth at Greenock, on the Clyde, about 1645, and his emergence into the limelight in New York as a successful and “blasphemous” privateer, in 1690. The skeleton chart not only shows that he had voyaged in a part of the world he is not known to have visited at any time of his career, but it takes us one step on the road toward an elucidation of the mystery of the locality of the nameless eastern treasure island drawn on the first chart!

The collector has also a third chart of the island. This was found concealed in a chest which figured at the trial of Captain Kidd, in the Old Bailey, in May, 1701, but the Crown authorities clearly never knew what lay behind the innocent-seeming oblong looking-glass which slides in and out of a wooden beaded frame inside the lid of the chest! This third skeleton chart also bears the initials, in red ink:

“W. K. 1669.”

When my friend showed me these charts and we excitedly compared them, noting how two of them supplied essential clues to the lacunae in the first, I said, “I’ll bet there is a fourth treasure chart, which Kidd made, knocking around somewhere.”

I certainly lay no claims to powers of vaticination, but on February 16, 1933, I received an “urgent” letter from the collector:

“Dear Mr. Wilkins:
“At last I have some news for you which I think tops the lot. The fourth map has turned up! I went today to see the man who keeps all pirate relics for me, and he told me the other day an old naval man came to see him and mentioned he had an old brass-bound chest with engraved plate on top ‘WILLIAM AND SARAH KIDD: THEIR CHEST.’ One day he let it fall and must have touched a secret spring, for out fell a parchment and on it the map of the island, rather a large one with writing ’round it. My man did not buy it, as the owner said he might be tempted to sell. He is coming to see him in a few days.”

My friend, the collector, was for a week kept on the tenterhooks of suspense. The days went by, and then one morning the old naval man called, bringing with him the chest.

“It came to me from my brother, who traveled the world a good bit,” he said, “but who is this Kidd? I suppose he is a financier who was prosecuted for swindling?”

The collector smiled, like Brer Rabbit, as the chest changed hands.

The hectic moment had arrived. Would the chest solve the riddle of the whereabouts of this skeleton treasure island? Exactly as in the case of the three other treasure charts of Kidd, the fourth map was hidden most artfully in a false bottom. Had you not known, you might have searched for hours and not found the secret opening. Four nails, of a kind not made today, were withdrawn from beading around the edge of the bottom of the chest. These nails, though of course very small and slim, are telescoped very much in the manner of a modern cartridge bullet in its casing. We drew out the beading and probed in the narrow aperture revealed.

Something was inside! It was drawn gingerly forth and to our excited glances there stood disclosed a very Tantalus of a piece of old musty, brown parchment, well calculated to bedevil the most acute of treasure hunters. An oblong piece of yellowish vellum had been stuck on the back of a piece of leathern binding, very ancient, which seemed as though it had been cut from the cover of an old Bible, which may well be the case. On the reverse of the parchment, when one carefully pried it aside at the corners, one may read the clearly written script of some old English legal document, forming the palimpsest for Captain William Kidd’s treasure island.

We looked. It might well have formed the original of the delightful treasure island chart which R. L. S. and his young relative, Lloyd Osborne, drew and faked for Treasure Island!

“Very prettily drawed out” by an educated sea rover of the late 17th century—most certainly not by a foremast hand who “could hand and reef and steer a course, but not set one till you got back into the trades with no blessed miscalculations and a spoonful of water a day”—is a real treasure island, with latitude and longitude, but identical in other respects with the treasure chart signed by “W. K. 1669.” This fourth chart is the key chart. Wrecks—old galleons and brigs—are marked around the coasts of this island of coral and romance, and round three sides, in the margins, runs a fascinating legend—clues to treasure caches—detailing feet to step out from triangles, stakes in a lake, and “Death Valley.”

What treasures the island caches hold, we are not told by the old cartographer. My own view is that Kidd himself drew these charts—he was a good hand at this kind of thing and could write a good letter, as Robert Harley, speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of William and Mary, well knew. The collector, on the other hand, thinks that Captain Kidd may have been given this chart by some dying pirate who knew it was not long before he, the owner, went to feed the sharks.

“There seems some fatality about all this,” the collector says with a worried face.

“I am dogged by Kidd and his relics. People call here with his watch, his miniature done in a ring, his chests, his bureau, and the Lord knows what. It is almost as if his ghost were trying from the land of shades to get ready to hunt up this treasure island, and to do him some justice, 230 years and more after he died, refusing to reveal to the Crown these secrets hidden in his chests, then in England. Here’s a queer thing. Years back, when old Mrs. Hardy was a girl, and had just inherited the Kidd chest, which had been in her family ever since the days of the famous Captain T. M. Hardy of Nelson’s Victory, two very rough old shellback sailors called at her house.

” ‘We hear you’ve got a chest of Kidd,’ they said, gruffly, ‘will yo’ sell it to us?’ “She was frightened and sent the sailors away. But how did they know she had Kidd’s chest? They came from a long way off.”

There are several puzzling features about these charts. The problem of verifying the latitude and longitude calculated in days before the invention of the sextant and the chronometer is far from an easy one. It is known that until the 18th century longitude was found by ships at sea by the crude method of estimating the run of the vessel by dead reckoning. The sea is a remote one of coral island and lagoons and of wild and “un pacified” natives. All one may tentatively accept is the latitude given by the old buccaneer. But who shall say why Kidd drew two detailed and two skeleton charts and hid them in these chests years before the fatal enterprise which took him to Execution Dock? Had he a presentiment of future tragic happenings?

When Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, wartime Director of Intelligence at the Admiralty, visited the house where are located these treasure charts and chests, he was excited by the sight of the detailed chart of the nameless island.

“Do let me take it away with me and send it to Admiralty,” he entreated. “We will send a ship out there, if we can find where the island is.”

The collector, with a distrust of government departments and their ways, refused.

The Admiral again returned to the house and begged for the loan of the chest, when Lady Hall interposed: “It is best to let it stay where it now is. You would only lose it,” she added.

Sir Reginald Hall had seen only one of these chests and charts.

The mystery of the identity of the nameless island was still unsolved, although I had examined no fewer than 800 charts in the British Museum, ranging from Dutch vellum of the middle of the 16th century to printed and more modern maps and charts of the early 19th century.

Another chest turned up, very tantalizingly, while we were thus stalled. It came from Haiti, the old-time Hispaniola, and had belonged to the mad black Emperor Henri Christophe, slain with a silver bullet. The mate of an English brig off the coast of Haiti had bought it from a man who said he was a prince. It is a very handsome piece of Oriental work, and on the massive lid bears the words:

“Capt. Wm. Kidd
His chest
from ye
Q. Mt.”

“Q. Mt.” of course stands for the name of the famous pirate ship, the Quedagh Merchant, captured by Kidd’s pirate ship, the famed Adventure Galley, in the waters of India in 1697. The chest contains neither false bottom nor chart, only a broken pearl!

I had given up the mystery of the location of tie island when one day in 1934 fate once more took a hand in the game. At the collector’s house I was introduced to an old sea captain who navigated a British cruiser in the World War. He knows the hidden corners of the Far Eastern seas like the back of his hand. He looked hard at the principal chart hidden by Kidd.

Then he said suddenly:

“I believe I know this island, I am sure, in fact, that I sighted it one evening in 1896 when, about the time of Chino-Japanese war over Formosa, I was chasing blackbirders in that part of the world. The island bears a Latin name, and what’s decidedly odd is that in one Far Eastern port, in 1898, I actually listened to a set of shellbacks and wharf-loungers singing a chanty in which Kidd’s pirates were mentioned, and this island by name—in a garbled form.”

He then said:
“I could navigate a ship to that island tomorrow, and if the money is forthcoming for the expedition, well, you will know where to lay your hands on the man for navigator.”

The reader may naturally ask: Where is this Eastern ocean island?

To which I answer with regret that I am unable to reveal the name or exact location, which, however, we have and know. It is not that we fear the claim might be jumped—for, lacking the essential clues and charts, which only three people know or possess—it would be like hunting in a haystack for a needle.

There are excellent reasons of international politics why its name may not be revealed. A certain power, whose spies are everywhere, from the far Aleutians to the edge of the Antarctic, would be very glad to know the name and location of this island, so, for the moment, until Kidd’s caches have been found and searched, my lips must remain sealed. All I can say is that even the British Admiralty’s charts do not show this island, which lies in very dangerous waters of which its sailing directions say:

“Coral reefs abound … by day and night, navigators must keep a sharp look-out and the lead going. It would be well to give this region a wide berth in foul weather, or in the dark.”

What better place for Kidd’s lost treasure than this forbidden, mysterious sea of lone palm and coral islands?

EDITORIAL
NEEDED: CIVILIZED ABORTION LAWS

Many voices have been raised recently calling for liberalization of our abortion laws, unchanged since 1803. These include doctors, churchmen, attorneys, newspapers and persons in all walks of life. Some of these have joined together to form the “Association for the Study of Abortion.”

According to CBS Reports, April 5th, 3000 illegal abortions are performed in the U.S. every day. The majority of these are sought not by single girls seeking to escape the penalty of promiscuity, but by desperate married women who are forced to this unhappy solution because of our restrictive abortion laws.

The New York Times’ pointed out in an editorial, “The Cruel Abortion Law,” on April 7th: “Present abortion law offers no honorable, safe escape from hearing a child predictably deformed, physically or mentally. It treats with majestic equality the raped 14-year-old girl, or the victim of incest within the depraved home. It takes no account of other circumstances that might warrant judiciously considered termination of pregnancy. It turns thousands of women and girls away from reputable hospitals and doctors that would like to treat them mercifully and with understanding, and sends them to a barbaric, primitive underworld of crude clandestine surgery, where their lives are in danger.”

Many churchmen also stress the need for change. In a letter to their colleagues, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Fletcher and Rabbi Israel R. Margolies, co-chairmen of the Clergymen’s Advisory Committee of the Association for the Study of Abortion, urged that “each of us transcend the old taboo which suggested that abortion is inherently and always sinful.”

Least happy with our abortion laws are the physicians, who are either kept from performing a humanitarian health service or forced into getting around the letter of the law in their hospitals. Recent surveys have shown a vast majority of them in favor of abortion law reform.

We know that the word abortion is an emotion-laden term that stirs up the prejudices of many persons. But we cannot call ourselves really civilized until our laws dealing with it take into account modern medical practice as well as human compassion.

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Native Tells of Great Quake

From Popular Mechanics Magazine’s Japanese Correspondent,
N. SAKATA OF TOKYO.

[Popular Mechanics Magazine believes it need offer no apology for presenting an account of the Japanese earthquake at this late date, when it is the experience of a native eye-witness, N. Sakata, this magazine's special correspondent in Tokyo. The tale is a moving one and written from the native point of view. In the stress of his emotions, Mr. Sakata seems to have suddenly developed a fluency ill English, which former contributions lacked to some extent. His "copy" has been edited in order that his pitiful adventures may be more readily grasped by the reader.—Editor's Note.] THE morning of September first was stormy. A strong wind was blowing, and I could scarcely hold an umbrella. It was raining heavily, but when I reached my office it began to clear up, and the dark sky changed to a cheerful blue.

At 11:58 o’clock I heard a strange sound from the earth through the building wall, but since it was so slight, and, because I afterwards learned that other men did not notice it, I paid little attention. Soon afterwards, the building began to shake very softly. Inasmuch as we Japanese are familiar with small earthquakes, I paid little attention to it and felt that it would soon pass, but, alas! it grew into an uncomfortable shock.

I heard the crying of women and the sounds of the cracking of the adjacent building walls. We had in our room a large case for filing papers which measured about 10 feet high and 20 feet wide.

This now began to sway from left to right, and back. Finally, it fell over forward. The bookcase crashed to the floor and my writing cabinet fell over. The huge body of the office building was still shaking, giving off an indescribable sound.

The movement of the first shock still continued, and I cannot tell you how dreadful it was to me. The walls had not cracked in my room, but I could hear them from all sides. I supposed, of course, that my room would finally crush in, and in my mind I said farewell to all my brothers, my mother, and my sister. I crawled under the heavy desk, hoping that I might thus be saved.

After the first tremendous shock, I resolved to go to the Imperial Palace Square, which is a very wide field and near our building. As I rushed out the front door, I noticed that the huge buildings all about me were broken. A man, terribly hurt,, was sitting on the ground by the building. I ran on to the square.

Many fires now arose throughout the city. Black smoke and red flames were cast over the sky. I could not see the natural color of the sky anywhere because of the dense smoke. Hunger and thirst came next.

Indeed, the first night of the earthquake, September first, was a very dreadful one. I still find it difficult to believe that it is all true. In every direction one might look, the city was a mass of flames. The Imperial Palace Square was the middle of a great furnace. Crimson flames and billowing clouds of smoke covered the city.

We could find no light or gas in the square, for these had been extinguished at the producing station because of the danger of fire. There was, however, no need of man-made illumination, for the holocaust provided as brilliant a light at night as the sun did in the daytime. The temperature of the air being raised, we were forced to breathe quickly, the heavy air almost stifling us. I could not sleep, for I was nearly frantic thinking about my mother and sister whom I had left at home.

Hunger attacked us. Tokyo is very cold in September, and although the flames gave off great heat, the midnight air chilled us.

I tried to get out of the crowds. There were more than 100,000 gathered in this small square, so it was very difficult to get away. Indeed, I could not get a bit of space to stand up. It took me 30 minutes of crawling and stumbling to move 200 feet, but finally I emerged.

After a very long time, and by devious routes, I reached my home. Alas! I found my house burned to ashes, and I could not find any members of my household. I searched and searched in the clouds of smoke for my mother and sister. The smoke filled my eves and I could not see. I tried to find even a bit of my mother’s burned body, but I could not. After hours of vain search, my eyesight nearly gone from smoke, I had to stop, and I could only hope that my mother might have escaped to safety somewhere. I could not think of any place she might be. All the homes of my relatives were destroyed. “Oh, where could she be!” I asked myself, and cried and cried. I thought that I might not be able to find them anywhere any more in this world. All my courage had disappeared.

It was in this state that, as I was walking along the river which is near my house, I saw a woman dimly through the smoke—just an outline. The phantom shape seemed to resemble my mother. I approached and asked her who she was, and then, I could not believe it was real! I thought it must be a dream, but it was not. It was my mother! It was my mother! She and I embraced each other again and again, thanking God, and again I cried and cried for joy.

Coming home from my office I saw hundreds of dead bodies of men and women. I had had nothing to eat for more than three days, and the odd odor of the hot wind often caused me to fall down fainting. But my mother and sister were safe, so my courage had returned to me. Everywhere, I saw thousands of people running to escape from the city to the suburbs. I had taken my mother and sister to the suburbs, and was trying to get into the city. I understood fully that I might be wounded or killed by fire and falling buildings, but we nevertheless kept on our way.

Occasionally I was asked who I was by a policeman. They urged me to stay out of the city, and at times even attempted to prevent me, for by this time the government had declared the city under martial law, and soldiers stood 011 the road with their guns loaded and swords bared. If we insisted, then it would mean we would be shot or cut down. Sometimes we were attacked by flames and smoke. Frequently, to protect ourselves against such terrors, we were forced to dash into the water and get ourselves wet from head to foot. It was very dangerous work. The fire continued eight days.

We Japanese have one thing in mind to tell you; that is, our great thanks for the wonderful help you gave us. If you will, please, print on your pages that the Japanese people are thanking the American people, and will never forget your kindness at this time.

I am now at Shibaura, which is the shipping center on Tokyo Bay. I can see many ships flying the American flag on the calm sea. It is an inspiring sight, and I thank God for it.

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Mechanics of Killing

From the first torture rack to the latest gas chamber, science has transformed the criminal’s execution from a human butchery into a skilled profession.

BY Lester David

WHEN the world was younger, the law’s method of exacting an eye for an eye and a life for a life was crude. Today the mechanics of executions have been made both deadly and scientific.

Not so always! In ancient Rome a condemned man, clad only in a loin cloth, was shoved by his executioner into a large sack. Into the sack also was placed a dog, a rooster and a poisonous snake. The writhing bundle was hurled into a swamp, and the execution had been carried out.

In England, in the Middle Ages, a victim was chained to the stone floor of his cell, and he was forced to lie prone with heavy weights clamped to his back. Each day the jailer brought a slice of moldy bread, a cup of stagnant water, and added another weight. The bread and water got smaller in quantity each day. The weights grew heavier. Finally, the wretch died.

For centuries the unfortunates who incurred the death penalty were broken on the wheel, boiled in pitch, drawn and quartered, impaled on pickets, hurled onto sharp rocks from steep cliffs, burned at the stake, torn to pieces by red-hot pincers or buried alive. Scientific execution has replaced the torture death in the modern democratic state. Today the men who carry out the state’s sentence of death are skilled craftsmen, whose goal is swift, merciful execution by scientific instruments.

Take the science of hanging, which now requires intricate mathematics and hair- split planning for a technically flawless job. A sudden snap must break the neck cleanly; there must be no mutilation or slow strangulation, proof that the execution has been bungled.

In the 17th and early 18th centuries hanging was a crude affair. Someone tossed a rope over the gallows. One end of the rope was hastily knotted in a noose which was slipped around the victim’s neck. Then the man holding the other end of the rope jerked the victim into the air.

Even this was an improvement over a still earlier hanging method. In this case, the condemned man was forced to stand up in a horse cart while the noose was yanked down over his neck. Suddenly the horses were whipped. The man fell off and choked to death as the cart-pulled rope dragged him over the ground.

Not only has the modern state perfected the actual act of hanging, but it has done much to bolster the victim’s morale before execution. Many states have done away with the old-fashioned gibbet which stood menacingly in the prison courtyard. Formerly the prisoner had to walk a long “last mile” and march up the wooden steps to the gallows. Now the victim simply walks a few feet from his cell onto a hidden trapdoor.

The mechanics of hanging calls for close attention to the rope, the noose and the exact distance of the fatal drop through the trap.

If the condemned man twirls or spins at the end of the rope, or if he gurgles, gasps, draws up his knees or convulses in spasms, the hangman has muffed his job, for these indicate that the man is dying of slow strangulation. In this case, he may stay conscious for as long as 20 minutes.

On the other hand, if there is no sound or motion and only a gentle swing on the end of the rope, the criminal has died quickly of a broken neck. And this time the hangman knew his craft.

The rope itself is probably the most important single tool of the hangman’s trade. Hemp is almost universally used. It gives a sharp snap when jerked taut, and it’s this snap which breaks the neck and severs the spinal cord. The hangman must soap-stone his rope and keep it in a cool, dry place to retain its freshness. Most executioners use a 13-foot piece of five-strand, 3/4-in. Italian hemp with ten twists. A fiber rope does not stretch and therefore is never used. Each execution requires a new hemp rope, because the snap lessens markedly after the first hanging. Thus, in the official photographs of the Nuernberg hangings each dead Nazi is shown lying with his own rope around his neck.

The most vital task of the hangman is to calculate the correct “drop.” If the victim falls too far, the rope will cut the neck or even sever it. If he doesn’t drop far enough, the rope merely binds tight about his neck and slowly chokes him to death. (See Table page 52.) In figuring the drop, many factors must be considered— the weight of the victim, the size of his neck, the strength of the muscles and the bones. The hangman makes a minute study of the condemned the day before execution and consults the prison doctor’s records. The hangman may even enter the criminal’s cell to examine him personally.

In Spain the garrote is still the traditional way to execute criminals. It has been greatly improved since its first use in the Middle Ages, however. Formerly, the executioner twisted a cord or bandage around the victim’s neck by means of a garrote or “cudgel” until he strangled. Later, the mechanical collar and other innovations to quicken death were adopted.

The victim now sits upon a post or stool and leans against a heavy stake. Attached to the stake is an iron collar, which the executioner clamps around the victim’s neck. The executioner tightens the collar by turning the heavily weighted levers fastened to a big screw. The collar itself has an upper and a lower ring, and as the screw turns, the upper ring is drawn toward the stake while the lower is pushed away, creating a “scissors” action. If the executioner adjusts the double collar on the victim so that one of the rings presses on one vertebra and the other on an adjoining one, the executioner can turn the screw rapidly and thus dislocate the spinal column. The dislocation kills the criminal immediately.

In another widely used version of the garrote, there is a sharp blade in the rear of the collar. When the executioner turns the screw to tighten the collar, the blade slices into the neck and causes instant death.

Execution by beheading, however, reached its peak, scientifically as well as numerically, with the guillotine during the French Revolution. For swift and sure beheading, the guillotine has never been surpassed.

Although it is commonly believed that the guillotine was born during the revolution in France, the Scots had a similar device almost two centuries before. As in the guillotine, a blade moved in grooves set in an upright frame. Dubbed “The Maiden,” the Scottish device was used for nearly a century before being discarded.

The French machine, suggested by Dr. J. I. Guillotine for the speedy execution of anti-revolutionists, improved upon the crude “Maiden.” This improved model still is used in France today.

The guillotine consists simply of two upright posts, topped by a crossbeam grooved to guide an obliquely bladed knife. The back of this big knife is heavily weighted, and the blade “chops” down swiftly when the executioner releases the pull rope.

Without a guillotine, beheading is one of the most difficult executions to perform. There are many cases on record where the headsman had to make up to adozen strokes before he finally succeeded in beheading his victim.

In England, before beheading was cast aside, the executioner used either a huge two-handed sword or an axe, the head of which was eight inches wide at the blade and about a foot long. Sometimes the condemned man simply knelt and lowered his head, a method the Japs still use. More often, though, a chopping block was added.

This usually was a long piece of timber with foot-high supports at each end. A small log of wood was fastened across the upper end, on which the neck was laid. During Queen Elizabeth’s reign, a low, grooved block was commonly used to hold the victim’s neck in the proper position. The victim lay on the ground with his neck resting on the block. Other types forced the condemned person to kneel while the executioner’s assistant tied victim’s hands to the sides of the block.

As the scientific age began in the twentieth century, a strange thing happened. Humaneness, up till then unknown where the death penalty was concerned, was introduced into executions. Science now sought to make killing more expert for the state and more merciful for the condemned.

After many experiments and tests, the electric chair finally was adopted to replace hanging in most of our states. Here was a way of meeting death that took advantage of man’s new knowledge of electricity. Naturally, there is a lot more to electrocution than merely throwing a switch.

Before the date set by law, the executioner, who must be a trained electrician, gets data on the victim’s exact physique so that the electrodes will fit perfectly. This must be done as close to the day of execution as possible, since condemned men often start shriveling away as they await their doom.

Unlike the hangman’s rope, the electric chair is always the same. It is made of stout oak and has eight straps by which the victim is bound at the chest, the waist, each upper arm and each ankle.

At the death signal, the guards step back. The executioner throws the switch to the maximum voltage, usually 2,000. After five seconds, he decreases the voltage to 1,000 to prevent sparking and unnecessary burning. He holds the current at 1,000 for 30 seconds, then steps it to 2,000. He repeats this alternate increasing and decreasing of the current for four or five successive shocks, and then the doctors examine the body and pronounce the death of the criminal.

Electricity enters the body through two electrodes, one on the head and the other on the right leg. To get perfect conductivity, these parts of the body are shaved, and a sponge soaked in brine is placed between the electrodes and the flesh.

After the electric chair had been in operation for some years, man continued to cast about for even more humane methods. The next major step in the technical progress of killing was the lethal gas chamber, now the legal method of execution in eight states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon and Wyoming.

The gas-chamber victim is bound hand and foot to a straight-backed chair in a sealed chamber, while the official witnesses observe through windows. A two-gallon jar of sulphuric acid and water stands at the side of the chair. At a signal, the executioner cuts a string outside of the chamber and releases about ten one-ounce “eggs” of cyanide of potassium. As the “eggs” plummet into the jar, clouds of death-dealing gas immediately arise.

The victim breathes once, twice.

Man thus has learned to temper justice with both humanity and science. For science, which has given man a far better life than he has ever enjoyed before, also has given a better death to the condemned criminal. •

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Adventurers of Science Explore Mankind’s Past

by ALFRED ALBELLI

Archaeologists, who are as much adventurers as they are scientists, are every day striking out into remote parts of the world in search of relics of mankind’s mysterious past. The dangers these explorers encounter, the scientific methods they employ, and the treasures they have unearthed are described in this article.

