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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 1825.PDF
FLIGHT, 13 December 1957 915 THE AERONAUTICAL BOOKSHELF "Operation Vanguard" by Werner Buedeler. Burke Publish-ing Company, Ltd., 55 Britton Street, Clerkenwell Road, London, E.C.I. Illustrated. Price 16s. "The Making of a Moon" by Arthur C. Clarke. FrederickMuller, Ltd., Ludgate House, 110 Fleet Street, London, E.C.4. Illustrated. Price 21 s.r 7 would be difficult to review these two books separately. Theyare both published at the same time, they are both an intro- duction to earth satellites and they both need some revision inview of Sputniks I and II. "In due course," Mr. Buedeler says in Operation Vanguard, "American experts will announce theorbits of the satellites" and as a result thousands of people would see man's "first" vehicles in space. Later he says: "In theU.S.S.R., apparently, plans are not yet sufficiently advanced for us to learn what the orbit or orbits of their satellites will be." We may smile at these wrong predictions, but the blamecannot be laid at the door of the two authors. The magnificent Russian achievement has surprised everyone—except probablythe Russians—and in the light of their success these two books are tremendously useful and timely. A wealth of simply statedinformation will help both laymen, and the more technically minded, to understand how satellites work. Operation Vanguard is perhaps the simpler of the two, andmight be regarded as an introduction to Sputnikery, while Mr. Clarke's volume is slightly more technical, though still easilyunderstood and excellently illustrated with all-American pictures. The Making of a Moon is usefully indexed too, and contains moreof the history of the preparation of the American satellite pro- gramme. How useful it would be if an enterprising publisherwere to get a similar book from Russia about how the programme there was brought to fruition. A.C.B. "Ships in the Sky," by John Toland. Frederick Muller, Ltd., Ludgate House, 110 Fleet Street, London, E.C.4. Illustrated. Price 21s. FROM Santos-Dumont to Eckener, from the Shenandoah andthe Italia to the R.101 and the Hindenburg, airships and their designers have always exercised a peculiar fascination on thepublic mind. This was partly because so few dirigibles were built (compared with the numbers of aeroplanes) that each developedan individual personality, its name and exploits catching popular attention. The fascination of airships also arose from the sad factthat so many of their limited number met horrible ends with great loss of life. The Shenandoah was torn in three by a line squall;R.30 broke apart over the Humber; the R.101 suffered a fiery death at Beauvais; the Italia was never seen again after itscontrol-car broke off and crashed on the Arctic ice; and the Hindenburg disintegrated in flames when securing at New Yorkafter a successful Atlantic crossing. Yet though they were involved in so many disasters, airshipsalso made many remarkable flights. In 1917 the German L-59 flew 4,225 miles from Bulgaria to the Sudan and back non-stopwithout incident; the R.34 and the R.100 both completed double Atlantic crossings, likewise without incident; and the Germansmade international airship services a commercial success. Now only the U.S. Navy's blimps remain as tangible remindersof aviation's lighter-than-air era, whose triumphs and tragedies John Toland has painstakingly recorded in a book which shouldappeal equally to airship enthusiasts and to aeronautical connoisseurs. H.W. "Man Unlimited," by Heinz Gartmann. Jonathan Cape, 30Bedford Square, London, W.C.I. Illustrated. Price 18s. ""TRANSLATED from the German by Richard and Clara•*- Winston, this is a record and discussion of modern scientific achievement—not all aeronautical, but all fairly familiar to us.It is the sort of book which exhorts young men and women to make use of modern science, and to help to lead their countriesinto the ranks of the scientifically minded nations of the world. "Flight Today" by J. L. Nayler and E. Ower. Oxford Univer-sity Press, Amen House, Warwick Square, London, E.C.4. Illus- trated. Price 12s 6d. XJERE is a