THE thrilling, zestful days of the old West are almost gone, the North and South Poles have yielded most of their secrets to intrepid explorers, the mysteries of the impenetrable jungles of Central America, Brazil and Africa have been solved by the all-seeing eye of the airplane, and so it would seem that the world holds no more frontiers for adventurers in their quest for the thrills of the unknown.

But modern adventurers need not despair, for the science of archaeology, bent upon solving the mysteries of mankind’s past, is now pointing the way to new frontiers in remote regions of the world where buried and long-forgotten cities of antiquity are yielding to stout hearted explorers a rich harvest of thrills and treasures that are inexhaustible.

Employing every resource of modern science available for their purpose, venturesome archaeologists are digging in the bowels of the earth and bringing to the light of day the lore and relics of ancient civilizations, which flourished thousands of years ago and whose secrets are now being read.

Why is work of this kind being carried on? There is an intense fascination in seeing how mankind lived back in the remote beginnings of the world. Even the most modern and sophisticated person feels a certain astonishment and keen appreciation when some beautiful and precious object, last used some fifty centuries ago, is placed in his hand.

Thanks to the patient labors of adventurous archaeologists, we know far more today how men lived in the remote past, what were their beliefs, their culture, their sports, their wars and intrigues, than the generations that followed them ever knew. What Egypt taught Greece about warfare, navigation, and industry, what the conquering Romans learned from the Greeks in the way of architecture, government and athletics, and what our modern civilization owes to all these nations of antiquity, has been slowly gathered from the graves and ruins that they left.

In recent months excavators digging in the ruins of Pompeii, Italy, a famous city whose life was suddenly snuffed out by a fiery rain of lava from Vesuvius centuries ago, came upon a group of gold and silver objects worth over $1,000,000.

From other corners of the earth comes the news of discoveries that have roused intense enthusiasm in explorers and their sponsors. The diggers of ancient lore, it seems, are in for a bull market. It has been conservatively estimated by H. Phelps Clawson, the noted excavator, who aided in bringing to light the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen eight years ago after it had lain hidden from civilization for over 3,000 years, that the year 1931 would see over $50,000,000 expended to unearth the secrets of bygone centuries.

Mr. Clawson also declared that the possibilities for improvement in the mechanical aids used to penetrate to the hidden vaults of antiquity were limitless.

“The amount of money required to carry out such a work,” he said, “depends upon where you are working and the size of the staff you maintain. An expedition in a fairly permanent location will need an equipment consisting of dump-cars, yards of track, engineering implements, chemicals for pre- serving the finds, photographic supplies, and a thousand and one things that are used in scientific research.

In connection with the discovery of the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen, Howard Carter, another eminent archaeologist who figured conspicuously in its discovery, announced recently that the tomb of that Egyptian monarch had been thrown open to the public as the last gesture in one of science’s greatest adventures. Ironically, the Earl of Carnarvon, the leader of the Tut-Ankh-Amen expedition, perished in the midst of operations.

Turning eastward from the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, we find that the diggers are as busy as beavers unearthing the tombs of the ancient kings of Ur, and on other sites in the Tigris-Euphrates valley.

The joint expedition of the British Museum and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania not long ago brought to light the burial places of three kings of Ur. Horace H. F. Jayne, director of the Pennsylvania museum described this site as the most monumental ruins in Mesopotamia. The oldest of the tombs date back about 4,300 years.

Mr. Jayne pointed out that the expedition had centered its attention upon these tombs at Ur for nine seasons. The excavation was made difficult, he said, because the enormous mudbrick walls which Nebuchadnezzar built around the sacred area ran directly across the site and had to be dug through.

“Below these,” he went on to say, “are also private houses of about the twentieth century B. C, and it is only when they have been cleared away that we can lay bare the work of the third dynasty of Ur. Some of the buildings have solid walls of burnt brick laid in bitumen, with square and rounded buttresses along the outer face.”

Some of the resourcefulness of these diggers, in combining science and mechanical skill and ingenuity, may be gleaned from the recent operations carried out on the site of an ancient Greek settlement called Chersonese, and described in the writings of Strabo, a Greek geographer.

A group of Russian archaeologists, baffled after months of excavating on what they had divined to be the site of Chersonese, decided to look under the sea, near the modern Crimean city of Sevastopol for the long-lost city. This was after fishermen had spread tales of a wonderful submarine city off the coast of Sevastopol.

It was then that scientists set to work with divers and giant searchlights. Their quarry was located 200 feet offshore. The city has been completely submerged and the divers found a semi-circular wall, a market-place, crumbling houses and a small amount of treasures. The reclaimed city flourished over 2,000 years ago and is believed to have been sent to the bottom of the sea by the violent earthquakes of 480 A. D. Millions of dollars of diggers’ plunder lurks in old Chersonese and engineers are making plans for recovering it.

Athens, which has felt the restless onslaught of the steam shovel and spade for generations, has been girding herself for another attack this summer. Last winter the American School of Classical Studies secured, the condemnation of thirty buildings on the Athenian agora, as the market-place is called, preparatory to excavations there. Perhaps another Acropolis group will be found. Millions will be spent to inquire into the mysteries which “this site conceals—and perhaps the reward will net many millions of dollars more.

For the person, or group of persons, who seek adventure through the quest of subterranean treasure or lore, the realm over which he may roam is still virgin territory. Despite the vast sums of wealth which have been gathered since one of Napoleon’s lieutenants found the Rosetta Stone near the Nile River in 1799, thereby offering a key to rich domains of scientific data and jewels, because it made possible the translation of the -Egyptian language of the ancients, there still abound vast, untapped kingdoms.

A proof of the inexhaustible source of this ancient treasure-trove may be found in the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society of London. It has 350 men at work in Upper Egypt. Among this group is Gilbert D. Phillips, an American student who sought this particular brand of adventure. Only a short time ago he unearthed a jar containing twenty-three small bars of pure gold with a market value of about $5,000.

In Lake Nemi, near Rome, two pleasure galleys of the Emperor Caligula have already been located. Through drainage operations.

conducted by the Fascist government in 1928, one galley has already been recovered. Professor Ugo Antoniello in charge of the archaeological operations, has announced that he will bring a third one of Caligula’s luxurious galleys into view. They disappeared 900 years ago.

Last January considerable furore was caused when Dr. E. L. Sudenik, a member of the faculty of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, announced that a tomb had been discovered at Jerusalem which bore the Aramaic inscription, “Jeshua Bar Jehoseph,” meaning, “Jesus, Son of Joseph.” Investigations were started to ascertain whether this was the tomb of Christ. Although it did not prove to be, the pages of archaeologist’s story is replete with instances where their excavations gave proof to Biblical statements.

Although science has been endeavoring for centuries to locate the cradle of civilization, striving to determine the definite beginnings of human evolution, diggers in deserts, caves, plains, pits, mounds and other sites are constantly turning up evidence to overthrow the orthodox scientific beliefs concerning the beginning of man.

Today there are scores of excavators in the Orient seeking the secrets of man’s origin. These diggers find their reward not in the golden-wares of other ages which they might unearth but in scientific discoveries they might make concerning the history of man. Similar work is going on in the Holy Land.

When one trains the attention on the operations of these men, one does not reckon with centuries but with cycles of thousands of years. For instance, in Montana a Princeton University expedition of scientists uncovered dinosaur eggs believed to have been laid 50,000,000 years ago.

Arizona has also been designated as the habitat of creatures which roamed the face of this globe millions of years ago. Roy Chapman Andrews found similar types of eggs, and even older ones, in Mongolia seven years ago.

Not long ago Dr. James A. B. Scherer, director of the Southwest Museum, announced that traces of man had been found in Gypsum Cave, near Las Vegas, Nevada. It had been previously believed that man had not inhabited North America until 10,000 years ago.

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Washington’s Brassy Influence Peddlers

Retired generals and admirals cozy up to their old buddies to swing billions of dollars in defense contracts!

By FRANK DEGNAN

LAST JULY, three of the largest defense contractors in the nation readied plans to entertain Air Force Lt. General Bernard S. Schriever, head of the Air Research and Development Command. Party invitations described the affair as cocktails and dinner with an off-the-record chat by General Schriever about his plans and problems.

The party was suddenly cancelled when a newspaper carried a report on it. Why? Because at that very moment the House Armed Services Committee was investigating influence peddling by retired high-ranking officers suspected of using undue influence and pressure to get defense contracts amounting to millions of dollars for their new employers.

Hosts for General Schriever’s party—scheduled for the Pan-American Room of the Statler-Hilton Hotel in Washington—were Frank Pace, Jr., Secretary of the Army during 1950-53 and now chairman of the board of General Dynamics Corp.; Dan A. Kimball, Secretary of the Navy during 1951-53 and now president of Aerojet-General Corp., and William B. Bergen, president of the Martin Co.

Washington is famed for its parties for high Government officials, foreign dignitaries, industry moguls and hundreds of lesser lights. None of them outdo the serenading the high Pentagon brass gets from friendly emissaries of defense contractors with the emissary usually being a retired general or admiral. When the evening wears on and conviviality runs high, conversation turns to the lush multi-million dollar defense contracts that big companies fight for.

Up and down Connecticut Avenue and Sixteenth Street; in swanky homes and former embassy mansions; in fine hotels like the Mayflower, the Congressional and the Shoreham; these nightly gatherings entertain Government officials and generals and admirals responsible for awarding defense contracts.

Before the generals and admirals switch to civilian life on retirement, they are courted assiduously by the defense contractors who dangle the lure of high salaries to get their influence and friendships inside the Pentagon on contract letting.

How serious is this influence peddling? At a recent Presidential press conference, these generals and admirals and other influence peddlers working for large defense contractors were referred to by President Eisenhower as a “munitions lobby.” And they certainly are! In the scramble to get and keep defense contracts it’s invaluable for a company to have a few retired admirals or generals on tap. And companies spare no efforts to see they do have a few sitting around the board rooms, ready for a trip to Washington for a chat with a key Defense Department official. Here’s the importance North American Aviation, Inc., of Columbus, Ohio, places on a military man: The following is an advertisement placed by North American in the Wall Street Journal of May 7, 1959:

MILITARY ADVISOR To advise—counsel—report to high level management on military matters as they apply to long range development planning. Must be personable with high degree of speaking and writing ability. Military background with rank of Air Force Colonel or Navy Captain or higher. Experience on Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff desirable. (Author’s italics) Mail Resume to: Mr. J. A. Swanson North American Aviation, Inc.

4300 East Fifth Ave.

Columbus 16, Ohio Asked Representative F. Edward Hebert (D., La.), chairman of the House Special Investigations Subcommittee, about this advertisement: “In effect you were trying to buy not only the ability of the applicant but also the knowledge he acquired in the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization where all the papers are secret?”

How many retired military officers are now working for defense contractors? Unofficial estimates place the number at 2,500. Senator Paul “Douglas (D., Ill.) revealed that there were 769 officers holding the rank of Colonel in the Air Force or Army, or Captain in the Navy, and above, in the employ of companies that got nearly three-fourths of all defense business, with contracts running into billions.

These retired officers using their names and influence to wangle fat contracts for the companies now employing them boost the nation’s defense bill, since most of the contracts are negotiated rather than let by competitive bidding.

Listen to Representative Alfred E. Santangelo (D., N.Y.): “If we are to reduce the wasteful defense expenditures, we must eliminate the Pentagon influence by former retired general officers upon those who let contracts.”

A former assistant Air Force Secretary admitted that retired military officers did try to influence decisions at the Pentagon—at least while he was there several years ago. Edwin V. Huggins, now executive vice president of Westinghouse Electric Corp., testified to this before the House Special Investigations Subcommittee. Mr. Huggins said that while he was a top Air Force official from 1952 to 1953, some retired officers were “too evident” by their presence in the Pentagon. It was clear they were “around too much,” he added.

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the atomic submarine, was asked by a Congressional committee: “Do you have visits from former associates?” He replied, “I used to, but the word got around that I’m obtuse. But they go higher up and I sometimes get pressures from that.”

Commenting on influence peddling to get lush Government contracts, Senator Douglas said that 85% of all defense contracts are negotiated by the Pentagon, rather than awarded to the lowest bidder. “When companies with defense contracts hire officers of high rank, some of whom negotiate with their fellow officers, or who may sit in the back room while such negotiations are going on, or who have information from their former comrades which is useful to their companies, the potential and actual abuses of the negotiated contract system are magnified,” added Senator Douglas.

Negotiated contracts have resulted in the Government getting gypped many times in the past. On one occasion the Government was overcharged more than $12 million on contracts because of careless negotiation. Even Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Cecil P. Milne admitted to a House Committee that the Navy did a “bad job” on the contracts.

The Government has had its pocket picked before. Largely forgotten, but still good examples of what indifference to influence peddling can cost, are past scandals. Remember the five-percenters! In July, 1949, Major General Herman Feldman, 59, who joined the army as a private and served for 42 years, finally reaching the post of Quartermaster General, was suspended by Army Secretary Gray. The charge—furnishing a contractor’s representative procurement information under irregular circumstances.

At the same time Major General Alden H. Waitt, 56, head of the Chemical Corps was also suspended because he “improperly furnished personnel data” to a civilian.

The two generals were friends of retired Army Colonel James VK Hunt, a five-percenter, whose friends helped him get defense contracts.

Getting weapons contracts from the Government is still too often conducted on a close personal basis. Recently, a top official of the Martin Company, missile manufacturers, admitted to House investigators that his firm had flown high-ranking military officers to an exclusive country club in the Bahamas for gay weekend parties. This official was George M. Bunker, chairman of the board.

Martin deducts the cost of the junkets from its tax payments. Martin has about $800 million worth of defense work under contract. Bunker said the purpose of the weekend pleasure trips was to bring about a “closer relationship” between Martin officials and those in the military, the Government and industry. He said the Martin Company picks up the tab for the weekend entertainment at an exclusive country club called Eleutheria on one of the Atlantic Ocean isles off the Florida coast.

The cost of all this entertainment to benefit the companies’ and tickle the vanity of the generals and admirals comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket. And on top of that he can get stuck again by lax negotiating of contract terms when influence creeps in.

That’s not all! The retirement pay of ex-officers also comes from the lean wallets of the taxpayer. Retired generals on defense contractors’ payroll are also on Uncle Sam’s payroll. “Double-dipping,” Representative Hebert calls this. He says, “Isn’t that In effect getting two paychecks from the Government? Isn’t the officer—as we call it down in Louisiana—double -dipping?”

Retired officers are still members of the armed forces and subject to court martial. Existing laws bar officers from drawing retirement pay while selling to their former services. The Navy prohibits a retired officer from drawing retirement pay as long as he sells defense materials to the Navy. The Army and Air Force hold up retirement pay for two years after an officer retires if he is selling material to them.

But, what is selling? Anybody that knows anything about salesmanship knows that the days of the old time drummer are gone. Today’s salesmen use the soft sell techniques and hidden persuasion. They pretend to be anything but a salesman. To avoid the law, it’s easy enough to have the retired general close the sale and send an order-taker around to pick up the contract Apparently this is what happens.

Thomas S. Gates, as Deputy Secretary of Defense, said it was common for a retired officer to come to him to “talk business.” He said none had tried to exert pressure on him. But Senator Douglas accuses Defense Department officials of trying to “cover up” abuses by claiming that limitations on the employment of retired officers would hurt the defense program.

Are the services taking any action to prevent influence peddling? Mr.

Gates said that the Navy was investigating 300 cases that indicated “some possibility of conflict of interest” among retired Navy officers now working for defense industries. He said the Navy sent out more than 4,200 questionnaires to former officers. Replies were received from about 3,400. From these come the 300 cases under investigation.

That’s about as far as it gets. The only recent case of a retired military officer being penalized for representing a defense contractor is a retired Navy lieutenant commander forced to forfeit his retirement pay during an eight-month period when he sold beer to officers’ clubs and ships’ stores.

Representative Santangelo charges that an “unsavory aura” has been cast over all defense procurement by the “extensive hiring of retired military personnel. This practice of hiring retired officials smells to the high heavens,” he declares.

He advocates a ban on defense industry employment of senior officers for five years after their retirement. And Representative Charles E. Bennett (D., Fla.) has introduced a bill to make it a crime for any business that has dealt with the Government through a particular officer to employ him or offer him employment for two years before as well as two years after his retirement. Either of these two bills, if passed, would go a long way toward cutting down on the influence-peddling.

The pressures generated within the Pentagon and in Washington by the billions of dollars expended annually for defense are enormous. Can we be sure we are getting the best weapons for this money if contracts are awarded on the basis of influence?

Hardly! What happens when a company is in danger of losing a lucrative government contract or isn’t getting its supposed share of a new one? What happens is a mobilization of forces and pressures by the company on a scale of vast proportions. If it’s a missile contract that’s being withdrawn, for example, the company fights back by advertising the missile’s great importance in magazines and newspapers; and their inside men swing into action with retired officers leading the charge.

Gates, the new Secretary of Defense, said he didn’t like magazine advertisements by companies with defense contracts pointing up their contributions to defense. He might have added that the taxpayer doesn’t like it either, since all the crowing is paid for by him. The cost of the advertisements is tax-deductible as a business expense.

Representative Hebert, chairman of the House Special Investigations Subcommittee, says: “The American people are alarmed and aroused at what they see and what they hear today about the conduct of our weapons procurement and about the alleged conduct of some military men who depart from the ranks of defense for lush places on the payrolls of defense contractors.”

That’s no overstatement.

In an atmosphere of big spending and the urgency to keep up in the missile race, the cost of war readiness goes up faster than a high speed rocket. The tab runs into billions. Corporations are adept infighters at competing for this business. Their methods are costing us all more than it should to protect ourselves. And when influence decides who gets a contract there is always the possibility that we are getting something less than the best. We can’t afford any undercover alliances between big defense contractors and officers of the armed services. • • •

HISTORY WITH A BANG!

ROBERT Lewis of Tujunga, Calif., gets a big bang from his hobby—a private gun collection said to be one of the finest in the country. He began gunning for guns 25 years ago and has amassed 135 historically significant weapons ranging from the 15th Century to the present day and including flintlocks, percussion and cartridge types. All are in perfect working order and he’s fired most of them. Each item has a personal history which he can support by documentary evidence. For example, the Burnside carbine in photo below, left, belonged to famous outlaw, Harry Tracy, who was killed in a jailbreak at Steamboat Springs, Colo., in 1898.

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King of Cymbals

An ancient Turkish formula has grown into one of the world’s most fabulous monopolies.

By H. W. Kellick

IN quiet, colonial North Quincy, Massachusetts, a small vault-like structure as impenetrable as Fort Knox reverberates with a crash echoed ’round the world by 99 per cent of the professional bands and orchestras. There, behind double-locked doors in an explosion-proofed room, Avedis Zildjian zealously blends his secret cymbal formula kept for over 331 years and handed down to the eldest male of each succeeding generation like the royal crowns of France and Spain.

In 1623 the first Avedis, a Constantinople alchemist searching for the mythical method of making gold from base metals, bent over his smoking crucible and saw a yellow substance that glittered. And it was gold for his descendants who hammered it into the Zildjian cymbal—and one of history’s most fabulous monopolies.

No one has succeeded in duplicating the tone, quality and durability of Zildjian’s metal alloy. Competitors, chemists, scientists have sought the secret as adventurers have sought for Captain Kidd’s treasure— all without success and some with disaster. A German firm in 1925 wasted months of research and a small fortune in tin, copper and silver trying to duplicate the metal then gave up in despair. The Imperial Chemical Company of England experimented for three months before admitting defeat. An American sheet-metal manufacturer attempted to convince Zildjian it could supply him with comparable alloys. To demonstrate the quality of the Zildjian metal to the engineer, Avedis threw on the floor one of his cymbals only 15 thousandths of an inch thick, stamped on it, struck it with a sledgehammer without marring the contours of the disk. Six weeks later the representative returned and decreed it was absolutely impossible to hammer the metal; it was as brittle as glass. Then in 1920 a senior male family member not in the line of inheritance and therefore excluded from the process believed he nevertheless could duplicate it and set up his plant in Mexico City. The first day he blew up the plant and his head, literally, went with it.

A Hollywood producer flew a staff of cameramen and writers to the plant to film Zildjian’s process. They left the same day empty-handed when Avedis refused to divulge his secret.

The blending of the copper, tin and silver is a dangerous process. Explosions occur once or twice a week but the Zildjians have learned how to control them. Before they were localized, however, the plant went through a series of major explosions. After the first blow-up, the Aetna Insurance Co. returned three years’ premiums in full. Another put Avedis in the hospital for four months. Another burned off all his hair and eyebrows. The roof of the laboratory has been blown off so many times that after the last explosion Avedis replaced it with one of six-inch reinforced concrete—to “eliminate the nuisance of repairing it.”

One night about 20 years ago two thieves broke into the plant and in three trips carried off thousands of dollars worth of cymbals. Now a number of huge vaults have been installed. Over the factory windows are metal bars so hard that a special cutting tool is necessary to part them. The windows themselves open at an angle so acute that no human could possibly crawl through them. The entire building is theft-proof.

The modern history of the cymbal began with the first Avedis. As his fame spread he became known to patrons and guilds-men as Zildjian, the Turkish term for cymbalsmith. The cymbal had been used in the highly rhythmic music of the Byzantine civilization and down through the Middle Ages of most of the Eastern nations. When Strungk, Gluck and other romantic composers of the 18th century began to exploit the brilliant effects of the instrument in their scores, the demand spread to Western Europe.

A later Avedis, more salesminded than his predecessor, built a 25-foot schooner, loaded it with his art, and in 1851 sailed from Constantinople to Marseilles and then to London. At Paris and London fairs his cymbals won all prizes for excellence. He died in 1865 leaving two sons, neither of age. The secret passed, according to the Salic law, to his younger brother, Kerope, and in 1910 to Aram, son of the late Avedis. But Aram was as interested in the turbulent politics of Mid-Europe as he was in cymbal making and finally moved to another country, where he experimented with cymbal manufacture. Later when the political unrest subsided, Aram returned to Constantinople and continued his business.

With the World War came martial music, marching bands, drum and bugle corps paced by the clash of the Zildjian cymbal. America went jazz-happy and every band and dance orchestra resounded to its music. The cymbal market shifted to America. In 1929 when Aram decided to retire he passed the secret to the present Avedis.

Avedis Zildjian came to America in 1909 as companion of a son of a wealthy Turkish family. The two boys wandered to Boston where Avedis established a confectionery firm. In 1929 Uncle Aram wrote and told Avedis of his plans to pass on to him the cymbal secret but insisted he return to Constantinople. When Avedis argued that the industry could be established in America, Aram was skeptical. He maintained that a certain proximity to the salt water of the Bosphorus was necessary for the successful blending of the formula and Avedis had to convince him that America’s salt water was equally potent. Only after Aram had come to Massachusetts, tested its salt water and measured carefully the distance from Avedis’ proposed plant site in North Quincy to the ocean and found it was identical with that of the home factory, did he give his consent.

Avedis had difficulty obtaining qualified hammersmiths in America. The best in the country couldn’t handle his metal although he tried many at the then exorbitant rate of $3.00 per hour. With an employe of the original Turkish plant he hammered the cymbals himself and finally imported two metalsmiths from Europe whom he trained for three years. Today these are recognized as the most skillful craftsmen in the world of cymbals.

Because of existing restrictions on importing items which can be made in the country, England prohibits sale of Zildjian cymbals in her markets. Several months ago Avedis received a letter from a Scotsman complaining of the outrageous price he had paid for a Zildjian cymbal. Avedis, who despite increased costs of material has kept his prices at post-war level, wrote in reply, “This particular cymbal sells for $25 in Arnerica. My friend, you bought yours on the black market.”

Cymbals, like wine, improve with age. None is sold less than one year old and some age as long as 15 years. Many thousands now are curing in the Zildjian vaults. About 20,000 are sold each year. Artists such as Gene Krupa, Shelley Mann, Lionel Hampton, Cozy Cole, Louie Bellson, and Boston Symphony, N. Y. Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera Co. players appear in person at the plant to select their instruments. Prices range from $7 for the smallest, 7-inch cymbal to $108 for the largest, 28-inch cymbal. Gongs, better than the oriental, cost $132 each.

No two cymbals have the same sound. They vary from 15 to 20 thousandths of an inch in thickness. There are 14 varieties: fast, fast-crash, crash, splash, swish, bounce, bebop, hi-hat, flange hi-hat, ride, finger, concert band, brass band and symphony. There are 25 different ways of playing each.

Avedis has two sons: Armand, the factory manager, and Robert, sales manager. Robert is the younger. Armand has three daughters and the absence of a male descendant caused much worry to the Zildjian household till two years ago when his wife presented him with a son to inherit the secret.

Armand tests all cymbals for tone before they leave the plant and plays in a local band for amusement. Avedis, an expert player himself, and Armand sometimes lock themselves in the curing vault and treat themselves to a concert.

The firm is so unique that it receives much unsolicited publicity. One night while listening to the radio, the Zildjians were startled by the words, “Like the name Avedis Zildjian on a cymbal, the name of DuPont is your assurance of the utmost in quality.” A well-deserved and significant compliment.

Avedis can tell why the family secret has remained as such for so long. “We have never entrusted it to a woman,” he says. “As Americans we respect our wives completely with this one reservation. Mrs. Zildjian can order me to do the shopping, but she has never been allowed through the double-locked doors of our laboratory.”

The cymbals are made of approximately 80 per cent copper, 19 per cent tin and 1 per cent silver. The exact mixing process and chemical formula which marries the metals together is, of course, the Zildjian secret. When they are mixed in the electric furnaces, they emerge as circular ingots. These are tempered still longer and then hand-hammered into final shape even including the center cup which affects the cymbal’s final tone. It takes about seven years to master the technique of hammering and Zildjian has high regard for experts in his employ. Even so, about one cymbal in ten cracks and is ruined during shaping.

Finally they are shaved in a lathe and polished after which they are annealed 10 or 20 times and then tempered 10 or 12 times. Then they go into the curing vaults. Armand tests each carefully by ear before storing and when a great drummer or cymbal player visits the little factory to buy an instrument, he usually says, “Leave it to Armand.”

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WORLD’S LARGEST STATUE CARVED IN MOUNTAIN

THE world regards with awe the stupendous sculptural achievements of the ancient engineers who built the Egyptian Sphinx, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pyramids, but now it has a new monumental edifice to marvel at which dwarfs the projects of the ancients to almost insignificant proportions.

In the Black Hills of South Dakota a group of engineers, captained by the famous sculptor-engineer, Gutzom Borglum, are carving from a mountain of living granite the figures of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, whose faces alone measure sixty feet from chin to cranium top—twice the height of the face of the Sphinx of Gizeh. Borglum Explains Engineering Procedure In a special interview with a MODERN Mechanix correspondent, Mr. Borglum explained the engineering procedure by which he is attacking his titanic job.

“First,” the bronzed and rugged sculptor said, “I prepared a small scale model to get the proper grouping of the three figures. This work was done in a studio with a great plate glass window looking out upon Bush-more.

“Next I made a working model of Washington which was five feet from the chin to the top of his head. This model was taken to the top of Rushmore and used to guide the carving of the great stone head.

“The measurements taken from the working models are multiplied by twelve—an inch on the model being a foot on the statue—and are transferred to the granite of Mount Rushmore with the aid of a 30 ft. swinging boom and plumb bob.

“This boom swings horizontally through a graduated arc of 180 degrees. The plumb bob may be suspended from any point upon it. After setting the angle, the distances horizontally outward and vertically downward to the rock are measured by tape. Skillful engineering here is as important to the work as artistic modeling.

“When the work was first begun, I picked the largest sound piece of granite for the figure of Washington,” Mr. Borglum continued. “The carving of the rock monument consisted in excavating the excess granite by a process of drilling and blasting which removes successive thin layers without injuring the mountain itself. As little as ten inches of granite can be moved at one time. Engineers Work in Safety Harness “This process proceeds to within a few inches of the final surface, and then the finishing is done by a ‘broaching’ process.

“There are no reserved seats at Rush-more. Workmen when engaged in actual carving are suspended over the edge of the cliff in steel and leather harnesses attached to a % inch steel cable. These cables are ‘paid out’ or reeled in by hand winches.

“Usually ten Ingersoll-Rand ‘R12 Jack-hammer’ drills are on the job for the rougher work. When in use these, too, are attached to cables. The drills are % inch steel finished with cross bits.

“All drilling is dry. On the head of the three figures, now roughly completed, the drill holes were from 10 to 12 inches deep, about three inches apart and set about six inches from the face.

“About a 40 per cent special gelatin dynamite is used in each hole. The cap wires of a row of holes, usually from 60 to 75, are connected and the charges in the row of holes are fired simultaneously by means of a 110-volt power circuit. The dynamite does its work rapidly and smoothly.

“When blasting has brought the work to within three or four inches of the finished surface, another procedure is employed for the final “sculpturing.” Holes three or four inches in depth are drilled vertically into the face at intervals of about three inches over the entire surface.

“Chisel bits are used in this step, as they do faster work. Once all the holes have been drilled, the rock between is ‘broached’ out with the aid of short pointed steel gads driven by plugger drills. Broaching produces the finer finished surface.”

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SPIN YOUR GLOBE TO LONG ISLAND

Only Six States Have More People than the Insular Empire that Ranges from a World’s Fair Through Potato Patches, Princely Estates, and Historic Shrines

By Frederick Simpich
With Illustrations from Photographs by Willard R. Culver

WHAT if a super-tugboat could cast a line about Long Island and haul it out to sea! Left exposed would be the broken ends of all the bridges and the under-river tunnels that now tie it to Manhattan.

Riding off on the runaway island would go more than 4-1/2 million people—but only if the start were made at night, for in the daytime a large share of these people work in New York.

Off on the floating island would also go about one-fourth of the sea trade of the whole United States, Uncle Sam’s Brooklyn Navy Yard, radio towers from which he talks with 34 countries overseas, his busiest coffee and sugar mart, 3,454 trains that run daily between New York and the island, shops that make navigation instruments for the whole world, strategic airports and plane factories, millionaire estates, herds of polo ponies, Forest Hills’ famous tennis courts, five million white ducks, to say nothing of Coney Island and other resorts where millions come to play, and a World’s Fair!

SHAPED LIKE A MONSTER FISH.

Look on the map and you see this island is shaped like a big fish.* Its blunt, whalelike head, capped by Brooklyn on its west end, pushes into New York’s East River. For 118 miles it stretches east, where two flukelike land points stick out into the Atlantic; they seem on stormy .days to be whipping the salt water into foam and spray, just as the split tail of a big mad fish might do.

Like a dorsal fin, its north shore is set off from Connecticut by that blue-water playground, Long Island Sound.

Finally, to clinch this figment of fancy, the island outlines show not only the fish’s form, but suggest that this leviathan has just swum in from the Gulf Stream and is nibbling at the hook of lower Manhattan.

Actually, it isn’t nibbling, but gobbling. Already Long Island has swallowed about one-third of New York State’s whole population.

Gone now is the day when Gotham comedians could get a laugh at Brooklyn’s expense, when Brooklyn Bridge was dubbed “the road to yesterday,” and Brooklyn itself was merely “New York’s bedroom.”

Long Island now has more people than most of the States in the Union, being exceeded by only six; more assessed wealth than all Texas; and more sea trade than Manhattan. While Brooklyn, politically, is a part of New York City, considered separately it is America’s second largest city, surpassed only by Chicago.

Quick, cheap, easy travel turned this tide.

As French Strother once wrote: “John A. Roebling, dying of tetanus in the home on Brooklyn Heights that he had built to overlook the construction of his ‘crazy’ suspension bridge over East River, had sealed the doom of Manhattan as the prime city of the Western World. Not westward, but eastward, the star of New York City’s empire made its way” (page 422).

751 COMMUTERS’ TRAINS A DAY.

Today truck farms turn into parks, golf courses, new homes, and business blocks.

In and about Queens you see literally square miles of new houses, laid out like London’s vast new suburbs. Beyond spreading Forest Hills and Kew Gardens sprawls Jamaica, with 751 trains a day to Brooklyn and New York. If it stood somewhere out in a Rocky Mountain State, it would be a nationally known American city; here it is only one more spot in the lengthening shadow of New York, which creeps steadily out Long Island.

Beyond this shadow, farther east, lies yet another island world, whose people still have the “island feeling”; in their 200- and 300-year-old houses and churches, and in their old flintlocks, harpoons, and spinning wheels, there’s still a hint of English settlers’ life, of Captain Kidd, and the Sag Harbor whalers.

Ride all the way round this island and you see how wild, desolate, and thinly settled its eastern tip is; yet how monuments to man’s mechanical genius fairly clutter its west end.

Between these extremes, what profound contrast! Out on storm-pounded Montauk Point, with its ancient lighthouse and lonely beaches, where the ribs of wrecked and forgotten ships stick up like camel bones on an Arab desert, you feel the full imaginative content of that word “island” that “verbal hieroglyph” for romance, piracy, and adventure (Plate XII).

But come back to Brooklyn, on the island’s west end, and you see yet another picture. Here is Western civilization, heroically sketched on a gigantic canvas, alive with glimpses of inventions—queer robots from gyroscopes and linotypes to miraculous machines that flash photographs around the world on wireless waves.

How vividly Sir Francis Bacon foresaw these wonders 316 years ago! In his essay on the civilization of the “New Atlantis,” writ- ten in 1623, he says: “We have boates for going under water. . . . Flying in the Ayre. . . . Artificial echoes reflecting the voice many times. . . . Lights of all colors. . . . Lights, which we carry to great distances.” Here are all these things: submarines, airplanes, radio telephones, neon lights, and giant searchlights.

“MOTHER OF NAVY YARDS”.

At Brooklyn Navy Yard you may see Bacon’s “boates for going under water.” With a permit to visit this “mother of all our navy yards,” you can see Uncle Sam building his “fancy war canoes,” where Indians built theirs long ago (page 425).

Since 1801 this yard has laid keels for wooden “ships of the line,” for frigates, sloops of war, paddle-wheel steamers, torpedo boats, destroyers—for many kinds of warcraft from brigs to battleships.

Read the brass name plate on any American war vessel from Miami to Manila and you may see it was launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

From here slid the ill-fated Maine, whose destruction in Habana Harbor was followed by our War with Spain. First of first-class battleships launched here was the old Connecticut. Years later, off Olongapo, I was aboard her at target practice, and also saw the boxing matches, after mess, when rival gun crews fought out the evening postmortem. Today some 9,000 men work here. That’s about three times as many as the whole enlisted strength of the Navy when this yard opened.

INSTRUMENTS TO STEER PLANES AND SHIPS.

Bacon foretold searchlights. Today Long Island makes them, of almost supernatural penetration, in a tightly guarded factory at the foot of Manhattan Bridge.

If you can get in, here you see not only powerful searchlights for spotting enemy airplanes on a dark night, but also other startling Jules Verne wonders of the “Mysterious Isle” kind.

How times have changed since Henry Hudson sent a shore party to explore Coney Island in 1609!* He steered uncertainly, by crude instruments. Today, in Brooklyn, the Sperry Gyroscope Company turns out sensitive gyropilots and other magic aids to navigation which are now used by vast fleets of sea and air craft moving over the wide world.

Among all colleges on this island, none has so heterogeneous a student body as the navigation school conducted by the Sperry Company. In one classroom, crowded with sailors from more than thirty different nations, you see a life-size ship’s bridge—a dummy, of course—but equipped with all the scientific navigation instruments used now on modern battleships and ocean luxury liners.

From this school more than 8,000 seamen of every nationality from Argentinian to Chinese have been graduated and licensed to handle the gyrocompass, gyro-pilot, and other Sperry marine instruments.

A corresponding aeronautical school gives similar instruction on Sperry aeronautical instruments, the “blind flying” instruments —the gyro-horizon and directional gyro— and the gyro-pilot for automatic flying. From the Sperry Company’s magic shop come also such “gadgets,” to use sailor slang, as rudder indicators, gunfire-control apparatus, searchlights (both high-intensity arc and incandescent), steering-control equipment, course recorders, and salinity indicators.

ONETIME TOY NOW SAVES LIVES.

Twenty-five years ago the gyroscope merely amused people, as a spinning toy. Today, on land, sea, and in the air, it makes travel safer. Ships of more than 170 of the world’s merchant fleets use this gyrocompass for safer and more efficient navigation.

More than 20,000 airplanes maintain flight altitude and course, under blind flying conditions, thanks to the gyro-horizon and directional gyro. By keeping the plane on its course, the gyro or “automatic” pilot relieves the human pilot of the burden of handling his controls and gives him more time for observation, navigation, radio, and engine work.

With the gyro-pilot, at sea, it is the same; in rough weather as in calm, it saves hard work at the wheel by keeping even the most heavily loaded ship straight on its course.

Out on Ryerson Street, in Brooklyn, Mergenthaler makes a typesetting machine that speeds up the world’s newspaper printing and revolutionizes the reading habits of civilization (page 427). This is no phantasy of phrasemaking; look at the facts: News that the Sioux had killed Custer and all his men, in 1876, was carried in a total newspaper circulation of only about 4,000,000.

By the time Edison had invented his practical type of electric bulb; by the time Garfield had been assassinated and the James boys were raiding across the Middle West, printing was still a slow job because all type had to be set by hand.

Then came the linotype; Whitelaw Reid so named it in 1886, when his New York Tribune was first to use the revolutionary machine. Today, American daily papers circulate more than 40,000,000, which only mechanical typesetting makes possible.

Mergenthaler’s factory exports typesetting machines so widely that it has speeded up the whole world’s reading habits. Nearly one hundred different languages and vernaculars are set on this machine, including all those using Arabic script, such as Urdu, Persian, Kurdish, and Malayan, as well as Sanskrit and all East Indian vernaculars written in the Devanagari.

Uncle Sams printing office in Washington uses 171 linotypes, and 71 foreign governments, from the Vatican City* to the Fijis, set type on this machine in any size from tiny “4-point” to big letters two inches high.

On 25 battleships of our Navy, type is set on these Long Island-built machines, which also set bills of fare and ocean newspapers on many a big liner.

Incredible almost is the feat of a teletype and a linotype working jointly. On this almost human composite of mechanical genius, one machine receives and sends the news into the linotype, which sets it up ready for the printer!

BROOKLYN WHARVES, AMERICA’S BIGGEST GROCERY.

Home port of the Seven Seas, Brooklyn water front, with pier space for 700 steamers, barters with 200 foreign ports in 71 different countries (page 423).

Strange names on ship sterns hint at far places. What you don’t see you can imagine—the Zlowtub, out of North Sea ports, or the Fling Punk Hi, from China.

You get hungry on this water front if you only walk along and smell all the exotic fruits, cloves, pepper, sage, sugar, dates, coffee, coconuts, smoked fish, cheese, cocoa, and other good things to eat that unload on this “Isle of Spice.”

“America’s biggest grocery store” is this water front. More coffee, alone, comes here than to any other spot on earth.

Here is the goal post for the annual date-ship race, which starts from the Persian Gulf. We get most of our dates from about Basra, old haunt of Sindbad the Sailor.

Dates ripen, and rival boats load, all in a brief period; then home they race, across the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Suez, Mediterranean, Atlantic, and all the way to Long Island, because the first load in sells for the highest price.

One Brooklyn shop takes bales of crude quinine bark from Peru and turns out nice clean pills and powder. Another gets big dirty chunks of beeswax from Africa to make lipstick, shoe polish, and other things.

Since Egyptians varnished their first mummy, the making of lacquer and paint has been a good business. Here, in Queens and Brooklyn, figure fans say enough paint is made every year to cover all buildings now standing in the Thirteen Original States of the Union.

Enough rope to lasso Mars has been made here. Brooklyn had eight ropewalks, but only seven churches and seven saloons in clipper ship days of the 1820′s. To fit out a full-rigged ship then took 40,000 pounds of cordage.

Today, ships don’t take so much. But hemp, jute, and sisal still pour in from fiber-growing hot lands; and besides all the hawsers, halyards, and braces made for sailors, a world of rope and cordage goes inland for use in derricks, binder twine in wheat fields, even to make rope rugs.

Today Long Island makes better rope than the Romans did, but it’s all twisted in the traditional Roman way—strands left, final rope to the right (Plate VIII).

Proximity to New York and its great harbor fostered Brooklyn’s industrial growth. Now one city complements the other.

How the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Indians is an old story. From there whites crossed East River to farm, fight the savages, build homes, and barter on Long Island.

That was the day of straw roofs, wooden chimneys, and windmills. Little remains now, except documents yellow with age, to recall that era—little except family and place names.

Brooklyn itself was then Breukelen, so changed after the English took New Amsterdam and renamed it New York for their Duke. Midwout became Flatbush, and Rust dorp changed to Jamaica.

Though the Dutch again took New York in 1672, the English won it back two years later and held it until the Revolution. In Brooklyn the British defeated American troops in that historic battle of our War for Independence (page 421).

But from that August day in 1776 the history of Long Island began as a part of the United States.

From his pulpit in Brooklyn’s famous Plymouth Church, Henry Ward Beecher sold the slave girl “Pinky” into freedom at public auction, when Abolitionists clashed with Southerners (page 415). Roosevelt landed his Rough Riders at Montauk Point after the War with Spain; at Yaphank and Roosevelt Field in World War days Uncle Sam made the greatest mobilization of man power in our history.

Go where you will on this island, past potato patches or princely estates, and you find it thick with scenes of historic events in the making of America. In one place Captain Kidd hid his treasure; in another stands the old house that inspired John Howard Payne to write “Home, Sweet Home” (Plate VIII and page 445).

GARDENS RIVAL THOSE AT VERSAILLES.

Take Route 25-A east, along the island’s North Shore, turn off now and then, and you enter another world.

Up Glen Cove way lie some of the island’s family estates. One we saw, for quiet beauty of landscape and gardens, brought to mind the royal parks at Versailles, or at Sanssouci in Potsdam. Some hatch their own game birds; others have stables and private race tracks and steeplechase courses (Plate XIII).

Turn south along Wheatley Road and the old Post Road and you come to West-bury, world polo center (Plate X).

Of all games using a stick and ball, polo is most ancient. Its name comes from the Tibetan word pulu, or ball, but Long Island got the game from England, which got it from India.* Since John Watson first brought an English team to the States in 1886, and since the first American team repaid that visit in 1902, this game has spread to all America’s “horsy” spots. Now thousands play it, including schools, universities, and a few women.

Today, without doubt, the Long Island town of Westbury is the world polo center. At famous Meadowbrook Club, locking mallets, you may see Indian rajahs, titled Britons, cattle kings from Australia and Argentina, cavalry officers from many lands.

Pony buyers swarm here, too, and since 1924 best mounts have sold for as much as $10,000 each, and more.

Wherever good polo is played, riders know the names of such famed American players as Hitchcock, Milburn, Waterbury, Bostwick, Iglehart, Gerry, Guest, Stoddard, and Stevenson.

“Meadowbrook, Long Island,” will be the date line on a great polo news story to be filed there in June, 1939; that is the schedule of the International Polo Challenge Cup Series between England and the United States, which will draw many visitors from the near-by World’s Fair Grounds.

Turn north from 25-A at East Norwich and you come to Oyster Bay. Here is an old house on whose windowpanes you can still read names cut in the glass by British officers when they were quartered here during the Revolution. Here also is the family home of Theodore Roosevelt, former President, who led the Rough Riders, gave America the Panama Canal, hunted in Africa,* sought a lost river in Brazil, and spiced up our language with such apt phrases as “the strenuous life,” “the big stick,” “weasel words,” and the “lunatic fringe.” To his simple tomb, upon a roadside hill, thousands of Americans have worn a path (pages 442, 444).

Near by is the Roosevelt Bird Sanctuary, apt tribute to that President whose interest in all wild creatures was a predominant passion. Particularly did he love the birds of Long Island.

ISLAND LIKE ONE BIG BIRDHOUSE.

So many snipe waded about here when Henry Hudson came in 1609 that this fact was noted in the Half Moon’s log.

Every sailor knows how islands attract birds. Migrating strangers stop to eat and sleep. Storms blow others ashore. Caribbean hurricanes have brought strange tropic birds to Long Island. Of the 1,420 species and subspecies found in North America north of Mexico, only about 120 nest here, but many others pay calls.

One European widgeon shot here had been banded in Iceland, says one authority; a fish hawk marked at Orient Point was found dead in Brazil; another hawk carried his band for 21 years.

On Shelter Island one September day we saw telephone wires lined with small swallows for more than a mile—tens of thousands of them.

Ospreys built such heavy nests hereabouts on telephone crossarms that they short-circuited the wires. To stop this, and yet to oblige the ospreys, the company set up other poles near by, with convenient platforms on top where these fish hawks in knee pants now build their big nests.

Bird life here changes with increasing population. Heath hens quit the sand barrens a century ago. No more Labrador ducks come to Great South Bay. One story says that in April, 1759, about 75,000 passenger pigeons were sold in New York meat shops, some at 50 for a shilling! They went away with the 19th century.

To preserve many species and perhaps to bring others back, both conservationists and island sportsmen work now to increase and improve bird sanctuaries.

Go east to Huntington and they show you a monument to the patriot, Nathan Hale; also, south of town, the house where Walt Whitman was born.

From Huntington smooth, shady roads wind around the quiet shores of blue-water bays to Northport, on east, past Sunken Meadow State Park, and so to Port Jefferson.

High steel towers of RCA’s sending station rise at Rocky Point (page 439). They recall another line from Bacon’s Atlantis essay: “We have sound houses . . . and means to convey sounds.”

Farther east, at Riverhead, is RCA’s receiving station. Taken together, the two plants form the “giant voice” and the “big ear” which converse with countries overseas. Words can be sent at speeds up to 200 a minute; these stations also bounce and catch music and speeches back and forth over the seas for distribution on broadcast programs.

TELEVISION SHOWN AT WORLD’S FAIR.

Odd, futuristic-looking sound trucks you may meet, too, with poles sticking up on top like masts. These are the RCA television trucks (page 416). At the World’s Fair of 1939, this first baby of radio takes its first step in public. Though on a very small curtain, with reception limited to points within 50 miles of the sending station, RCA will give World’s Fair visitors their first taste of television.

Think of sitting in a small theater at the fair grounds and watching a Forest Hills tennis game—seeing the players hit the ball, hearing the actual smack at the instant of impact, and hearing the crowds cheer (Plate XI); or of seeing the finish of a horse race or a boxing match; or a television broadcast of street scenes at the fair itself, with all their simultaneous sounds, picked up from some distant part of the grounds.

Long Island was the birthplace of American wireless; at Babylon town in 1901 a pioneer station first talked with ships at sea. Now, by television apparatus come news pictures from abroad for use in our daily papers. Even fingerprints have been sent by “photoradio,” to aid in identifying fugitive criminals.

Sailors far out on the ocean can see these high wireless towers.

They appreciate their importance. Men digging in the near-by potato fields or cutting cauliflower show no interest in the towers, nor their function. Of one fieldworker I asked, “Do you ever think about the millions of words—all about shipwrecks and dictators and wars—that fly over the oceans to be caught by those big towers, or try to imagine how it all works?”

He said “No,” and went on digging potatoes.

Its map spot, climate, and physiography make this island a good place for food crops. America’s biggest food market is near-by New York.

A TRUCK FARM FOR NEW YORK.

Likewise, in 1844, the Long Island Railroad, reaching east to Greenport, brought island farmers within hours of New York markets, instead of days. They began turning from hayfields and dairy herds to put their land into intensive gardening crops. New plants were introduced to build up truck farms. Any night in the harvest season you can now see long lines of trucks, with potatoes, cauliflower, asparagus, and cucumbers—and ducks—rolling into market.

Route 25 veers northeast from River-head, touching Southold, settled in 1640, and runs on through Greenport and out to Orient Point, the tip of Long Island’s northern fluke.

Moss-grown tombstones, road markers made of ballast stone from English sailing ships, museums filled with relics of whaling days, old houses and churches, all link Long Island with colonial days. Our country grew so fast in size and man power after 1776 that we are apt now to skip all too hastily over the profoundly significant pioneering of the English and other whites who founded civilization here long before the U. S. A. was ever thought of.

On Long Island these pioneers fought Indians, fished, farmed, built towns, drank, smoked, and gambled, prayed, argued politics, married, begat, and were buried through five or six generations before Washington, D. C, was even surveyed.

BACK TO COLONIAL TIMES.

Your mind goes back to colonial times when you see Gardiners Island, which lies between Orient and Montauk Points. It is not only a dramatic survival of colonial days; it shows once more how, from Rabelais’ island tales to Hollywood films of Tahiti, mutiny on the Bounty, and South Sea hurricanes, this island theme has stirred men’s souls.

When Lion Gardiner bought his island in 1639, he must have felt the same romantic nostalgia that moved Blennerhassett to settle on that Ohio River island.

Gardiner, who had built forts for the Lords Say and Brook at New London, paid for his island with a dog, a gun, some rum, and blankets. As a true baronial estate, with manor house and slaves, this domain persisted unspoiled through long generations. After 300 years, it still belongs to the Gardiners. At a society wild west show on Montauk Point, I saw a daughter of that family facetiously introduced as “a cow girl from Texas.”

This family knew Captain Kidd the pirate. He paid them an unexpected visit one day, demanded certain favors, and hid some of his loot on their island home. Later it was recovered, and Kidd was hanged on London’s Execution Dock.

Shelter Island, between the north and south flukes of Long Island, is another example. Its story centers about Nathaniel Sylvester, advocate of religious liberty. He founded its Manor House in 1651. Today’s Manor House, dating from 1735, is a fine example of Long Island colonial architecture. On the manor grounds is a wooden windmill 144 years old, still in running order.

Sylvester Manor reminds you that eastern Long Island was largely settled by religious and political zealots, some of whom were exiled from New England as “heretics.” For many years some of these early English towns on east Long Island did not acknowledge the royal authority, but ruled themselves entirely through town meetings.

As one writer says: “Of the four New York patriots who risked hanging together (or separately) by signing the Declaration of Independence, two were supplied by Long Island.” They were Francis Lewis and William Floyd.

Merely to scan quaint epitaphs on moss-grown stone; to finger rusty old harpoons or cap-and-ball pistols; or to chat with wrinkled veterans of offshore whaling days is to sense the rich color and quality of the life that was.

Today these historic sites, plus fishing, sailing, and other summer sports, form this region’s stock in trade. Many visitors hunt up the old inn at Orient Point, where James Fenimore Cooper wrote Sea Lions.

A CYCLE PATH TO CONEY ISLAND.

Here, now, is a “Pleasure Island” whose social revolution began with the Long Island Railroad. It ended isolation. Later came bicycles. From England, about 1876, we got the high-wheeled pioneer ” boneshaker.” On Long Island this new vehicle saw the rise of the L. A. W., or League of American Wheelmen. Then came the safety, with pneumatic tires.

By the 1890′s men, women, and children

all over Long Island were riding bicycles. Munsey’s Magazine for May, 1896, tells how the L. A. W. raised funds to build a cycle path from Brooklyn to Coney Island and issued 5,000 tour books.

When cheap, quick rides brought this half-wild, isolated back country close to crowded New York, it began to turn into what it is now, a colossal playground (Plate IX and page 447).

Fishing, hunting, and horse racing were pioneer American sports. But only after the Civil War, slowly, people from growing cities began to seek the outdoors and learn to play. The thirty years after the seventies saw the rise of baseball, bicycling, boating, tennis, and the beginnings of golf. Long Island was a pioneering spot in America for these games. Shinnecock Golf Club, at Southampton, was one of the first in the United States. By 1900 Long Island had 24 golf courses; and today there are listed close to 120.

Ferry from Shelter Island over to Sag Harbor and drive east to Montauk Point, and you see how man has turned the wilderness into playgrounds (Plate XII and page 448).

Facing the open Atlantic, Montauk’s luxurious hotel hints at Long Island’s kinship with the sea. In State parks other thousands motor out to camp, cook in the open, or sleep on the warm sands while the children “play Indian.”

CARRIER PIGEONS GO TO SEA ON FISHING BOATS.

Steam in from Europe any fine summer morning toward Fire Island; see how yachts, sailboats, speedboats, and fishermen scour these waters.

About 25,000 motorboats frequent Long Island waters (Plate I). Off its shores for decades famous races have been run, especially the cup contests between American and British challengers and defenders.

Every Long Island port has some kind of aquatic society. One youthful yachting group at Sayville calls itself “The Wet Pants Club.” To join, all you need is a craft resembling a sailboat and $1 for dues. In the Wet Pants Club one class is called the “Diapers,” and the emblem on their sails is a baby’s “didy pin.”

Freeport was conceived by sail and born of salt water. As a big-game-fish center, more than 1,000 boats make this their home port. “Party boats” ply for hire. Some have catwalks extending ahead like bowsprits, on which men stand to harpoon sleeping swordfish, turtles, and any other swimming monster they can hit.

Into Freeport, into Great Pond (Lake Montauk), and other bases late any summer afternoon you may see tired, sunburnt fishing parties returning, the lucky grimly exultant over a big marlin, a giant tuna, or maybe even a shark or a sea turtle.

Some shiny cruisers carry two-way radio telephones. A few others take carrier pigeons to sea; if skippers catch a prize fish or get into trouble and need help, they send word ashore by the birds.

“Sunday Morning Fish Specials” whiz out Long Island railway in summer, carrying thousands of eager men and women. Off they pour, at Peconic Bay and at Montauk Point, run for the nearest party boat, scramble in, and make for “where they are.” To keep your string fresh on the ride back at night to New York, the company helps out with a special baggage car wherein you can “check your fish on ice.” No fish anywhere get “worked over” any harder than these around Long Island, and some devotees get only fisherman’s luck— wet pants and a hungry tummy. I watched some disgusted school girls fishing near Orient. All they pulled in, time and again; was toadfish.

“Ugly mugs!” complained one girl. “I’m tired wasting good crab-meat bait on you. Let’s all quit fishing and eat some canned salmon!”

“Or eat our own bait,” said another.

SOWING AND REAPING UNDER THE SEA.

Farmers who plant and raise oysters own or lease thousands of submarine acres under Long Island bays. Clams, scallops, and mussels are also brought in by baymen and tongers; only oyster work is called “farming.” One difference between this and dirt farming is that on land you can see corn or potatoes growing, but the oyster crop is out of sight, under water.

Sea-bottom fields also have to be cleared and made ready for planting; while young oysters grow up, the farmer has to thin them, as young corn is thinned, and protect them from sea stars and other enemies, just as land plants are defended against voracious crows and other pests.

Return from Montauk to Brooklyn over Route 27, and you pass through East Hampton. High spots for sight-seers here are the old windmills, topiary hedges, and the “Home, Sweet Home” House. Here in boyhood lived John Howard Payne (Plate VIII). In Paris he wrote the words of “Home, Sweet Home” to the measure of the Ranz des Vaches and had it sung in his play, Clari, or the Maid of Milan. It opened at a Co vent Garden theater in London, and that song swept the world; after a century it is sung wherever English is known, and Easthampton people have made a shrine of Payne’s boyhood home.

On this old stagecoach road, now Route 27, lies Southampton. People here say that Job’s Lane, now a village street, was opened as a pioneer road in 1636. The town was founded in 1640. Some houses of the colonial period still stand. Venerated, vine-clad Hollyhock House was built about 1650.

Lawns as vast as smaller-city parks surround some Southampton mansions. The Beach Club here is known from Nice to Santa Barbara. Camera addicts invariably halt to photograph the dignified War Memorial at the head of Agawam Lake.

“Worms!”

Startling in its ominous brevity, that signboard flanks the road as you near Shinnecock Canal, heaven to confirmed anglers.

Alfred E. Smith, former Governor of New York and candidate for President, was out wetting a line. “I’ve been coming here thirty-four years,” he said.

Go west, skirt Moriches Bay, and the raucous quack of infinite white ducks shatters the morning calm.

More ducks than people live on Long Island (page 446).

In a peak year 5,000,000, or over one-half as many as all wild ducks and geese shot annually in the United States, are dressed and shipped in iced barrels to a gluttonous world. On menus from Maine to Manila you find “Long Island Duckling,” some of which never saw Long Island.

Ride near a typical duck farm, with its low sheds, feeding pens, and fenced-in swimming pools, toward dusk or about sunup, and your eyes, ears, and nose join in quick recognition of it. Pass at night, and you see that lights are turned on, because young ducks thrive better that way.

People can’t throw stones between Sayville and Brookhaven because of the many glass hothouses. This business is enormous—acres and acres of glass roofs. Here they call it “the glass industry.”

Quit the cold outer air on a chill winter day and step into one of these warm, steamy, fragrant hothouses, and you feel as if you’re down in Rio de Janeiro’s botanical garden.

Switch from Route 27 to 109 at Babylon, and you come to Farmingdale. Here is more farming under glass, but of far more importance to all New York is the State Institute of Applied Agriculture. We watched a group of its ambitious young students planting an experimental garden.

“Can you place your graduates in jobs?” I asked a faculty member.

“Usually, yes, on the big estates for garden and landscape work, as well as on farms over the State.”

Airplanes have been built about Farmingdale for years. Seversky’s proving field is near by.

SPRINGBOARD FOR AIRPLANES.

Springboard for land and sea planes, Long Island and its waters swarm with aircraft. Spin your library globe and see how not only ship lanes but sky paths converge here.

Mitchell, Roosevelt, and Floyd Bennett Fields, the Aviation Country Club, the new international Air Base at North Beach, and Coast Guard stations and private test fields of Seversky, Grumman, and Fairchild factories are among the island’s busy spots.

Look up any flying day and you see planes, big and little, soaring like pelicans and gulls over a fishing fleet.

Lindbergh, Byrd, Chamberlin, Wiley Post, Amelia Earhart, Corrigan, Mollison, and many another transatlantic flyer has used this island base. From here they ventured, conquering time and space, blazing sky paths from pole to Equator, adding to the world’s history of adventure and travel, which is the history of civilization.

From here went Howard Hughes around the world in 91 hours, to land again on Long Island. Forgotten are others who flew east into gray Atlantic fog, and oblivion; for them no wreath, no statue, no welcome of the city.

West from Farmingdale, over Route 24, lies Hempstead, with a Presbyterian church organized in 1644. In St. George’s Episcopal Church here they still use a communion set given them by Queen Anne; their rector’s prayer book was a gift from George III. It holds a handwritten sheet pasted over that part of the prayer which asks God to bless “the King and all others in authority”; after independence, this was changed to read “the President of the United States,” etc.

Eat, drink, and be merry; from Brooklyn clear out to Montauk, 118 miles of cafe, casino, dance hall, and nocturnal hot spots flaunt their signs.

One sign reads “Chicken to Take Out.” Says another, “Here You Can Eat With Your Fingers.” Food costs what you can pay. In a “quick and dirty” a good fish sandwich sells for ten cents; in ultra-swanky casinos, where a doorman in field marshal’s uniform bows you in, you get a good cup of coffee for $1.50.

Ride out any night, and madhouses echo with swing music and the passionate, paid moans of blond torch singers who enchant the innocent traveler here just as sirens on another isle vamped the sailors of Odysseus coming home from Troy.

TOWERS OF BABEL AT A WORLD’S FAIR.

North from Forest Hills rises that glittering, futuristic city, the World’s Fair, “The World of Tomorrow” (pages 418-9). When yet a long way off you see its queer, polyhedric piles limned against the horizon— spheres, pylons, obelisks—an architecture as of another planet. It suggests nothing familiar, unless it be big painted gravestones, grain elevators from our western plains, round, pink gas tanks, or castles in Bryce Canyon.

Rich in fancy as was Bacon’s prophetic mind, not even he could have imagined an Atlantis Island of such breath-taking wonders as this World of Tomorrow. Here one miracle follows another so swiftly as to be almost unendurable to any ordinary man who watches too long and thinks too hard.

Supreme sensation of it all is a ride on “magic carpets” through the hollow Peri-sphere. From inside this globe you look down as if from two miles up in the sky upon an idealized “city of tomorrow.” Music fills the vast 200-foot globe. By means of adroit projection, moving pictures show legions of workers walking down out of the clouds, arms upraised, singing the “Song of Tomorrow.”

Bits of the “Auld Sod,” dug up in Ireland, are laid down on a miniature of that Emerald Isle set in the Irish Free State exhibit. Tiny lakes and rivulets are filled with water actually brought from such beloved sources as the River Shannon and the Lakes of Killarney!

Blooming in all their glory one million brilliant tulips nod to visitors on the Fair’s opening day. Planted, also, at just the right time, a field of knee-deep green wheat —the world’s most costly field, because of high value of fairground space—is also a part of the food exhibit.

Shot through the whole Fair’s brilliant pattern is a spectacular use of glass. Today glass blocks form an increasing part in a gayer, brighter, and more lavish architecture. Some surrealistic structures are almost great goldfish bowls.

Mixing Vesuvius with Niagara—blending fire, water, color, and sound—nightly extravaganzas of furious beauty are formed by leaping fountains and burning gas jets 150 feet high on Meadow Lake and Mall Lagoon.

Fantastic patterns in colored fire and water range from giant peacocks to a golden sheaf of wheat 90 feet tall!

Amplified above the roar of fireworks and fountains, music comes from a pipe organ, from brass fanfares, a carillon, and percussion instruments. Captive balloons, played on by searchlights, form a ceiling over this man-made inferno.

By ingenious valve controls, patterns can

be changed at will, from night to night, or the whole incomparable scene instantly “blacked out” by the operators.

With tremendous effect a giant, integrated color scheme also paints the whole geometric pattern of these two square miles of astonishing architecture.

As if squeezed from myriad rainbows, here float infinite vistas of color, some painted walls blending so gradually into a skylike blue that sometimes it’s hard to tell where man’s work ends and real sky begins. Across vast facades march colored murals of majestic proportions, some by American artists, some by famous painters from abroad. Many of them cover from 4,000 to 6,000 square feet; their themes range from man’s quest for food to the history of communications.

Set here and there are more than sixty pieces of heroic sculpture, much of it pure white, the work of such artists as Malvina Hoffman, Gertrude Whitney, Mahonri Young, Paul Manship, Derujinsky, Savage, Gregory, and others.

Tumbling high in air are 150 tons of water, tossed up and held there by powerful fountains.

Transplanted forests of more than 10,000 growing trees add sylvan charm and afford shady paths for strolling visitors.

Crack railway trains, including streamlined flyers from overseas, take part in the stirring pageant, “Railroads on Parade.” This exhibit covers 16 acres and includes a complete operating railway system in miniature.* From sixty foreign nations come other revealing exhibits which add their conceptions of the “World of Tomorrow.”

Designed by Norman Bel Geddes, one vast, living panorama shows what highspeed motor traffic on tomorrow’s superhighways may be like. Projected in the General Motors exhibit and known as “Highways and Horizons,” this dramatic visual demonstration reveals how progress in transportation is linked to advancing civilization.

By this ideal highway plan, crowds may move with more ease; populations may shift, with farms and cities linked more closely together. To see this road net of tomorrow, visitors sit in chairs on a moving escalator.

Nobody knows, of course, what actual form tomorrow’s highway net may assume; * See “Trains of Today—and Tomorrow,” National Geographic Magazine, November, 1936.

yet profound change is inevitable. It may come sooner than many people now imagine; certainly, in “Highways and Horizons” there is eye and brain food for plenty of fresh thinking.

Pause at Ford’s novel exhibit, and you see cars actually running over a house and around the sides of it!

One odd house in Amusement Area is formed like a giant human eye. Its pupil makes a landscape window; you walk in, look out through this big round pupil, and enjoy a panorama of the fairgrounds.

If you want to see how adventurous men in the World of Tomorrow may attempt being shot up to Mars, here’s a working model of a “Rocket Gun,” complete with a nice little cabin.

EVOLUTION OF WORLD FAIRS.

World’s Fair! What words to conjure with! For decades they hinted at the din of many bands all playing different tunes, at races and balloon ascensions, at the sweet whiff of hot grease on frying doughnuts, at side-show barkers with their bored wild men of Borneo, their scaly, tattooed women, whirling dervishes, diving horses, and earth’s heaviest hog.

Infinitely more comprehensive, symbolic of man’s conquest of Nature, are today’s colossal expositions. Now amusement walks hand in hand with instruction. Crowds love play, but also they pack the great halls where magic machines work as deftly, as surely, as if a human brain guided their motions, and even children pause to ponder the miraculous laboratory feats of chemistry.

They expect 60,000,000 paid admissions to the Fair. What a crowd! Think of the lost children, and the aching feet!

What Long Island will be 5,000 years from now nobody can say. At the World’s Fair, in an “Immortal Well,” they sank a metal “Time Capsule.” It holds samples of our civilization and millions of microfilm words, for the benefit of future archeologists—if they can find the capsule!

Meantime, Long Island gears its daily rhythm of breakfast, labor, dinner, and love to the schedule of suburban trains, shoots its mail from Brooklyn to New York in underwater pneumatic tubes, builds its planes, gyroscopes, and typesetting machines, and raises ducks; and, fulfilling the prophecies of Bacon, it sends sounds to faraway lands.

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The NATION Sits in on National Conventions

Politics becomes mechanically minded in 1936, and both Republicans and Democrats are providing the machinery which will permit the nation to listen in to the proceedings.

by BOB GORDON

THE political machinery for nominating the presidential candidates of the two major parties remains as old as the parties, but in June this year the entire nation will be given ringside seats at the National Conventions at Philadelphia and Cleveland, with both parties taking advantage of every latest scientific wrinkle to bring the conventions to your home or local movie.

In stadiums, ball parks and town squares loud speaker systems will be set up for the hundreds of thousands of persons who will assemble on the evening of June 27 to hear President Roosevelt accept the Democratic nomination. Republicans, too, are planning on having their candidate broadcast his acceptance of the nomination from their convention hall.

More than six thousand persons will journey to the convention cities to select the men for whom you will vote this fall. There will be 1,200 delegates at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, with 1,700 alternates, while the Republicans at Cleveland will have 997 delegates and 1,116 alternates. Then there will be the 106 National Committeemen of each party, more than 1,000 reporters, and several hundred telegraph, radio, newsreel men and news photographers.

The voting delegates will be seated in the front of the hall in four gigantic banks of seats. Delegations from each state will be seated together, with huge signs designating the seats. The alternates will have chairs on the auditorium floor directly behind the delegates. Aisles between the banks of seats will be especially wide.

The speakers’ stand will be an elevated platform erected on the front center of the stage. On this platform will be the Chairman of the Convention and the principal speakers for the day. On this platform also will be the operator who will control the radio and newsreel microphones and the public address system through a maze of 53 switches.

From a technical point of view, this switchboard operator will be the most important man in the convention hall, for he will have complete control of all sound effects. It will be he who will, under the direction of the Convention Chairman, sort out the correct speeches from the bedlam created by a thousand men all anxious to talk at once, and to see that the voice of only the speaker recognized by the chair is amplified on the public address system, is broadcast to the nation over the three networks, and is recorded by the newsreel camermen.

On the rostrum of the speakers’ platform will be the three microphones of the broadcasting companies. The voice of the regular speakers will be carried directly to the soundproof studios erected over the back of the stage, and from there, over telephone lines, will be carried to the hundreds of broadcasting stations on the networks. The five news-reel companies will also have microphones here connected directly with recording apparatus, while another microphone will amplify the speech so it may be heard in the farthest corner of the hall. So far there is nothing unusual about the procedure.

But there are a thousand delegates seated on the floor of the hall, each of whom has the right to speak when he has been recognized by the chairman. Actually, each state delegation has a spokesman, who is authorized to speak for all.

Pages Will Carry Microphones Owing to the size of the meeting, it would unnecessarily delay the business of the Convention if every delegate desiring to be heard had to mount the speaker’s platform. To obviate this there will be ten microphones suspended from the ceiling, each mike in charge of a page boy. When the chairman recognizes a speaker on the floor, the nearest boy will bring him a microphone, into which he may speak, while the switchboard operator plugs in that mike to the loud speakers, radio and newsreels. It will be futile for anyone to attempt to shout down a speaker, once he has the exclusive use of all sound facilities.

Howard Leland Smith, the architect for the Democratic Convention, has designed a way of taking care of newspapermen that will do away with the complaint that the most favored pressmen had the worst seats. Press boxes at such affairs have usually resembled two huge sections of grandstand, sloping downward toward the center, so that the representatives of the big press associations and largest papers have been directly under the speaker’s stand, unable to see, and often to hear, what is going on. Smith has reversed this arrangement, elevating the center of the press box, and sloping it downward toward the ends, thus enabling all to see and hear. This press box has been placed over the orchestra pit, with press rooms directly beneath.

Newsreels Will Be Active Three platforms have been erected for use of the newsreel cameramen. One, a double deck affair, will be at the edge of the stage, so the camera may catch a profile view of the speaker, or may be turned outward to take in the Auditorium floor. Two other platforms will be erected 120 feet from the speaker’s platform, at either side of the hall. The cameramen here will use telescopic lenses. Accredited newspaper photographers taking stills will be permitted the run of the auditorium, mainly because those in charge realize the futility of trying to confine their activities to one spot.

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Looking for Louisiana’s Lost Loot

Legends are many of the Bayou state’s buried treasure but facts prove it’s there, waiting to be taken out.

By William L. Rivers

THERE are so many legends of buried gold in Louisiana that it would seem all the would-be treasure hunter had to do was pick up a shovel and start to dig. Sadly enough all these tales aren’t true. If they were, there wouldn’t be room beneath the Bayou State for much else.

But the encouraging fact is that at least some of the many buried treasure tales are fact. Perhaps 30 all told. The problem is which 30 are worth investigating?

For example: Who can say with any degree of certainty that Jean Lafitte, pirate king of kings who made his headquarters at Grand Isle off the Gulf Coast, didn’t leave much of his loot there or along the Mississippi bluffs near Baton Rouge?

Lafitte had three islands that are still believed to be the best locales for a serious search. Besides Grand Isle (also a base for Henry Morgan) Lafitte often landed at Coca Island and $1,000,000 in gold is said to be buried on Kelso’s Island. The pirate is also believed to have left at least $11,000,000 in gold along the South Louisiana coast and in the Mississippi bluffs.

Rumors have been persistent for decades that all these would be good sites for a treasure hunt. And when author Ben Luien Burman went into the South Louisiana swamps to write a fur-trapping story, two men at Barataria Bay were pointed out to him as discoverers of part of Lafitte’s loot.

“Ain’t done a lick of work in their lives. Everybody knows it’s because they found where Lafitte’s money was buried,” Burman was told.

However, like most of the other tales, the story of Lafitte’s caches in the levees and swamps are hard to track down—largely because treasure finders are a notoriously close-mouthed lot.

But the stories can’t be dismissed easily. Lafitte wasn’t in the pirate business just to wear a cutlass and swagger. Even if it is possible that most of his loot has been discovered, scores of other finds have been made in Louisiana.

George Maher, Jr., and his father for example, are reported to have found more than $200,000 in old coins, jewelry and silverware in Louisiana with a patented machine they call the Ground Radio.

This device, an invention of the father-son team, operates via the variable induction of a magnetic field and has a strange affinity for locating buried treasure, the Mahers claim.

A farmer in Avoyelles Parish (county) who was plowing in his fields one day stumbled on an iron pot filled with 1,000 gold pieces.

In 1929, 21 Spanish doubloons were found in a load of gravel at the Louisiana and Arkansas Railroad tracks in Baton Rouge.

And a farmer named John Skinner, who lived near Ruston in North Louisiana, fell over a box which yielded nearly 1,000 gold coins while plowing his fields.

The second largest find in Louisiana history was made at Gretna by a group of men who were searching for treasure, not farming. They unearthed $65,000.

A vocal minority of Louisiana treasure seekers believed another pirate, Pierre Rameau, whose operating base on Honey Island has already paid off handsomely, is still the best locale for a search. Bordering Louisiana and Mississippi on the Pearl River, “Rameau’s Kingdom” yielded an iron chest filled with $1,000 worth of coins.

Connoisseurs of treasure tales also rank Honey Island high because latter-day pirates, fugitives from the law during the 1880′s, found the island an ideal out-of-the-way place.

In 1929, one of the richest treasure strikes in history was made on the dry bed of the Calcasieu River. The take was $75,000 in coins.

The lost world of Louisiana in Tensas Parish, pre-Civil War home of Col. Norman Frisbee on the Tensas River, is a prime inland treasure-hunting site now being explored again.

Frisbee, who lived vividly and died violently in a knife fight, laid the foundations and built the walls and pillars of a magnificent mansion eight miles up-river from Flower’s Landing. He was one of the world’s great landowners, with 52 miles of river-front and 12,000 acres planted in cotton.

When the plantation baron died, he left only the memory of a day shortly before Union soldiers came when he went into the forests near his home with two slaves and wagonload of gold.

The slaves who accompanied Frisbee were killed and none of the Tensas treasure has ever been found. Descendants of the Tensas king have scanned maps over the years. Four years ago, two young Frisbees led an expedition to the old plantation but the party was ill-equipped and only scratched the surface.

The residents of Natchitoches Parish in Northwest Louisiana haven’t been so casual about the search for a trove that is estimated at $9,000,000 to $30,000,000. For more than 30 years, fortune seekers have been sinking holes in the ground at points near old Camp Salubrity, a bivouac area during the Civil War.

Unlike Florida, which has a complicated system of permits, Louisiana is easy-going, perhaps because treasure-hunters rarely bother to let state officials know they’re looking for buried and sunken wealth on the lands and in the waters of Louisiana.

For permission to search on state lands and information about state property, the treasure-hunter should work through the office of Register of the State Land Office, Ellen By ran Moore, in Baton Rouge. General information on maps, histories of the plantations and pirates can be obtained from the Louisiana Department of Commerce and Industry in Baton Rouge.

The law that sets forth the rights of property owners runs: “Although a treasure be not of the number of things which are lost or abandoned or which never belonged to anybody, yet he who finds it on his own land or on land belonging to nobody acquires the entire ownership of it; and should such treasure be found on the land of another, one-half of it shall belong to the finder and the other half to the owner of the soil.”

At least 1,000 possible treasure sites have been rumored in Louisiana and even scholarly state historians agree that several locales offer excellent possibilities for treasure-seekers.

Where are the best sites to look for treasure ?

A planter near Hubbardville buried his money and silver plate outside the town before the Civil War; the ruins of the old fort at Barataria yielded a box containing doubloons and earrings; $300,000 is believed to have been buried at Parlange Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish; last summer, two Tulane students took a mine detector to the barren site of Fort de la Boulaye 38 miles down the Mississippi from New Orleans—and what they found led them to believe French gold would be discovered there.

The old bed of the Red River near Dixie, the “Lost Mine of Wyndham Creek,” an Indian mound near the highway between Convent and Lutcher—all might pay dividends to anyone who makes an all-out effort to tap the fabulous buried treasure of the Bayou State.

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HOW PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT Keeps Fit

Faced with problems that would have staggered a superman. President Roosevelt has come through his first year in better physical shape than when he took office. This story reveals the secret of his amazing vitality and what he does to maintain it.

by JAMES NEVIN MILLER

EVERY day of his official life President Roosevelt is faced with momentous decisions affecting our national life; yet his greatest problem is not the settling of affairs of state but the safeguarding of his personal health.

The White House pressure is terrific. Once officially saddled with the destinies of more than a hundred million people, our chief executive faces a task which leads, almost inevitably, to shattered nerves, premature old age, physical breakdown and sometimes loss of life itself.

Proof of the tremendous pressure of the office may be had in the fact that only one of our former Presidents is alive today. Their average life span is less than 64 years. On the other hand seven wives of former Presidents are still living.

Keeping fit and trying to escape the crushing pressure of official affairs has long been the concern of our chief executives. Woodrow Wilson was a rabid baseball fan and found relaxation in reading detective stories. Harding tried to forget his executive worries in social gatherings with his friends and an occasional game of cards. Calvin Coolidge was an intermittent fisher- man and sought physical stimulus in a mechanical hobby horse. Hoover stole away on fishing trips to his Rapidan camp whenever time permitted; and his “medicine ball cabinet” became a national byword.

Yet of them all, only Hoover survived the rigors of the President’s office. That is what makes the career of President Roosevelt extraordinary.

Although handicapped, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is a veritable dynamo of human energy. His mind is lightning quick, his decisions sure, his speech forceful. He is a vibrant, electric personality living to a staccato tempo whose overtones abound in refreshing, gusty humor.

President Roosevelt has never missed a single night’s sleep nor experienced anything approaching a nerve crisis. Today, after one of the most exacting years faced by any President since the World War, he is in better shape than when he took office, according to Dr. Ross T. Mclntire, official White House physician.

How does he do it? The President’s formula for keeping fit is simple. Regular hours, regular exercise and temperance in all things are the basis for his code of physical and mental health. To keep his body fit the chief executive rides horseback, swims in the White House pool and takes long auto rides into the country. When time permits, he boards a sea-going yacht for a bit of deep-sea fishing and ocean air, hurries off to his experimental farm at Warm Springs, Georgia, or joins his boys on a carefree, coastwise sailing cruise.

When in Washington, the President’s chief form of physical relaxation is swimming in the executive pool. Built by popular subscription, the beautifully tiled water playground is located in the west wing of the White House extension under a cover which makes it available at all times, regardless of weather conditions. Here, for half an hour every evening, the President Wallows and frolics like a boy at play, while the cares of office literally drip off his broad back.

No chief of the White House—not even Teddy Roosevelt—has taken a keener inter- est in the outdoors than the present President. Before illness robbed him of the full use of his legs he was an all-around athlete, enjoying tennis, hunting, iceboating, swimming, baseball and football.

But although the President’s, enormous energy is geared to the production peak of a precision-tooled machine, he does not allow his energy to run away with him. He knows when to work and when to rest—a lesson brought home to him in force when in 1921 paralysis struck him down. Deprived of the use of both his arms and his legs and given scant aid from physicians who knew next to nothing about his disease, Roosevelt was forced to work out his own salvation. His subsequent victory was two-fold: physical recovery and a basic knowledge of mental discipline.

Today, a great part of the President’s health program is given over to mental relaxation. He is a great reader, enjoys moving pictures, likes to listen to the radio and is enthusiastic about music, both popular and classical tunes.

Indoor games are one of the President’s favorite methods of relieving mental pressure. He enjoys rummy, solitaire, bridge and parchesi, playing them all with his characteristic gusto, but never worrying about their outcome. The President is also one of America’s leading hobbyists. His stamp collection is noteworthy and his group of ship models and naval paintings and lithographs is one of the most extensive in existence.

X-Ray Detects Disease in Mummies

THE X-ray is the latest instrument of science being empolyed by experts in photographing Egyptian mummies to determine the nature of the diseases which ravaged the ancients. The above X-ray of an Egyptian boy’s mummy is interesting in its disclosure of the fact that he suffered from malnutrition. Scientists determine this from the irregular development of the ends of the long bones, indicating deficiency of calcium in the diet. Photographs of other mummies show distinct curvatures of the spine. Teeth condition is also studied fron the photographs.

The advantage of the X-ray is that the bone structure of the mummies can be studied without unwrapping the body, with the consequent lowering in value of the mum-my as a museum specimen.

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IF Atomic Fuel Were Shared…

The world would be healthier, wealthier and wiser, say AEC scientists, discussing President’s daring proposal to United Nations.

editor’s note: President Eisenhower’s dramatic proposal to the United A at ions that a world pool of fissionable materials he created for peaceful purposes had no greater appeal to any hearts and minds than those of nuclear scientists. Popular Science Monthly invited some of them, on the staff of the Atomic Energy-Commission’s labs at Brookhaven, N. Y., to tell yon what they think of the plan’s potentialities. Their discussion, recorded on magnetic tape, is transcribed here. The various speakers are: William A. Higinbotham, Harry Palevsky, Drs. Clarke Williams, Marvin Fox and Charles P. Baker, physicists; Mrs. Beth Baker, a chemist; and Wesley S. Griswold, of PSM’s editorial staff.

MR. GRISWOLD: What do you people think of the President’s plan to pool fissionable materials for peaceful uses?

Dr. Fox: I think it’s brilliant—a stroke of genius to solve this whole dilemma that has confronted us for the last half-dozen years.

Mr. Palevsky: It provides a central focal point that serves a very necessary purpose. It starts us off.

Dr. Baker: The Acheson-Lilienthal proposal, in 1946, was a brilliant proposal, but in order to get anywhere, you have to start. And with that proposal you had to start by taking off all your clothes and jumping in. Whereas in Eisenhower’s proposal, you say, “Take off your coat, loosen your tie, and sit down. ” There are many people who will do this that wont go the whole way.

Griswold: If you were given the task of setting up such a pool, would you anticipate getting large amounts of fissionable materials, or small amounts? Mr. Higinbotham: The fact is that no countries except Russia and the U. S. (which are well stocked) and England and Canada have the capital to buy—or, as a matter of fact, have access to—a substantial amount of source materials.

You see. thorium is useless until you’ve gone a long way with uranium and its products. And the U. S.. Great Britain and Canada have virtually cornered the free-world market in uranium.

Palevsky: So the three of us and Russia control all the source materials, except for truly trivial quantities.

Higinbotham: The U. S. and Russia control a lot of materials, but they don’t own them. I think the first step is to get these two major parties to loosen up on their controls, so that other people can play around.

I’m thinking of natural uranium and thorium ores—source material.

Griswold: You think, then, that it would be ores that would be contributed to this pool, and not enriched stuff?

Higinbotham: Yes.

Grisuold: How would you ship the materials to the pool?

Higinbotham: I suspect that you are thinking of this pool as a big concrete building somewhere, loaded with radioactive stuff. It seems to me that what Eisenhower contemplates will be a holding company, like the AEC. The stuff will be stockpiled all over the world. It will go by the pound or the truckload or the shipload direct from the donor to research laboratories in different countries all over the world.

Griswold: Is it dangerous to ship? Would it require shielding?

Fox: Not in ore form.

Griswold: What does the stuff look like?

Fox: Well, uranium is shiny silver when freshly made but tarnishes to brown or black quickly when it’s exposed to the air.

Griswold: I’ve heard that it can be obtained in fairly small ingots, almost the size of flashlight batteries.

Fox: You can get it in any size you like.

Griswold: What countries besides the ones you have already mentioned would be likely to have surplus fissionable materials for the world pool?

Baker: I think you should include the Belgian Congo, South Africa and Czechoslovakia—if you can distinguish that country from Russia.

Higinbotham: You’d also include India and Brazil, wouldn’t you?

Baker: Oh, yes.

Higinbotham: India and Brazil would most assuredly be interested in the power potentialities of a world atomic pool. Brazil is peculiarly poor in water resources. The waterfalls are a long way from the coast. The Amazon is flat for many, many miles inland. I think the Brazilians are working small streams mostly.

As a result, Rio and Sao Paulo, the two biggest cities—about 200 miles apart with decidedly mountainous country between—have a common power supply. And they are so hard up for electricity that the different sections of the cities are shut down in succession.

Griswold: Is it possible that we can have smaller atomic power plants than any yet built—plants that could be used, say, to run planes and trains?

Fox: Oh, yes.

Dr. Williams: Especially Russian trains, which are broader gauge. [Laughter. ] Griswold: But not small enough to run automobiles?

Higinbotham: Well, the only possibility in this line is that someone might design a really good battery that you could have charged at an atomic power station, and then run your car by electricity.

Baker: There are other ways. If you had cheap power you could store it chemically by taking water and carbon dioxide and making gasoline out of them, then pouring the gasoline into your car. [Laughter. ] Well, if you had cheap power, you could do this.

Palevsky: That’s true. If you can make cheap power, there are just unlimited processes that could be developed.

If you can reduce the cost of power by, say, 20 or 30 percent, I think that many new industrial processes would just spring up overnight. They will then be feasible.

Griswold: How could atomic power be useful in barren lands—like Arabia or the Australian desert?

Palevsky: Why, in making fertilizer. You need power to make fertilizer.

Griswold: Yes, but what about water?

Water would still be the essential ingredient, wouldn’t it?

Baker: If you have the energy, you can demineralize sea water. If you have the energy, you can also pump it as far as yon like, if you’re willing to pay for it.

It’s not a matter of discovering any fundamentally new principle. It’s a matter of getting the science, the technology and the economics together.

Palevsky: Even in those desert regions, I think if you go down far enough, you get water. It just happens to be uneconomical to pump it now. But cheap power from atomic energy would easily make the pumping job feasible.

Griswold: Have we yet come up with any practical atomic explosive for changing the course of rivers, or for changing the course of hurricanes or tornadoes?

Mrs. Baker: Well, you’d pollute your rivers, for one thing.

Palevsky: And if you dropped an atomic bomb into the eye of a tornado, you’d scatter lethal radioactivity all over the countryside.

Baker: The Eastman Kodak Company would certainly be unhappy. [Laughter. ] Griswold: If the proposed atomic pool is going to exist in several different places, scattered throughout the world, how can it feasibly be guarded?

Higinbotham: First, is it worth guarding? Probably all the material contemplated for the pool will not be enough to make a single atomic bomb. And when the atomic bombs in the world already are counted in the hundreds or the thousands, material that could possibly make one more is not really important.

Griswold: Isn’t it true that, with the right kind of reactor and the necessary raw material, in the course of making atomic power you also make plutonium?

Higinbotham: Yes, but it isn’t until you have really big power plants that the amount of plutonium you are going to produce in a year will be significant.

Baker: Besides, in order to make this plutonium useful, you would have to run your plant in a particular way and it would involve certainly an equivalent plant to extract the plutonium. In other words, if you went and looked at the power plant, you wouldn’t need to be a detective to tell if people were Africa, and now had plutonium, where would you send the plutonium?

Baker: Send some back to South Africa, so that they can start their power plant.

That is, I would think that if the pool delivers uranium to somebody and they use it in a power plant, and use the power for their benefit, then the plutonium which they make incidentally should, of a certainty, belong to the pool and might be sent to help make a quart of milk for every Hottentot, or whatever else seems to be a worthy undertaking.

Mrs. Baker: Essentially, then, you could just rent the material, and then pay it back to the lender.

Higinbotham: It would be ideal if, when we allow another nation to take from the international pool certain material that had been allocated to us, we would also permit that nation’s scientists to visit our laboratories, see our reactors, learn our techniques. Some of our scientists, too, would be expected to go to those countries and help them get started on their research—let them in on our know-how.

Williams: The information is fully as important as the materials, if not more so.

Higinbotham: This proposal of Eisenhower’s really will be something that will be awfully hard for the Russians to turn down.

If you can get a start at talking on a practical level about these problems of the exchange of information and people and cooperation, there will certainly be an entirely different atmosphere from the one we’re presently living in.

And one could hope that out of these discussions would come something at least as attractive as the Eisenhower proposal, and that this would be the beginning of breaking down the iron curtains that exist not only around Russia but around a good many of the rest of us, too. end

NEW YORK SKYLINE NOW AND FIFTY YEARS AGO

Nearly half a century lies between the two views of New York City’s skyline shown in the pictures above. The two photographs were taken from the same point—a tower of the famous Brooklyn Bridge. The upper one was made only the other day and the lower one is over forty-seven years old.

Architects, engineers, and modern machinery seem literally to have raised Manhattan Island out of the waters surrounding it. In the lower view, Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883, was just being built. Note how the buildings at that time seemed to crouch low on the island, only here and there an occasional church, spire throwing itself defiantly skyward.

In the upper view the buildings have fairly freed themselves from the land and apparently have become decidedly air-minded. In the immediate foreground is the office building at 120 Wall Street. Looming gigantic behind it is the Bank of Manhattan Company building, and far to the right of it appears the famous Woolworth Tower.

Still farther to the right, and beyond the Manhattan end of Brooklyn Bridge, is the Municipal Building. Note how the present height of the buildings almost completely obscures the distant west shore of the Hudson River, which in the lower picture is plainly visible across Manhattan.

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INVENTORS BY ACCIDENT

A mishap can make you a millionaire— if you’re alert enough to recognize a million-dollar idea when it hits you.

By Robert Cutler

WOULD you recognize a million-dollar idea if you fell over it? More than one man owes his good fortune to an accident —plus his own ability to learn and profit from it. Many inventions we enjoy today are the direct results of mishaps that have made their “victims” rich.

With Harry Waters of St. Louis, though, it was not one accident but a whole series that brought him a fortune. First, a stenographer in his office spilled a glass of water on him. Due for an appointment, Waters had to get a quick pressing job—not quick enough, however, to prevent his being late. So he had to take a taxi, even though he was nearly broke and desperate for money.

During the ride, his recent mishap drew Waters’ attention to the taxi driver’s badly wrinkled necktie. That started him thinking about the possibility of a wrinkleproof tie. Meanwhile, the driver, missing the correct street, had started to turn around in the middle of Delmar Avenue. Then came a more serious accident. A streetcar rammed into the cab and Waters was severely injured.

The final accident occurred as Waters lay on the operating table in the emergency room of the hospital. As he began breathing the anesthetic, the rubber respirator bag on the tank caught his eye. With each breath the bag alternately wrinkled up tight and straightened out again. Just before he lost consciousness, that accidental glance at the breathing bag made him think: “Why, that bag is wrinkleproof!”

That was it—his idea for keeping ties from wrinkling. You’ve probably worn one of the wrinkleproof neckties with rubber-impregnated linings that soon remedied Waters’ lack of money.

The name for this faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident is “serendipity.” The word comes from an old fairy tale about three princes of Serendip (Ceylon) who were constantly making lucky discoveries of this sort. Serendipity pays well.

As an example, fifteen-year-old John Alby Spencer had a job in a Maine lumber camp firing an old steam boiler. It burned up wood so quickly that he scarcely had time to take care of other duties before it was necessary to dodge back and look at the fire. Then one day Spencer noticed that whenever the fire started to burn very hot there would be a sharp, metallic sound. And whenever the fire started to cool off he would hear the same noise. That was the accident. Admittedly it didn’t seem very significant—but it made Spencer more than a million dollars.

Spencer was curious. He investigated and discovered that expansion and contraction of the metal as it heated and cooled was causing the clean-out door on the firebox to belly out and snap back.

Did he think that this phenomenon would make him wealthy? As a matter of fact, he wasn’t thinking of money at all—just of a way to save himself trouble. He placed a log against the clean-out door before leaving the stove. When the fire died down, the door snapped back into shape and kicked the log to the floor. This made a loud noise, which signaled him to come back.

A number of years later Spencer applied that accidental discovery in an invention that made his fortune. Using a little disc made of two metals with different rates of thermal expansion, he made a thermostatic switch. Normally a metal point on the disc rests against a stationary terminal, completing an electrical contact. When the temperature rises beyond a certain point, however, the disc flicks over and the electrical contact is broken.

First used in an automatic, temperature-controlled flatiron, the Spencer thermostatic switch today is included in electrical appliances of all kinds, motors, water heaters, toasters, etc. Millions of them have been sold.

As for the Spencer company, its financial rating is tops. And all because an alert boy happened to hear a little noise, tracked it down and applied his discovery.

Then, too, there was Elihu Thomson, a young teacher who was demonstrating the various forms of electricity during a routine physics lecture at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Thousands of other teachers had rigged Leyden jars for the discharge of static. But there was a hitch in Thomson’s demonstration. During the discharge of electricity the ends of the two primary wires came into contact. Thomson gave them a flick to separate them, but they stuck together.

Do you see a possible million in this? Well, Thomson looked more closely. What he saw was really worth his attention. The metal of the wires was fused together. Thomson had discovered electrical welding, today widely used in industry.

Accidents happen to all of us. We don’t all see the same things in them, however. In at least one case, the same accident led two men to two entirely different inventions. These two men happened to spill bottles of collodion, or liquid court plaster, which consists of nitrated cellulose in solution with alcohol and ether. One of these bottles was spilled in Albany, New York, by a young printer, John Wesley Hyatt. The other was spilled in Lyons, France, by another young man, Hilaire de Chardonnet, an assistant to the famous Louis Pasteur.

Hyatt did not notice anything unusual when that bottle of collodion spilled in Albany. But a few days later he cut his finger and hunted for his liquid court plaster. The bottle was empty. On the shelf around it, though, a tough, hard sheet of strange material had dried.

At that time the game of billiards was at its peak of popularity. But ivory for balls was so scarce that a manufacturer had offered a $10,000 prize for a substitute. Hyatt thought he had one. He found a way to mold the nitrocellulose together with camphor and alcohol, forming a clear, hard substance which be called “celluloid.” Direct consequences of Hyatt’s discovery include not only the celluloid collar of former jokebook fame but the mammoth photography and motion-picture industries.

Now, what about that other bottle of collodion, spilled in Lyons? The young Frenchman, de Chardonnet, left the sticky mess for a while. Later, when he returned to clean it up, it was partly dry. Accidentally his fingers slipped into the slimy stuff. As he raised his hands, long filaments strung out from them.

De Chardonnet, a trained observer, examined them carefully. His mind clicked. Starting from collodion, his experiments yielded the first artificial silk. This became the basis of the rayon industry which today has a volume of more than a billion dollars a year in the United States alone.

Though celluloid made possible the tremendous expansion of the photographic industry, the story of photography goes back farther than that. About a hundred years ago scientists all over the world were conducting experiments to perfect the art. Men had found ways of producing photographic images, but they were still dim and faint. The problem was to develop them more clearly.

One of the experimenters was a Frenchman, Louis Daguerre, who worked with his partner, Claude Niepce. One morning Daguerre entered the laboratory, went to the chemical cabinet, and took out a plate which Niepce had exposed and left the night before. Daguerre nearly dropped the plate in his surprise. It already was developed—developed as no other plate had ever been. On it was a clear, sharp image.

Daguerre rushed excitedly to the cabinet and looked inside but found no new chemical there. There were many chemicals in the cabinet. One of them must be the developing agent—but which? That evening he removed one chemical from the cabinet and put in another exposed plate. In the morning he found that plate developed, too. One chemical was eliminated. The investigation went on night after night, and morning after morning the story was the same: The plate was always developed.

Finally only one chemical remained. “This must be the one,” Daguerre told Niepce. Sure enough, the next morning the plate was developed.

Jubilant, both experimenters tried the chemical on another exposed plate. Unfortunately, the chemical had absolutely no effect.

Puzzled, Daguerre and Niepce decided to try the empty cabinet on an exposed plate. Surprisingly, in the morning the plate was developed. They examined the cabinet carefully. There, on one of the shelves was a little loose mercury, spilled from a bottle. Mercury was the developing agent.

In this accidental fashion the first practical photographic method was discovered. Long since obsolete, it was nevertheless the beginning of the photographic industry. For years, all photographs were known as Daguerreotypes—after Louis Daguerre, who accidentally stumbled on the secret.

In turn, the development of photography was responsible for another accidental discovery. Professor Wilhelm von Roentgen, teacher of physics at Wurzburg, Germany, and an enthusiastic amateur photographer, was experimenting with cathode rays. Called to lunch during one of his experiments, he left the tube on his desk and forgot to turn off the electricity. That same day he happened to take some photographs. When he developed them, he was startled to see, in the center of one picture, the silhouette of a key.

After a search, he found his office key inside of a book on his desk, where it had been used as a bookmark. Sitting down, he carefully thought over the whole strange group of circumstances. The key had been in the book. The book had been on the desk. And, come to think of it, one of his photographic plate-holders also had been on the desk and under the book. The cathode-ray tube had ‘ been left burning on the desk and also on the book. The tube must have given off rays of some sort that had penetrated the book and plate-holder to affect the photographic plate and leave the picture of the key. He tried duplicating the experiment. It worked. Before long he made a photograph of the bones of his hand.

Von Roentgen called this new, strange ray the X-ray, because it was unknown. As everyone knows, the X-ray plays an important part in modern life, being used in both medicine and industry.

Daguerre accidentally discovered exactly what he was looking for. Von Roentgen accidentally discovered something entirely unexpected. So did Dr. Waldo Semon, a research man for the B. F. Goodrich Company. Dr. Semon was trying to develop an adhesive which would bond rubber to metal. He carried out numerous experiments in which simple molecules were caused to polymerize or join together like links in a chain. These linked molecules formed products which he hoped would do the job.

In one of these experiments vinyl chloride, ordinarily a gas, was polymerized to give a tough, resinous product. When he heated this substance, Semon found that he had prepared something strange. It was much too thick to be an adhesive. In fact, he was having trouble getting it out of the test tube. As he struggled to remove the contents, the test tube slipped from his grasp and shattered on the floor. Semon was amazed by what he saw then. The contents bounced. Retrieving it from the floor and kneading it between his fingers, he formed a small ball. Then, as his colleagues gaped in surprise, he proceeded to bounce the ball down the hallway.

Further investigation revealed that the new substance, though something like rubber, had other astonishing qualities. Unlike natural rubber it was noninflammable. It was practically impervious to oil or gasoline and its surface sealed tight against the corrosive effect of almost every known acid. Because of this last quality, it was called Koroseal, a substance discovered by pure chance. Millions of dollars worth of this remarkable product now . are being used every year in industry, garden hose, backyard play ponds, curtains, bedspreads, baby pants and other products.

E. Howard Armstrong’s father thought he was too young to have bumped into a million-dollar idea. Howard, who was still in college was a pioneer radio bug. His equipment littered the entire attic of the family home in Yonkers, New York.

One day Howard had just rewired his homemade set, as was the periodic custom of every real ham. Tuning in on some signals, he was amazed to hear them without even taking the earphones from the table. Young Armstrong examined his circuit painstakingly. The only significant thing he found was that he had rearranged the plate coil and grid coil of the tube so that they were close.

Apparently part of the energy from the plate circuit was feeding back into the grid circuit of the same tube, and thus building up the signals. After checking for two months he knew that he had made a big discovery. When he asked his father for money to get a patent, his father scoffed: “Why, you’re still just a kid! You’d better pay more attention to your studies and stop fooling around with that wireless thing.”

Howard, however, still tried to protect his invention. Making up a detailed wiring diagram, he had this notarized. It was this document which later upheld Armstrong’s claim to discovery of the regenerative circuit, widely used in commercial radio.

Everyone has accidents but only a few make them pay off. The accidents described above have been worth millions. You, too, can stumble into a fortune.

If you want to be an inventor, you may be lucky even when you appear to be “unlucky.” For accidents are always happening to unlucky people. Just be sure, when that next accident happens to you, you’re alert enough to recognize that million dollars when it pops up and hits you right in the face.

This is the most amazingly prescient article I’ve ever read. When people write about the future they are usually wrong. When people write about the future of computers, they are usually even more wrong. This article got everything right. If you changed the tense and a few bits of jargon, then handed to me and told me it was written by the EFF, I’d believe it.

Just to give you an idea of how right he was on even the basic computer stuff, here’s the second paragraph of the article. Keep in mind that this is what desktop computers looked like in 1967.

“The modern computer is more than a sophisticated indexing or adding machine, or a miniaturized library; it is the keystone for a new communications medium whose capacities and implications we are only beginning to realize. In the foreseeable future, computer systems will be tied together by television, satellites, and lasers, and we will move large quantities of information over vast distances in imperceptible units of time.”

Forty-one years ago Arthur R. Miller laid out all of the privacy threats that we face now. The power that credit reporting databases have over us. The illegal government use of our financial and phone records. The attempt to build a master database tying all of these together. The fact that the government might consider you a threat if you so much as sent a Christmas card to someone the government has on a watch list. It’s all here. He basically predicted and laid out all of the arguments against the Total Information Awareness program and the current NSA programs that have been so much in the news.

It’s nice to know there were people who were so ahead of the curve in trying to protect our rights, and it’s a tragedy that more people didn’t listen. I think it speaks strongly to the need to pay attention to this stuff now, because this problem will only get worse.

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THE NATIONAL DATA CENTER AND PERSONAL PRIVACY

by ARTHUR R. MILLER

The computer age is not to be stayed, as anyone knows who has been billed for another citizen’s charge account or has wondered what has happened to his paid-up magazine subscription. The computer science is already so advanced that experts envisage a huge National Data Center to speed and simplify the collection of pertinent information about Americans. Properly run, it could be a boon. But any person who has seen an FBI file or been party to a U.S. government “security check” has reason to know how the abuse or misuse of dossiers of unevaluated information can threaten an individual’s rights. A professor of law at the University of Michigan here discusses the precautions necessary to protect citizens from “governmental snooping and bureaucratic spinelessness or perfidy.” Professor Miller has testified on the subject before the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure. On page 58, Bob and Ray show what can happen if the safeguards fail.

The modern computer is more than a sophisticated indexing or adding machine, or a miniaturized library; it is the keystone for a new communications medium whose capacities and implications we are only beginning to realize. In the foreseeable future, computer systems will be tied together by television, satellites, and lasers, and we will move large quantities of information over vast distances in imperceptible units of time.

The benefits to be derived from the new technology are many. In one medical center, doctors are already using computers to monitor heart patients in an attempt to isolate the changes in body chemistry that precede a heart attack. The search is for an “early warning system” so that treatment is not delayed until after the heart attack has struck. Elsewhere, plans are being made to establish a data bank in which vast amounts of medical information will be accessible through remote terminals to doctors thousands of miles away. A doctor will then be able to determine the antidote for various poisons or get the latest literature on a disease by dialing a telephone or typing an inquiry on a computer console.

A committee of the Bureau of the Budget has proposed that the federal government set up a National Data Center to compile statistical information on various facets of our society. Certainly the computer can help us simplify record-keeping by assigning everyone a “birth” number that will identify him for tax returns, banking, education, social security, the draft, and other purposes. This number could also serve as a telephone number, which, when used on modern communication mechanisms, would make it possible to reach its holder directly no matter where he might be.

But such a Data Center poses a grave threat to individual freedom and privacy. With its insatiable appetite for information, its inability to forget anything that has been put into it, a central computer might become the heart of a government surveillance system that would lay bare our finances, our associations, or our mental and physical health to government inquisitors or even to casual observers. Computer technology is moving so rapidly that a sharp line between statistical and intelligence systems is bound to be obliterated. Even the most innocuous of centers could provide the “foot in the door” for the development of an individualized computer-based federal snooping system.

Since a National Data Center would be augmented by numerous subsystems or satellites operated by state and local governments or by private organizations, comprehensive national regulation of computer communications, whether of federal or nonfederal origin, ultimately will become imperative.

Moreover, deliberations should not be conducted in terms of computer capability as it exists today. New computer hardware is constantly being spawned, machine storage capacity and speed are increasing geometrically, and costs are declining. Thus at present we cannot imagine what the dimensions, the sophistication, or the snooping ability of the National Data Center will turn out to be ten or twenty years from now. Nor can we predict what new techniques will be developed to pierce any safeguards that Congress may set up in order to protect people against those who manipulate or falsify information they extract from or put into the center.

Of course, it would be foolish to prohibit the use of data-processing technology to carry out important governmental operations simply because it might be abused. However, it is necessary to fashion an adequate legal structure to protect the public against misuse of information handling.

IN the past, privacy has been relatively easy to protect for a number of reasons. Large quantities of information about individuals have not been available. Generally decentralized, uncollected, and uncollated, the available information has been relatively superficial, access to it has been difficult to secure, and most people are unable to interpret it. During the hearings held recently by two of the congressional subcommittees investigating invasions of privacy, however, revelations concerning the widespread use of modern electronic and optical snooping devices shocked us.

In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy, Edgar S. Dunn, Jr., a research analyst for Resources for the Future, Incorporated, pointed out that information in the center would not be intelligible to the snooper as are the contents of a manila folder. Computerized data require a machine, a code book, a set of instructions, and a technician in order to be comprehended. Presumably Mr. Dunn’s thesis is that if it is difficult or expensive to gain access to and interpret the data in the center, there is little likelihood of anyone’s trying to pry; if the snooper’s cost for unearthing a unit of dirt increases sufficiently, it will become too expensive for him to try to violate the center’s integrity.

Mr. Dunn’s logic fails to take into account other factors. First, if all the information gathered about an individual is in one place, the payoff for snooping is sharply enhanced. Thus, although the cost or difficulty of gaining access may be great, the amount of dirt available once access is gained is also great. Second, there is every reason to believe that the art of electronic surveillance will continue to become more efficient and economical. Third, governmental snooping is rarely deterred by cost.

Mr. Dunn also ignores a number of special dangers posed by a computerized National Data Center. Ever since the federal government’s entry into the taxation and social welfare spheres, increasing quantities of information have been recorded. Moreover, as recording processes have become mechanized and less cumbersome, there also has been centralization and collation of information. In something akin to Parkinson’s Law, the increase in information-handling capacity has created a tendency toward more extensive manipulation and analysis of recorded data, which, in turn, has required the collection of more and more data. The creation of the Data Center with electronic storage and retrieval capacity will accelerate this pattern.

Any increase in the amount of recorded information is certain to increase the risk of errors in reporting and recording and indexing. Information distortion also will be caused by machine malfunctioning. Moreover, people working with the data in Washington or at a distance through remote terminals can misuse the information. As information accumulates, the contents of an individual’s computerized dossier will appear more and more impressive and will impart a heightened sense of reliability to the user, which, coupled with the myth of computer infallibility, will make it less likely that the user will try to verify the recorded data. This will be true despite the “softness” or “imprecision” of much of the data. Our success or failure in life ultimately may turn on what other people decide to put into our files and on the programmer’s ability, or inability, to evaluate, process, and interrelate information. The great bulk of the information likely to find its way into the center will be gathered and processed by relatively unskilled and unimaginative people who lack discrimination and sensitivity. Furthermore, a computerized file has a certain indelible quality — adversities cannot be overcome simply by the passage of time.

There are further dangers. The very existence of a National Data Center may encourage certain federal officials to engage in questionable surveillance tactics. For example, optical scanners — devices with the capacity to read a variety of type fonts or handwriting at fantastic rates of speed — could be used to monitor our mail. By linking scanners with a computer system, the information drawn in by the scanner would be converted into machine-readable form and transferred into the subject’s file in the National Data Center.

Then, with sophisticated programming, the dossiers of all of the surveillance subject’s correspondents could be produced at the touch of a button, and an appropriate entry — perhaps “associates with known criminals” — could be added to all of them. As a result, someone who simply exchanges Christmas cards with a person whose mail is being monitored might find himself under surveillance or might be turned down when he applies for a job with the government or requests a government grant or applies for some other governmental benefit. An untested, impersonal, and erroneous computer entry such as “associates with known criminals” has marked him, and he is helpless to rectify the situation. Indeed, it is likely that he would not even be aware that the entry existed.

These tactics, as well as the possibility of coupling wiretapping and computer processing, undoubtedly will be extremely attractive to overzealous law-enforcement officers. Similarly, the ability to transfer into the National Data Center quantities of information maintained in nonfederal files — credit ratings, educational information from schools and universities, local and state tax information, and medical records — will enable governmental snoopers to obtain data that they have no authority to secure on their own.

The compilation of information by unskilled personnel also creates serious problems of accuracy. It is not simply a matter of the truth or falsity of what is recorded. Information can be entirely accurate and sufficient in one context and wholly incomplete and misleading in another. For example, the bare statement of an individual’s marital status has entirely different connotations to the selective service, a credit bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, and the social security administration. Consider a computer entry of “divorced” and the different embellishment that would be necessary in each of those contexts to portray an accurate picture of an individual’s situation.

The question of context is most graphically illustrated by the unexplained and incomplete arrest record. It is unlikely that a citizen whose file contains an entry “arrested, 6/1/42; convicted felony, 1/6/43; three years, federal penitentiary” would be given federal employment or be accorded the governmental courtesies accorded other citizens. Yet the subject may simply have been a conscientious objector. And what about the entry “arrested, disorderly conduct; sentenced six months Gotham City jail.” Without further explanation, who – would know that the person involved was a civil rights demonstrator whose conviction was reversed on appeal?

Finally, the risks to privacy created by a National Data Center lie not only in the misuse of the system by those who desire to injure others or who can obtain some personal advantage by doing so. There also is a legitimate concern that government employees in routine clerical positions will have the capacity to inflict damage through negligence, sloppiness, thoughtlessness, or sheer stupidity, by unintentionally rendering a record inaccurate, or losing it, or disseminating its contents to people not authorized to see it.

To ensure freedom from governmental intrusion, Congress must legislate reasonably precise standards regarding the information that can be recorded in the National Data Center. Certain types of information should not be recorded even if it is technically feasible to do so and a legitimate administrative objective exists. For example, it has long been “feasible,” and from some vantage points “desirable,” to require citizens to carry and display passports when traveling in this country, or to require universal fingerprinting. But we have not done so because these encroachments on our liberties are deemed inconsistent with the philosophical fiber of our society. Likewise, highly personal information, especially medical and psychiatric information, should not be permitted in the center unless human life depends upon recording it.

Legislation sharply limiting the information which federal agencies and officials can extract from private citizens is absolutely essential. To reinforce these limitations, the statute creating the Data Center should prohibit recording any information collected without specific congressional authorization. Until the quality of the center’s operations and the nature of its impact on individual privacy can be better perceived, the center’s activities should be restricted to the preservation of factual data.

The necessary procedural and technical safeguards seem to fall into two categories: those needed to guarantee the accuracy and integrity of the stored information, and those needed to control its dissemination.

To ensure the accuracy of the center’s files, an individual should have an opportunity to correct errors in information concerning him. Perhaps a print-out of his computer file should be sent to him once a year. Admittedly, this process would be expensive; some agencies will argue that the value of certain information will be lost if it is known that the government has it; and there might be squabbles between citizens and the Data Center concerning the accuracy of the file that would entail costly administrative proceedings. Nonetheless, the right of a citizen to be protected against governmental dissemination of misinformation is so important that we must be willing to pay some price to preserve it. Instead of an annual mailing, citizens could be given access to their files on request, perhaps through a network of remote computer terminals situated in government buildings throughout the country. What is necessary is a procedure for periodically determining when data are outmoded or should be removed from the file.

Turning to the question of access, the center’s computer hardware and software must be designed to limit access to the information. A medical history given to a government doctor in connection with an application for veteran’s benefits should not be available to federal employees not legitimately involved in processing the application. One solution may be to store information according to its sensitivity or its accessibility, or both. Then, governmental officials can be assigned access keys that will let them reach only those portions of the center’s files that are relevant to their particular governmental function.

Everyone directing an inquiry to the center or seeking to deposit information in it should be required to identify himself. Finger- or voice-prints ultimately may be the best form of identification. As snooping techniques become more sophisticated, systems may even be needed to counter the possibility of forgery or duplication; perhaps an answerback system or a combination of finger- and voice-prints will be necessary. In addition, the center should be equipped with protector files to record the identity of inquirers, and these files should be audited to unearth misuse of the system. It probably will also be necessary to audit the programs controlling the manipulation of the files and access to the system to make sure that no one has inserted a secret “door” or a password permitting entry to the data by unauthorized personnel. It is frightening to realize that at present there apparently is no foolproof way to prevent occasional “monitor intrusion” in large data-processing systems. Additional protection against these risks can be achieved by exercising great care in selecting programming personnel.

In the future, sophisticated connections between the center and federal offices throughout the country and between the federal center and numerous state, local, and private centers probably will exist. As a result, information will move into and out of the center over substantial distances by telephone lines or microwave relays. The center’s “network” character will require information to be protected against wiretapping and other forms of electronic eavesdropping. Transmission in the clear undoubtedly will have to be proscribed, and data in machine-readable form will have to be scrambled or further encoded so that they can be rendered intelligible only by a decoding process built into the system’s authorized terminals. Although it may not be worth the effort or expense to develop completely breakproof codes, sufficient scrambling or coding to make it expensive for an eavesdropper to intercept the center’s transmission will be necessary. If information in the center is arranged according to sensitivity or accessibility, the most efficient procedure may be to use codes of different degrees of complexity.

At a minimum, congressional action is necessary to establish the appropriate balance between the needs of the national government in accumulating, processing, and disseminating information and the right of individual privacy. This legislation must be reinforced by statutory civil remedies and penal sanctions.

Testimony before Congress concerning the intrusive activities of the Post Office, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service gives us cause to balk at delegating authority over the Data Center to any of the agencies that have a stake in the content of data collected by the government. Some federal personnel are already involved in mail-cover operations, electronic bugging, wiretapping, and other invasions of privacy, and undoubtedly they would try to crack the security of any Data Center that maintains information on an individual basis. Thus it would be folly to leave the center in the hands of any agency whose employees are known to engage in antiprivacy activities. Similarly, the center must be kept away from government officials who are likely to become so entranced with operating sophisticated machinery and manipulating large masses of data that they will not respect an individual’s right to privacy.

The conclusion seems inescapable: control over the center must be lodged outside existing channels. A new, completely independent agency, bureau, or office should be established — perhaps as an adjunct to the Census Bureau or the National Archives — to formulate policy under whatever legislative guidelines are enacted to ensure the privacy of all citizens. The organization would operate the center, regulate the nature of the information that can be recorded and stored, ensure its accuracy, and protect the center against breaches of security.

The new agency’s ability to avoid becoming a captive of the governmental units using the center would be crucial. Perhaps with proper staffing and well-delineated lines of authority to Congress or the President, the center could achieve the degree of independence needed to protect individuals against governmental or private misuse of information in the center. At the other end of the spectrum, the center cannot become an island unto itself, populated by technocrats whose conduct is shielded by the alleged omniscience of the machines they manage and who are neither responsive nor responsible to anyone.

The proposed agency should be established before the center is planned. To date, there has been virtually no meaningful exchange among scientists, technicians, legal experts, and government people on the implications of the center. The center also might consider supporting some of the planned nonfederal computer networks, such as the Inter-university Communications Council’s (EDUCOM) plan to link the major universities together, using them as models or operating laboratories to test procedures and hardware for the federal center.

To satisfy those who argue for the early establishment of a purely statistical Data Center, it might be possible for the proposed agency to set up a modest center in which information which does not invade privacy could be made available to government officials, educators, and private researchers. Other federal agencies might establish satellite centers that would contain information too sensitive to be recorded in the statistical center during that institution’s formative period, although the data in satellites ultimately might be transferred to the national center.

The threat to individual privacy posed by the computer comes from the private sector as well as the proposed federal Data Center. Each year state and local governments, educational institutions, trade associations, and industrial firms establish data centers that collect and store quantities of information about individuals. Because the high cost of computer installation forces many organizations to operate on a time-share basis, the nonfederal centers pose a special danger to privacy. Without effective screening and built-in security devices, one participant, accidentally or deliberately, may invade and extract or alter the computer files of another participant. Moreover, because many time-share systems operate over large geographic areas, their transmissions will be vulnerable to tapping or malicious destruction unless they are scrambled or encoded. Right now, a mailing list containing 150 to 170 million names, accompanied by addresses and financial data, is being compiled. The list is so structured that it yields sublists of people in various vocational and avocational categories. Where the necessary in- formation to produce this monster came from and how one gets off the list are mysteries.

Currently there are more than two thousand independent credit bureaus in the United States, many of whose files are being computerized. Eventually, these bureaus will make a network of their computers, creating a ready source of detailed information about an individual’s finances. The accuracy of these records will become increasingly crucial; an honest dispute between a consumer and a retailer over a bill may produce an unexplained and unexpungeable “no pay” evaluation in the computer and result in considerable damage to the buyer’s credit rating.

In testimony before the House subcommittee, the director of the New York State Identification and Intelligence System described a data bank containing files on “known” criminals that ultimately will contain millions of entries. He expressed a willingness to exchange information with police officials in other states as soon as the state systems could be meshed. If this system is tied into the National Data Center or New York’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles or welfare agencies, it would permit someone to direct an inquiry to the computer file of “known” criminals, find an entry under the name of his subject, and rely on that entry to the subject’s detriment without attempting to verify its accuracy.

Congress should consider the need for legislation setting standards to be met by nonfederal computer organizations in providing information about private persons and restraining federal officers from access to certain types of information from nonfederal data centers. Nonfederal systems should be required to install some protective devices and procedures. This is not to suggest that Congress should necessarily impose the same controls on nonfederal systems that it may choose to impose on the federal center. But a protector file to record the source of inquiries and modest encoding would probably prevent wide-scale abuse, although security needs vary from system to system. Since security may be facilitated by installing protective devices in the computer hardware itself, the possible need for regulation of certain aspects of computer manufacturing also should be taken into account.

The possibility of regulating transmission between federal and nonfederal centers and the interaction among nonfederal centers also should be considered. The specter of a federal agency, such as the Veterans’ Administration, reaching into a citizen’s medical file in a data center operated by a network of hospitals to augment the federal center’s file is a disturbing one. Regulating the security of the transmissions and imposing sanctions for noncompliance and eavesdropping would preserve individual privacy against governmental snooping and bureaucratic spinelessness or perfidy.

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Golden Signatures

By E. R. Kurnik

Whenever great men take pen in hand, they create valuable historical documents, avidly sought after by America’s autograph collectors.

AT the National Antique Show held in . New York City recently, a New Jersey housewife presented a bundle of letters for evaluation. She had found them in her attic. Sigmund Rothschild, well-known appraiser, looked them over carefully.

“Madam,” he said excitedly, “these letters are a very important historical find.”

Six of them proved to have been written by Abraham Lincoln’s wife Mary to Abram Wakeman. Rothschild valued them at more than $100,000.

Naturally, finds of such magnitude are quite rare. But smaller autograph discoveries are constantly being made. For America’s thousands of autograph collectors make it their business to find out all they can about autographs and thus spot valuable signatures, documents and letters. And even if they don’t come up with a $100,000 find, this rapidly growing hobby brings them vast enjoyment and mental stimulation.

Autograph prices range from 40 cents for a Betty Grable signature to $260,000 for a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps you never thought of that document as an autograph but among real collectors an autograph may refer to a handwritten letter, a signed manuscript or document, a signed photograph or just a signature.

Let’s start with low-priced autographs. Among signatures and signed photographs the following values are listed by a leading autograph dealer: General Douglas Mac-Arthur, $3.50; Ingrid Bergman, $1.50; Fred M. Vinson, $3.00; Enrico Caruso, $.50; Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, $1.50.

The above prices are partially determined by the nature of the autograph— whether it’s a plain signature, a greeting or a signed photograph. Other factors that determine the value are the popularity of the person who wrote it, the contents, the rarity, condition, time and circumstance of the writing.

What are the big-money autographs? Back in 1927 a Mamaroneck, N. Y., family cleaning out the barn, came across a letter signed by Button Gwinnett and two other signers of the Declaration of Independence. The lucky family received $51,000 for that piece of paper.

Why? Because Button Gwinnett’s signature is the second rarest among the signers of the Declaration. The rarest of all is Thomas Lynch, Jr.’s. Current prices for Lynch, Jr. or Gwinnett range from $2,000 to $10,000. If you have a complete set of signatures of the signers of the Declaration, count yourself fortunate. There are only 36 complete sets, valued at up to $200,000. So, count yourself wealthy, too.

Uncover any of the following autographs and you’ll be able to take it easy for a while: a letter written by William Henry Harrison during the 30 days that he was President of the United States; any writing of Captain John Smith; original manuscripts of Herman Melville or Edgar Allan Poe.

Skipping across to Europe, if you can dig up autographs of Moliere, Michelangelo, Luther or Beethoven you’re a lucky collector. Currently the National Arts Foundation of New York City is searching for Mozart manuscripts that were stolen during World War II from caskets stored near Salzburg, Austria. The Foundation is offering a reward for any information leading to their recovery and stands ready to purchase any of the missing material and to return the manuscripts to the Mozarteum, a museum. The chances of your discovering an original letter written by Shakespeare are slim, but if you do, you’ll be able to name your price and retire. So far his signature has been found only on legal documents.

If you come across something that looks as if it might really be valuable, what should you do? Well, contact any autograph dealer who specializes in the field. When there is big money at stake, consult with one of these experts rather than a dealer who handles other items such as antiques, as well. You can check the reliability of an autograph firm by consulting a university librarian or the head of your nearest historical society. If they cannot advise you, write to the Librarian of Congress in Washington. Then, when you have chosen your dealer, send your find to him by registered mail. Usually it isn’t too helpful to describe the autograph in a letter since a dealer can’t judge accurately without examining the original.

The National Society of Autograph Collectors at 285 Madison Ave., New York 17, N. Y., can also help you with your autographs. Annual membership in the Society is $5, which includes quarterly issues of the Autograph Collectors’ Journal. You may write to the Society concerning your finds and they will refer you to the dealer or collector whom they believe would be interested.

Sometimes letters of unknowns have considerable value simply because they shed light on certain periods of history. A baker from Atlanta, Ga., found some letters recently which had been written by his grandfather, a Confederate soldier. His ancestor was not a famous man but the letters painted a vivid, authentic picture of life at the front during the Civil War. They brought a tidy sum.

There is always a demand for new source material that sheds light on some phase of our country’s history. Perhaps one of your ancestors took part in a famous Indian fight or helped to explore western territory. If you have letters that describe such adventures and the territory in which they took place, you have material that may bring you handy cash. Since the N.S.A.C. keeps a record of the specialization of each member, it’s easy to contact fellow collectors if you want to sell or trade your finds.

Holographs-letters written entirely by hand—are usually worth more than typewritten ones or letters written by secretaries and signed by the individual. Ordinary holographs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and President Truman might bring from $100 to $500 each, whereas signed, typed letters by these presidents may not be worth more than $10. President Truman’s letter calling the Marines “the Navy’s police force” with “a propaganda machine comparable to Stalin’s” was recently bought by a Chicago insurance man and enriched the Marine Corps League to the tune of $2,500. An equally high price was paid by a Connecticut man for President Truman’s letter to Paul Hume, the Washington music critic.

A George Washington letter of routine content is worth about $100 but one written while he was encamped at Valley Forge may bring between $200 and $1,000. If you can dig up some of his writing pertaining to either his inaugural or farewell address, you might ask between $2,500 and $5,000 for it In your search for valuable documents and letters, you should also be on the lookout for handwritten material that bears no signature. Before Washington decided on the inaugural address which he delivered, he wrote a much longer version of it in longhand. That draft of his planned address had 62 pages and so far only 16 pages and four fragments have been discovered. The manuscript was handed out, page by page, by historian Jared Sparks in answer to requests he received. So, if you should come across a 9-by-6-1/2 inch page in the handwriting of the first president, it might well be part of that valuable manuscript.

A signed photograph of Joseph Stalin was recently sold for $85. There are a great many Hitler autographs but they are worth little at present because of their abundance. Generally, a hero’s autograph is much more de- sirable than a villain’s although a letter of Benedict Arnold in which he gave a truthful account of his treason brought $2,850.

How do you go about acquiring a collection if you have no large amount of money to spend? Well, there’s a man in Baltimore, Md., who has an unusual and widespread collection, geographically speaking. For years he has been writing to kings and queens, statesmen and scientists all over the globe in an effort to acquire their autographs. He doesn’t just ask for their signatures—he compliments them for some achievement and asks their opinions on matters of political or scientific significance. And he has a very high percentage of replies. Because these celebrities often answer his comments or questions in detail, their autographs are of considerably more value than mere signatures.

It’s not a recommended practice, but some autographs can be acquired by trickery. Franklin D. Roosevelt, for instance, used to ignore all requests for autographs. One fan didn’t give up so easily. Taking advantage of F. D. R.’s weakness for bargains in postage stamps, he wrote to the late president, offering him a choice collection for a nominal fee. Roosevelt promptly responded with a check for the stamps and the autograph fiend was able to cash the check for considerably more than its face value.

Sometimes city, state and federal government bureaus are seized with spring cleaning fever and rashly destroy papers and documents which would be priceless to posterity. Walter Fetter, a Philadelphia business man, attended the disposal sale of 40 tons of miscellaneous papers taken from the Philadelphia custom house. The papers had supposedly been examined for possible valuable material. But, though Fetter was only a neophyte collector, he knew that there might be real valuables lurking in the mass of doomed papers. So he bought a load of them cheaply and sure enough, after careful scrutiny, he came upon several letters and documents whose value was about ten times the purchase price of the whole lot.

How much should you pay for collector’s items? Well, you can familiarize yourself with current prices by asking some of the dealers for copies of their catalogs. Usually they are free or else there is only a nominal charge for them. Another source which you may find helpful is a yearly publication called American Book-Prices Current which lists the auction prices of books and autographs that were traded in the U. S. during the year. You can probably locate this book in your public library.

And watch out for forgeries. If someone offered you letters written by Cleopatra to Julius Caesar, by Lazarus to Saint Peter, by Alexander the Great to Aristotle, what would you think? In the middle of the nineteenth century a forger by name of Vrain Lucas produced more than 25,000 of such autographs and managed to sell many of them. Lucas took the trouble to mix special inks and to make the letters look very ancient but the paper he used came from local French mills and most surprising of all, they were written in modern French!

Experts give this advice: Don’t deal with strangers where big values are involved but do business with dealers whose reputations are established. Good forgeries can usually be spotted only by the experts but you may be able to detect facsimiles made by rubber stamps. A quick test is the application of one of the standard liquid ink eradicators to the tail of the signature. Usually you can also tell a rubber stamp from a good signature because the stamp leaves a uniformity of ink not left by a pen.

It sometimes happens that collectors have authentic articles and don’t realize it. A Virginia college boy recently bought an address by Thomas Jefferson, supposedly copied by a contemporary. After careful scrutiny, the boy discovered that the speech was actually in Jefferson’s own handwriting and thus worth considerably more than the original purchase price.

Not an autograph collector, but a shrewd student of the field was the late Bernard Shaw. Like all great and wealthy men, Shaw was constantly being bothered by requests for handouts from people whom he knew only slightly or not at all. Shaw was not noted for his philanthropy and managed to disregard these letters completely without a twinge of conscience. But he was far from hard-hearted.

For instance, one real friend, whom Shaw knew to be destitute, would never stoop to the level of begging for money from his friend. Shaw realized this and periodically, would drop him a simple innocuous note, asking after his health.

The shrewd Shaw, having checked on the market value of his letters, knew that his friend could sell them for a substantial sum of money. And best of all, it only cost Bernard Shaw a postage stamp!

So, don’t despair because you can’t afford to buy the Declaration of Independence or the British Magna Carta. There are other autograph treasures to be found. They may be filed away in your attic, in a trash pile or in some office cabinet. But rest assured that astute autograph collectors are already out hunting for these golden signatures. •

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Flying Gold Out of Tibet

Planes Invade Land of the Lamas CARRYING millions of dollars worth of gold out of Tibet by airplane is the job of a young American who has become a cabinet minister in the Government of the Panchen Lama.

Until the present, Tibet, remote and inaccessible, has resisted all encroachments of the Machine Age.

Now, the Panchen Lama, back on the throne after a 12-year exile in China, has decided to modernize the country with radios, automobiles, hydro-electric plants, and other inventions.

The gold that has lain idle in the country’s 3,000 monasteries will be used to purchase the necessary equipment. Gordon B. Enders, American, and the only foreigner ever appointed to a high position in the Tibetan Government, has been commissioned to perform an extraordinary task in connection with this modernization program. His main job this year is to collect and transport as much gold as he can possibly carry from the rock-bound interior of Tibet to safekeeping in China.

This is the gold which sooner or later will find its way to the United States, as payment for purchases of all sorts of machinery and special equipment, such as the Panchen Lama wants for his country.

“Unknown to most of the world,” said Enders, interviewed during a brief stay in New York, “the monasteries of Tibet have been collecting gold dust for at least six or seven centuries. This gold belongs to the ruling power because the Church and the Government are the same in Tibet. How much gold has thus been accumulated, it is hard to say, but it has been estimated to be about $100,000,000.”

One hundred million dollars will certainly buy a great deal of American machinery. The Panchen Lama does not, however, plan to spend all his gold at once, for the country cannot be modernized rapidly.

The high altitudes, blizzards, and winds prevailing during most of the year will prevent Enders from flying in all but three summer months. He plans to fly out about $3,000,000 worth of gold dust during the first season of operations. At the rate of even $3,000,000 per flying season, Enders will have his hands full for some years to come.

The first commercial shipment of radios and automobiles ever to enter the Forbidden Land recently accompanied the Panchen Lama on his triumphal entry into Tibet, with a great caravan of priests, pilgrims, and pack animals. The automobiles and radios were knocked down and loaded on the backs of animals. They were purchased for the Panchen Lama by Enders.

China claims sovereignty over Tibet, and she has built a new capital for the Panchen Lama at a place called Kokonor, overlooking a great salt lake perched at an altitude of 10,600 feet, and having a circumference of 230 miles. Surrounded by a trained garrison of 3,000 men, the Panchen Lama rules over 3,000,000 people scattered over an area of about 500,000 square miles.

From the capital at Kokonor it is 180 miles to the Lufthansa Air Terminal at Lanchowfu, in Kansuh Province, China. The German all-metal planes make trips to the outside world twice each week.

But reaching the Lufthansa station will not be so easy as it appears, for the Tibetan capital is separated from it by a range of blizzard-swept, snow-covered mountains in which the lowest pass is 16,000 feet.

Enders’ first task on reaching Tibet, he said, would be to survey all the possible airplane landing sites. He must also prepare maps of various regions which are still practically unknown. The existing maps of Tibet are at best only approximations of the actual conditions.

Enders’ choice is American flying equipment for the gold collection work. He has two low-wing cabin monoplanes for the first year’s operations. Each ship can carry a 1,500-pound payload at a 25,000-foot ceiling. With special fuel tanks, it can remain in the air for 16 to 20 hours at a time.

One ship is intended solely for carrying fuel between Tibet and the railheads in either China or India. The British Indian railhead is 200 miles from Tashilhunpo, the religious capital of Tibet. On the Chinese side, the nearest railhead is Taiyuanfu, 600 miles from the Tibetan border and 1,200 miles from the political capital at Kokonor.

Practically all the required gasoline supplies in the land of the lama are brought in by the most laborious methods. Gas cans are transported either on the backs of coolies or the backs of beasts. The cost is proportionately high, so high in fact, that for the present only the Panchen Lama and a few high government officials can afford to buy the fuel.

While one of Enders’ planes is transporting gas from the nearest outside supply depots, the other plane, commanded by Enders himself, is flying from monastery to monastery and picking up bags of gold for export to the outside world.

The roadless condition of the Forbidden Land makes it almost impossible to employ any other safe form of transport. The airplane finds its own road in the sky. ‘ Another good reason for employing the airplane is that it can successfully evade roving bands of robbers.

“One of the odd beliefs in Tibet is that gold is a plant,” said Enders, “and the natives often bury nuggets in the ground, just as any farmer buries a seed.” Within the country itself, gold has little real value. The Panchen Lama has declared that it is “worth nothing, for you cannot eat it. It is only good for what it can buy.” Hence his decision to export quantities of gold to the outside world, where it is highly esteemed.

The Tibetan monasteries are financial institutions and commercial markets, in addition to temples of worship. They lend money to the people at the rate of 2 per cent per month. In this way the wealth of the government has increased over a long period of years, and today the Panchen Lama finds * himself in a position to do business with his white neighbors.

Gold is not the only real wealth in Tibet. The monasteries have salvaged considerable collections of semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli, sapphires, garnets, aqua-marines, topazes and moonstones.

One of the Panchen Lama’s earliest importations will be American road-building machinery. He plans to construct and to patrol modern highways that will bear commercial traffic between his country and the commercial centers of neighboring lands. He will work through an American syndicate, which will be empowered to do all the buying and selling for the Government.

After years of acquaintance with American methods and machinery in China, the Panchen Lama holds them in the highest esteem, and for that reason he has decided to modernize with American equipment exclusively. But he does not plan to open the country generally to foreigners. Tibet will remain for the Tibetans.

There are other natural resources which might be exploited. There is a possibility of finding oil. Modern machinery will certainly increase the production of semi-precious gems and gold. All mining is now done by hand. There is a great future for air transport in the Forbidden Land.

So far as invention is concerned, Tibet is one place that the machine age forgot. No nation in the world is so little touched by modern appliances and methods. Enders, after four years of travel in the country, recalls seeing only one machine, and that was a water wheel used to turn a prayer wheel during religious services.

Boy Giant, 8 Feet Tally Weighs 365 Pounds

ALTHOUGH but sixteen years old, Robert Wadlow, Alton, Illinois, schoolboy giant is 7 feet, 10-1/2 inches tall and weighs 365 pounds. Robert added two inches to his height in the last year, and gained twenty-five pounds. At this rate it will not be long before he will be holding world’s records for tallest and heaviest men.

Doctors are watching him closely, trying to discover the reason for his unusual growth. They do not allow him to participate in high school sports.

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Exposing Houdini’s Tricks of Magic

By R. D. ADAMS

The mechanic who made Houdini’s Trick Magic Apparatus

Harry Houdini, Prince of Magicians, carried with him to the grave the secrets of his extraordinary feats of illusion. Only one man, the artisan who made his magic apparatus, knows the working secrets of Houdini’s most mystifying stunts. That man, Mr. R. D. Adams, continues here his fascinating expose of the master magician’s methods.

HOUDINI was a master at the art of obtaining free publicity. No performer ever put on as many free shows for the purpose of breaking into print, and for that matter, few if any, were ever as liberal as he in the matter of entertaining lodges and other groups without charge. Many times he risked death in his publicity seeking stunts.

“If the public,” he once told me, “knew how much I really flirt with death in some of my stunts, I would never be accused of getting advertising free.”

Frequently Houdini permitted himself to be locked in a regulation steel safe. There was only one way for him to free himself— with the aid of a small screwdriver with which he invariably was armed for this feat. It seems comparatively easy for one possessed of his uncanny knowledge of locks to unscrew the plate covering of tumblers which control the bolt of a safe. But when one remembers that in most instances the prisoner was so closely wedged into the vault that he could barely move his hands, that he was forced to operate in pitch darkness, guided only by his sense of touch, the feat becomes quite complicated. Once he had pressed the tumblers in the proper order, of course the door would swing open. But if by some misadventure in the darkness, he had disarranged the mechanism, those on the outside would have been unable to shoot the bolts with the aid of the combination knob. The prospect of being enclosed in a vault with only sufficient air to sustain life for a few minutes and being dependent upon a professional safecracker for rescue in case you happen to jam the mechanism of the lock is not a very inviting one.

For years Houdini’s best avenue to the front page of the newspaper was by escaping from prison cells. Although he was often forced to strip naked before being locked up and was subjected to the most minute search, he was never without a picklock. Sometimes he secreted it in the cell while he was inspecting it prior to incarceration. A bit of wax and it could instantly be fastened on the lower side of a bar. Sometimes the pick was taped in the armpit or on the sole of his foot. And Houdini, with one glance at the lock of the cell he was inspecting, knew whether the pick he would have available would do the work desired of it.

In recounting to me some of his narrow escapes, Houdini once told of an experience with his trunk trick. At that time he was permitting committees to handcuff him, place him in a trunk, rope it securely and toss him into a river or lake, while thousands, including reporters and news photographers looked on.

The escape was made in the same manner of the familiar stage trick in which the magician is locked inside a trunk and within a few seconds after it is slipped behind a screen, changes places with a lady assistant—with the aid of a sliding panel.

Immediately Houdini got into the trunk for his stunt he went to work on his handcuffs and other shackles, and was free of them by the time the roping had been done. On one occasion the trunk sank rapidly and stuck on a muddy bottom, panel side down. It was only by the most desperate efforts, Houdini was able to force the panel through the sticky mud and escape drowning.

“That gave me a lesson,” he said. “Thereafter I made it a point to have the panel part way open before the bottom was reached. Sometimes I would be out and have the panel shifted back in place without reaching the bottom.”

Of course, one of the essential points in this performance was to have an assistant who saw to it that all the roping done would not make it impossible to move the panel.

Houdini’s famed “disappearance through a brick wall” was one of his most widely applauded stunts. That it mystified the public is putting it mildly. Just a short time ago a leading scientific journal announced that the magician made his disappearance by means of a trapdoor on one side of the wall and came up through a similar channel on the other. That was wholly impossible. A trapdoor, regardless of how cleverly it had been constructed, would have been detected by the investigating committee. And besides to mystify his audience still further and demonstrate that a trapdoor was not used, a large sheet of paper and sometimes a sheet of plate glass was placed upon the floor of the stage and the brick wall built upon it. Passing through glass into trapdoors and vice versa was not possible even for the great man of mystery.

Here is how Houdini operated: A dozen or more bricklayers in overalls appeared before the audience and built a bona fide brick wall seven or eight feet high extending from the footlights to almost the rear of the stage. When it was completed, Houdini was ready to “disappear”. After a few appropriate remarks, he stepped behind a small screen, something like a prompter’s box, which the bricklayers pushed slowly to the center of the wall. The bricklayers moved over to the other side and adjusted a similar screen there opposite the first one. “Here I am, here I am,” Houdini would shout and waving arms thrust through holes in the screen gave evidence of the fact.

Then the arms would disappear and Houdini would step forth from the screen on the other side of the wall.

Houdini disappeared through the wall only in the minds of the exceedingly gullible. As a matter of fact while the first screen, behind which he had stepped, was being pushed back against the wall, he leaped into a pair of blue jumpers and pulled a workman’s cap down far over his face. When the screen touched the wall, he was one of the bricklayers as far as the audience was concerned. He got behind the second screen disguised as a bricklayer. From this point he did his calling to the audience. Mechanical arms and hands, operated by a hidden rope leading to the wings, furnished the gestures which convinces Houdini was behind screen No. 1 instead of No. 2 completing the illusion.

Houdini probably possessed more information about magic and conjuring than all other artists combined. He had a library of hundreds of volumes dealing with this subject and occasionally he would completely mystify his friends with a stunt that was generations old. He once told me of a private performance he put on to entertain a small group of friends and completely mystified them. The trick itself was an ancient one. Calling for three of the ladies to hand him their handkerchiefs, he knotted them together and announced that he would have them appear anywhere the audience suggested, the suggestions to be made on slips deposited in a hat. A child drew one of the slips out of a hat, suggesting that the handkerchiefs reappear on the steps of a public institution three miles away. And they were found there a half hour later soldered in a tin box that had to be cut open.

Here were the steps in the deception. When Houdini knotted the handkerchiefs, he substituted three others for the ones in question and placed them under the dish cover. When he collected the slips of paper, he dropped in a few slips on top which he himself had written, each one designated the steps of the institution as the place the handkerchiefs were to be whisked. And while fumbling with the dish cover, he accidentally broke it. It was necessary to step to one side and obtain another of the same kind from his assistant who, during the process, was presented with the original handkerchiefs Houdini had palmed.

By stalling long enough to give time for another confederate to seal the handkerchiefs in the box and get a good start of the committee, it was perfectly simple to have the missing articles found as requested.

Having convinced most of the credulous that no shackles or bolts could imprison him, Houdini set out to prove it was impossible to entomb him—even in the grave.

In scores of cities he invited workmen to fashion a packing box that would hold him prisoner and various artisans, jealous of their craftsmanship, spent much time trying to devise boxes that the man of mystery could not escape from. The boxes made by the determined workmen would be brought upon the stage, Houdini would step inside and with a mighty pounding and at the expenditure of an unusual supply of nails, the lid would be hammered down with unusual tightness and solidity.

Sometimes a full half hour would elapse before Houdini, who of course worked surrounded by the usual screen, would liberate himself. And invariably the orchestra would play loudly while he was making his escape in order that no nails would emit a screech as they were being forced out of the wood into which they had been driven.

The secret of the escape was this: Houdini, upon entering the box, invariably had concealed under his clothing a device weighing two or three pounds which worked something on the order of an automobile jack. It consisted of two steel pipes one an inch and the other three fourths of an inch in diameter which telescoped together. At the top and the bottom of this “Open Sesame” was a T shaped bar four or five inches long and an inch wide. The pipes, threaded on the outside were held together in the center by a turn-buckle which when twisted by Houdini’s muscular hands exerted a pressure no nails could withstand. Having once forced off a board large enough to permit his escape, all Houdini had to do was to replace the board and press the nails back into the original holes while the orchestra drowned his carpentering.

As a variance of this trick, Houdini permitted glaziers to place him in a glass box and seal the cracks with putty. As soon as he was behind the screen, he would exert enough pressure to break the putty, carefully holding the glass to prevent it from crashing, step out, reach into his cabinet of many secret compartments for his own glazing tools and replace the glass. If in the process of his operations, he broke the glass, he had other sheets of the same size hidden in the cabinet with which to replace the shattered one.

I have spoken before of Houdini’s great lung capacity. But by diligent practice he also brought himself to a point where he could exist for a long period on an unbelievably small amount of air. This stood him in good stead during his experiences in packing boxes and glass cases. It also enabled him to stage a great publicity feat in California where he permitted himself to be placed in a casket and be buried some feet under ground. It was noticeable that he chose for the scene of the demonstration a spot where the soil was extremely light in weight, else his task might have been impossible even with the aid of his jack which had enabled him to break out of so many packing boxes. I did not witness this performance, but I very much suspect that the jack enabled him to force up the coffin lid to a position where he could bring his Herculean back and shoulder muscles into play effectively enough to break forth from the grave.

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I WAS A SLAVE-SCIENTIST IN RUSSIA

PART TWO

Suicide or Siberia seemed the only ways out for the “captive brains” in the secret research camp.

By Dr. Otto Maar

ART BY GURNEY MILLER

(Note: In the first part of this report (September MI) by a German scientist imprisoned in Russia and forced to do research for the Reds, Dr. Maar tells how he was arrested in the East Zone of Germany and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for “espionage” and “anti- Soviet propaganda.” With other German scientists and technicians he makes a long, harrowing journey to the Russian prison camp at Kutschino, in the environs of Moscow. Here he works on “border protection devices” for the Reds and learn first-hand of their slip- shod production methods and the ignorance of some of their scientists. Conditions at Kutschino are relatively mild. But over the prisoners hangs the threat of Workuta—a dreaded prison camp in Siberia. Now continue Dr. Maar’s remarkable story . . .)

THE way to the prison library is along a huge balcony. One day I hear a shot and rush to the door as Anatol, a Russian prisoner, collapses against the balcony. Blood is streaming from his heart, the pistol drops from his hand. It is a primitive weapon he has made himself; the explosive is from the lab. I take my coat off, roll it up and place it under his head. Then I run to the Chief Engineer whose office is close by. Meanwhile a few people have already gathered around. Dobroschanski only shakes his head. A secretary chatters away uninterruptedly and giggles.

Two men fetch a stretcher and take Anatol to an infirmary, where he dies that evening. A few days later the chemist Aronow poisons himself. He drinks hydrochloric acid and dies after horrible agony. Suicides are not rare here; mostly they use poisons from the chemical laboratories.

But there are also happier experiences. Hans B. builds a magnetophone device. In his laboratory are tape recordings of the former National Broadcasting, Berlin. At his work he manages to install a loudspeaker in the window— for “testing.” Then Wagner operas or the Unfinished Symphony reverberate through the yard. Sounds from another world!

In the evening we swap experiences, play chess or have news items translated from Pravda. Horst has very cozily built himself a short wave receiver. He listens regularly to the BBC broadcasts. When the weather is good we go out in the yard to play games. Anyone who wishes may go to the general room to watch TV. The Russians sit night after night before the screen; they roar with laughter at the programs.

One rainy Sunday afternoon I watch a soccer game between Dynamo and Spartak, top Soviet teams. I notice that the crowd is clearly on the side of Spartak; every little error on the part of Dynamo is wildly hissed. Aljoscha tells me that Dynamo is practically the secret police staff and on such occasions the people can air their feelings for once.

Meanwhile Major Schdanow has new plans for me. He wants to form a border protection group of which I am to be leader. He has at the moment no specific assignment; he is waiting for some good suggestions, something like the mirror-testing device. As I remain silent, he tries to help a little. He leans toward devices with which one can observe or catch men over the landscape. For example, in a neighboring laboratory an electric fence has been developed whose frequency and current are supposedly so adjusted that anyone who touches the fence remains stuck there, without being killed. At the moment they are trying it on dogs, and every day one hears the howling of the tortured animals.

In the course of the conversation, Schdanow asks me whether photographs can be taken without lenses. I have never heard of it. He blares out that with the electron-microscope, photography is done without lenses. Schdanow’s ignorance finally exhausts my patience. “If you want to take landscape photographs with it you would have to heat the trees so that they produce electrons.” This convinces him that he can’t make a big thing out of that.

After a few days the following plan is evolved: An ultra-red projector throws a concentrated ray on a photo element at a distance of one hundred meters. If a man runs through the ray there is a tone signal. In foreign literature there are numerous patterns for this and all we need do is build one according to the nearest pattern.

Always the same thing; always copying. Very rarely is any really independent research attempted. But the Soviets excel in their espionage set-up. Almost every day, here in Kutschino, microfilm comes in from all over the world. A staff of experts is engaged in appraising and recording the secret information. On the other hand Soviet security is virtually impenetrable.

Malutin brings up a captured German Zeiss optical-phone device. It is based on the principle that the ray path is made by two prisms, of which one moves very delicately and in this way produces a modulation. When I suggest to Malutin that it is easy to copy, he answers that that is not possible here. I must find something simpler, even if it does not work so efficiently as the Zeiss device.

I distribute the assignments among the group and we make a simple model. The modulation is then produced by sending the lamp current through a chopper (vibrator) as is done in automobile radios. This cannot go very far, and the lamp is thermically much too slow to go out a hundred times a second. But at the moment we can do no better. I ask all the Chiefs to obtain a Kerr cell from the sound film industry, but that is quite impossible. Since we have a quartz laboratory in the camp, I decide to undertake ultrasonic modulation.

Meanwhile, the situation in the medical laboratory begins to come to a head. Mayronowski has nothing to show and is being hounded by the control-commissioner who gives him the devil in front of us. One day soldiers come and take George away and take possession of the contents of all the desks.

- During the mid-day break George is brought before the whole staff. An officer reads the sentence: The prisoner George N. has misrepresented himself as a specialist. On his suggestion experiments have been undertaken which led to no results. He has sabotaged the social structure and will be removed to a camp in the far north. We know of this camp; it is called Workuta. We are sorry about George because he was a good comrade.

A doctor takes George’s place, and he seems to know more about bis field. The encephalo graph is abandoned, and a new program started: Observation of living cells in nutrient juices under ultrasonic action, ultrasonic anesthesis and preparation of better emulsions by ultrasonic action.

Meanwhile, we have earned our first rubles and we may buy things in the prison store. Our salaries range from thirty to four hundred rubles. As the most urgent items we buy shaving kits, tooth brushes, soap; then some sausage, cheese, butter, caviar, tea and cakes. If one saves up one can get a football, a guitar or a pullover. Everything is available but one has to save for a long time.

Progress According to Plan My work in the border-protection section progresses; a few parts for the model are ready to be finished off. We run into difficulties, however, because our section is crowded. The second laboratory has developed an unusual foot-pivot of which 3,000 pieces have to be manufactured. The production shops in the camp cannot fit this order into their plans so the small workshops must carry it out. I suggest that the order be given to the factory. Of course the Chief refuses this. Like everything in the Soviet Union, research is subject to planned economy.

Our project still provides a chopper for the modulation, although this method is not satisfactory. But I must improve it as best I can. I use a Russian oscillograph, which is not powerful enough to indicate the voltage trace of a photo cell in direct connection.

“I need a Philips Oscillograph,” I tell the Chief. There are many wonderful devices here—R.C.A., Marconi and so on, with which the Russian instruments cannot compare. (The Russians know it too, and are often furious about it, but when it comes down to it, they use the best foreign material.) The Chief, however, suspects one of my usual attacks on Russian production.

The following week Malutin informs me that I am to go to Major Iwanow, the Policy Officer. I start on my way with mixed feelings. The Policy Officer has unlimited powers, he is the grand inquisitor of the camp, and neither free citizens nor prisoners want anything to do with him. He can have anyone locked up in the camp if he wants to. I appear before him and he commences in a frightful manner. He asks why I work so badly; whether I have no more interest and whether I knew that my behavior might be put down as sabotage.

Thereupon I request an immediate and searching examination of my work up to now under the supervision of the Chief Engineer.

I am relieved when he calms down again, puts a ticket in front of me to sign and finally lets me leave. I do not know what I have signed but Iwanow explains that I have promised not to speak of our conversation.

The 7th of November approaches and preparations start for this great holiday. All notices and notes must disappear from the writing tables, the floors have to be waxed, the arrangements for tests are surrounded with exhibition items, the paths in the yard are cleaned up and smoothed out. Great holes are dug in the yard and everything that is not needed at once in the laboratories is buried there.

The Commission expected on November 7th must see no surplus material. After the Commission departs everything can be dug up again. An enormous variety of expensive equipment is buried in the holes: countless electron tubes, relays, Gorier transformers, resistors and condensors. Our short wave radio apparatus, whose existence is not known to the Soviets, is assembled for the most part from this material.

A Ten Million Ruble Project Now Schdanow has a new project. Along the coast underwater sound microphones will be installed which will warn of approaching ships. They think that in this way the whole Soviet coast can be guarded. This is very similar to my former work.

All day discussions and conferences in Schdanow’s room follow, Dobroschanski, Arapoff, General Gillesow, the Chief in charge of all “intelligence stations” and some other officers take me in for cross-examination. I argue that as a prisoner I cannot discharge this task; I must have liberty to circulate, to visit other institutes and experts and to carry out countless tests on the coast myself. I would get all that, I am told. I present the objection that millions of rubles might be wasted on fruitless experiments. That did not matter; nothing is too costly for the defense of the fatherland. “And what will you do with me when the rubles are spent and you are not satisfied with the results?” I ask. “If you do what you can and you prove that, nothing can happen to you.” I say that I have no confidence in these promises. I am condemned to 25 years for espionage, although never in my life have I had anything to do with spying. But they have an answer for everything; either they talk to me kindly, saying that I might have my freedom again, or else they point out that in the Soviet Union there are camps for incorrigibles. Finally we agree that I am, first of all, to draw up a plan and to prepare an estimate of costs for a coastal strip 50 kilometers long.

I am assisted by a Russian expert who knows Soviet production like his hip pocket. For weeks we sit over piles of catalogues, calculating the cost of cables, amplifiers, magneto-striction-oscillators, buoys, personnel, experimental and diver ships. A large test tank with soundproof walls is also needed. Estimated cost: ten million rubles.

Soon afterwards Schdanow comes again: I must try to lower the costs from ten million to six million. “It cannot be done,” I say. “It must be done, I will help you,” he answers. He asks me about every detail, what it is needed for, if it cannot be done otherwise. When we have finished I have not given up one kopek. Schdanow will pare it down according to his views, until the amount is reduced to six million rubles. He is afraid that ten million would be too much for the government, and since he wants to handle the whole project in his laboratory, he must lower the costs. A few days later he gives me his new statement and asks me to sign it. I refuse. In the evening I hand a letter to Dobroschanski saying that under existing circumstances I cannot take responsibility for the project.

Then one day Malutin comes to me, tells me to empty my desk, to give up everything, drawing material, books, slide rule, and so forth, and then to come to the Policy Officer. You can hear a pin drop. I pack my things together, bow to Malutin and leave.

I am not the only one. In front of the Policy Officer’s room several other Germans are standing around waiting. Where are we going? To Workuta, where one does the heaviest bodily labor for from ten to 12 hours a day, at 40 below zero; where one can be killed for a piece of bread. When we get there we stand out because of our good clothing. All kinds of riff-raff, mostly criminal prisoners, surround us; anything that we do not hold tight in our hand, we lose in a flash. Someone tears Kurt’s jacket off. Someone tries to do the same to Willi but he resists; a hefty blow with a club from behind cracks his skull. When the guards come, no one dares point out the murderer; we are all terrorized.

In the guard room I meet Professor Aronow,a well-known specialist in hoisting machines. When he hears that I have been in Kutschino, he brightens up and inquires after his son. For a second I don’t know what to say. This slight hesitation is enough for Aronow. “Tell me what is wrong,” he asks quietly. I tell him his son has poisoned himself.

Two years later, ten per cent of the German prisoners at Workuta are put in a truck. When we arrive in a transit camp, we realize a long journey is ahead. We do not know the destination, but certain signs point toward Germany. There are only a few of those who made the journey from Bautzen to Russia in 1949. Most of them are no longer alive.

• Note: The Editors of MI were curious to know why the Reds released Dr. Maar so unexpectedly. Here is his explanation, as contained in a letter to this magazine: “I was sent to Workuta because of my anti-Soviet attitude and because I refused to work on the acoustic project. That I was released after serving five years of a 25-year sentence was tremendous luck. In December ’53 about 400 Germans were released. After much thought we have come to the conclusion that it was a move to establish a friendly ‘climate’ for the impending four-power conference of Dulles, Eden, Bidault and Molotov in Berlin. It was noticeable that only prisoners in good health were released.”

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I WAS A SLAVE-SCIENTIST IN RUSSIA EXCLUSIVE!

An eyewitness report on the fate of German scientists enslaved behind the Iron Curtain.

By Dr. Otto Maar

FOR six months we have been imprisoned in the Bautzen detention camp—the first six months of a 25-year sentence to which we were condemned by a Soviet Military Court for supposed espionage and “anti-Soviet propaganda.” We squat all day on our bunks, because the cell is so small that we cannot move around in it.

One begins to run out of conversation after half a year and the only break comes at meal- times. It is an advantage to have studied physics and mathematics; you find many problems to ponder and in the seclusion of a cell it is easier to think out many of these than when free. But it is tiresome to solve differential equations in your head. A kingdom for a scrap of paper and a pencil!

It is two o’clock in the morning; although the cell is brightly lighted we are fast asleep. Suddenly a heavy key is turned in the lock, a noise that electrifies us. Before the cell door is opened we are wide awake and alert. We have had experience and we know that a visit from the Russian guard, especially at such an unusual hour, bodes no good. If something in our cell displeases him, we may all land in solitary. If he is making his customary search, we may lose valuable bits of our pitiful possessions. A multitude of unpleasant possibilities await us when the key turns in the lock.

The guard appears in the doorway and calls my name; as I answer he merely says, “Dress! Come along!” I roll out my bunk, jump into my uniform and walk out of the cell. My heart is beating in my throat and my whole body trembles.

On the way we are met by a guard and another prisoner, obviously on his way back to the cell. As the two come near us, I cough and whisper in front of me, “What is it?” “Scientists,” says the other. This little talk costs me a kick and a curse in Russian. But I am briefed on the picture. They are taking specialists for some work project. If you remain in Germany, very nice. But if you end up in Russia. . .

In a comfortless basement room sits a Russian in civilian clothes. In a toneless voice and in good German, he asks me to sit down. He takes up a folder, on the cover of which my name appears in Russian, and he turns the pages. After a while he asks me about my profession and my experience up to now. I don’t know how to answer. I try to discover what he knows about me. I describe my education and I throw in a little he or two to see how far I can go. The examination continues: “What did you do during the war?”

I do not like this question because I had worked on the development of an acoustic torpedo and later was technical advisor for acoustic-guided missiles. Naturally I don’t want to let that out here. So I answer, “I trained technical assistants.” The man sneers: “Were you so engaged for the whole war?” Naturally I cannot make that seem credible. “I took acoustical measurements in the Baltic. We had to do research on the transmission characteristics of sea water.” He raises his finger to show me that this answer pleases him better. It is clear that he knows something about me. I realize that the acoustic- controlled torpedo is known to the Reds and I determine to speak as much as possible about things that are already known, saying nothing of things about which they are ignorant. So I describe how, in Danzig Bay, we tested torpedoes which automatically run in the direction of the sounds of ships. In our experiments we had been unable to follow the path of an electric torpedo at a depth of 12 meters, so we had equipped it with reflectors and launched it by night. Then the light spots on the water enabled us to follow its course. At launching tests with predetermined convoy lines this torpedo rushed underneath the target ships, darting from one to the other; I was so busy measuring the sound range of the ships that I could not pay any attention to anything else that went on.

Again I inject a couple of lies: “I was present at a number of test launchings but I never saw the inside of a torpedo.” That is a smooth lie; my listener accepts it. He slaps the folder shut, rings for the guard and I am taken back to my cell. The next victim is brought in.

Weeks go by and I think less and less frequently of my night examination. Either the whole thing has been dropped or else I am of so little interest to the Soviets that they have given me up. It is now December and our thoughts turn to the outer world where Christmas preparations are beginning. The relatives of the countless prisoners will tearfully endeavor to prepare some Christmas cheer for their children. How many more Christmases like this are there to be? In Bautzen alone there are 6,000 prisoners and all are condemned to 25 years. We know that Bautzen is not the only disciplinary camp and we also know that many more prisoners are in the Soviet Union, living under more hopeless conditions behind barbed wire.

Then one day the key again turns in the lock. Again my name is called and this time it is “Pack everything together. Hurry! Hurry!” Again my heart starts beating in my throat. While I pack in great haste, there are parting words with my cellmates. “You know my address. I have yours in my head. If you have the chance to get news to my family, remember that perhaps I will go to Russia. Good luck.” The cell door clangs shut. I stand with the guard alone in the hall. The journey has begun.

On The Way East In the room into which I am taken there are about 20 prisoners with their bundles. We discover we are all scientists and technicians. Each of us receives a piece of bread and a spoonful of marmalade. We swallow the marmalade quickly and put the bread in our bundles. We are handcuffed, then loaded on an open truck and told to he on the floor. A canvas is thrown over us. At the last moment armed guards with dogs climb on the truck. So we travel through the streets of Bautzen.

Our prison wagon is coupled to a passenger train to Berlin. The truck is unheated and we freeze; it is December 14, 1949. In Oberschonhausen we are taken into a prison overnight.

Next day we go back to our truck. After many hours we are coupled to a freight train and start away; our train rolls on and on. Suddenly there is a halt. A train goes by us, stops in the station and the loudspeaker announces: “Frankfurt.” As we start off again we know from the noises of the train that we are passing over the Oder Bridge. No one says a word. Our homeland is behind us. Before us lie 25 years of imprisonment in a foreign land.

We go in chains through Brest-Litowski, accompanied by heavily armed Red guards with dogs. Far ahead there are a few guards who make the crowds stand with their backs to the streets so that no one can see us. We are marched into a prison that surpasses in horror everything we have as yet run into. No artist could ever imagine anything more gruesome than this cheerless, window-less building. We are all locked together in one cell and notice that we have acquired some additions from Sachsenhausen. Now we are 34 men—engineers, mechanics and two glass blowers.

Our morale has sunk lower since we crossed the Russian frontier. Only young Horst L. from Sachsenhausen is optimistic and unaffected by the hopelessness of our situation. While talking with him I learn that he is an excellent high-frequency expert. He has some tobacco and a newspaper, a gift from Russian officers whose radio apparatus he had repaired in camp. For the first time in a year we smoked again. Although it is only Machorka we enjoy it and our morale improves at once.

I also like George N. from Er. He is the oldest of us and gives an impression of calm. He tells us how he had offered to develop an ultrasonic apparatus for fighting cancer for the Russians. His plans interest me and I tell him I am an ultrasonic expert. “Then you are certainly assigned to the project,” he says and I realize that my words at the examination at Bautzen have sealed my fate.

“How long in your opinion do we need to finish it?” I ask George N. I am no doctor but from my professional experiences I know that ultrasonic medicine is still in its infancy and there is nothing certain as to what will come from it. At least it is clear to me that the cancer project is a difficult and extensive task. George, on the contrary, calculates that we will finish it in two years. As I express doubts, he refers to his horoscope which forecasts a two-year stay in a foreign country and then freedom. From this moment onward I cannot believe that he is a scientist.

At The End Of The Journey We spend three weeks on the journey, experiencing all the joys of such transportation. But finally we arrive at Kutschino, a veritable land of sunshine compared with what we had experienced so far. Kutschino is an outer suburb on the eastern border of Moscow, surrounded by forests and very little built up. There is a suburban railway station there and the trains run directly past our camp.

The first thing that strikes us is the courtesy of the guards. The search of our possessions is a mere formality here; the guard merely puts his hands in our bundles and rummages around a little.

Then we are taken to our lodgings. There are no cells but actual rooms; the doors are not locked and we can circulate freely. In the corridors there are prisoners standing around and gazing at us, full of curiosity; our arrival is obviously a welcome break for them. From some rooms comes the sound of music and singing. There are real beds here, a luxury we can hardly believe. The prison houses about 500 prisoners, mostly Russians but also Letts, Esthonians and Poles. We are so worn out with Bautzen and the journey that we make a pitiable impression. So they come to us from all sides and bring white bread, butter, sausage, sugar and cigarettes. Many speak English, others German and so we manage to understand each other.

From our German comrades we learn that Kutschino is a model camp in which only scientists and technical men are housed. But we learn also that one can very quickly find oneself back in one of the ordinary camps. The fact that we are in the Soviet Union weighs on our spirit a little but for the time being, at least, it is only Moscow and not Siberia.

Next morning, when the other prisoners go off to work, they tell us to stay in the prison; someone will fetch us. For half the morning we loaf around; we eat, smoke and shave with borrowed kits. Finally a guard comes and takes us to the Chief Engineer, Colonel Dobroschanski. When my turn comes he asks me very politely how I am. I tell him that he could not expect me to be well, that I have been through a trial and have come from a prison where the bread basket hung extremely high. The interpreter informs me that we shall have time to recuperate. Have I any wishes? My first concern is to write home. But no luck.

“You will not see your home again, reconcile yourself to that. You are only burdening yourself unnecessarily. Why do you want to write? You cannot do anything else except work well here; that is the only possible way to improve your situation. Furthermore, you will not find things bad here.”

These are the words with which the Chief Engineer prepares me for the future. I ask him whether he believes that under such conditions one can work scientifically. Condemned to such a fate, life would have no further meaning. Then, what incentive would one have?

“You have still 25 years to get through,” he answers, “and when that time is past you will have neither the desire nor ability to return to Germany.” His tone is compassionate, almost paternal. “I cannot help you. You are being punished and I have nothing to do with that; I cannot change Soviet laws. No one wants to change them. I can only warn you. If you do not work well here you will pass your 25 years in Workuta. And believe me, you are better off here.”

Other interviews run along the same lines. When we are all through, the guard leads us to the yard. A valuable planing machine is upside down in the mud and we are to get it out. It must have been there a long time as the mud is now frozen and the heavy machine is embedded in it as firmly as if covered with concrete.

While the cross-pickaxes are being fetched, I go over to Karl H., a prominent Communist prisoner. I say to him, “See, this machine belongs to everyone who passes by, that is why no one cares about it. If it had been paid for out of some individual pocket, it would not be lying here.”

It is astounding, all the stuff that is lying around this yard and being ruined. Film projection apparatus, telephones, refrigerators and so forth.

In The Laboratories After a few days we are assigned to workshops. Here are all kinds of laboratories, small and large production shops and a very well-kept library. In the laboratories quartzes are cut, as they are used for stabilizing frequencies; projectors (reflectors) are made; synthetics, ceramics, and insulation materials are developed. A whole section works on apparatus for so-called “border protection.” In the production shops telescopic receivers and magnet phones are built. Everything possible is experimented with here but there is no uniform organization.

The whole camp is barely one kilometer, long and about 500 meters wide. Around it runs a wall, and five meters away from it is a low barbed wire fence. At certain places along the wall are observation towers. Not only prisoners work here but also many “free” persons, including women and girls. Most of them live in Moscow and come to work on the suburban train.

I go to work in two laboratories concurrently. One is a medical laboratory apparently only just opened, as there is practically nothing there except the rooms and furniture. The top man of the section is the prisoner George N. who promises the blue skies above and is laden with grand new plans. His ultrasonic cancer project has been forgotten. Now George has another big idea—encephalography. He will detect the minute electromagnetic impulses of the brain and make them visible on a screen. Something like that was done in Germany and George has doubtless read about it.

Mayronowski, the Russian Colonel in charge of the section, is all fire and flame; he believes that with such a device thoughts could be read. George encourages this belief. I try to caution George to be careful but he does not want to hear any warnings.

We are a wonderful group, understand each other splendidly and we have a Chief who cannot check us. Horst L., the high-frequency expert, begins to build a huge amplifier; that is all he has undertaken to do so nothing can happen to him. I begin to design ultrasonic transmitters of various frequencies and powers. The scope of their tasks is clearly outlined for Werner and Gunter. We are all assured for the time being. Only George keeps us anxious; he is maneuvering himself into a fatal position. He thrusts our warnings aside. “Leave me alone, I shall get along beautifully.” He cannot be shown, we can’t shake his faith in his horoscope.

In the forenoon I work in the boundary “line-projector” section where devices are developed for guarding Soviet frontiers. It consists of three laboratories. The Chief is Major Schdanow, who regards prisoners as the scum of humanity, is basically suspicious and is one of the most dreaded officers in the camp. The technical brains of the section is Major Arapoff, a prominent authority, very polite when contact with the prisoners is limited to technical questions. The chief of my laboratory is Major Malutin, a good-humored moron who has a little technical knowledge and tries on the whole to live on good terms with the prisoners.

After a few days I get an individual interpreter, a splendid fellow. His name is Aljoscha and he is serving a 15-year sentence; he has been a major in the Red army. His first words are: “Don’t trust anyone here—not even your best friend. The only one you can trust here is your mother.”

My first job in the boundary “line-protector” section is a mirror-testing device with which parabolic hollow mirrors in production can be tested by unskilled personnel. For a few days I juggle with a small case, an indicator, a little red lamp and a bell. The mirror to be tested is placed on the case and a crank is turned until a short bell tone is heard. If the mirror has no defect, nothing more happens; otherwise the indicator moves and a little red lamp lights up. The chiefs are enraptured; they take turns playing with it several times a day.

The device needs some improvements; it is at the stage of a good laboratory sample but is still too unhandy for practical use. I tell the chief this but he doesn’t understand me at all. He says that it is too late for changes and improvements as the apparatus is already sold. I protest that a * reputable firm would not sell it. Malutin shakes with laughter, slaps me on the shoulder and tells me that I apparently want to get a prize. A young lieutenant takes the apparatus to its testing place and returns two days later. The factory has found a production fault in it. The acting Minister has said he would like to see the builder of the apparatus but changed his mind when he heard that I was a prisoner.

In the medical lab it is so comfortable that we volunteer for evening work. Each of us has his own table and a desk lamp and no one disturbs us. Gunter can draw very well and he finishes a pack of cards.

He is in love with Nina, a young laboratory worker who is supposed to superintend us on these evenings, and as she is not unresponsive she pays no attention to our activities.

Meanwhile I obtain permission to use the library. It is unusually well arranged. Hardly one of the German standard works in physics, mathematics and technology is missing. Many books have the names of former German owners; among them are acquaintances and high school companions of mine. In the Russian language I discover Robert Pohl’s volumes on experimental physics. I recognize the illustrations and formulas; it seems to be a verbatim translation under the name of a Russian author. An unabashed plagiarism but in time I shall grow used to that.

All the more important science periodicals and books from England, America, France, Italy and Switzerland are here. I learn from the American periodicals how synthetic quartz is manufactured, I find precise descriptions of the newest types of aircraft, detailed articles on military problems, rocket technology, and armored combat arms, and I am surprised at the public manner in which Americans appraise everything. The high point of my discoveries is the 26-volume work of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in which the development of radar during World War II is described. I had been introduced during the war to the development of this enormously important technique but I had never been able to obtain any deep insight into this field. For that I had to come to Moscow!

(Editor’s Note: In the second part of Dr. Maar’s remarkable account of his imprisonment in Russia, to be published in the October issue of MI, he describes the Top Secret “border protection” device he is forced to develop for the Soviets . . . numerous suicides amongst the enslaved German scientists … how the prisoners outwit their Red captors . . . the state of scientific research at Kutschino . .. how Russian engineers cover up their mistakes . . . his transfer to the dreaded prison camp at Workuta and his eventual return to Germany .)

Here is part two.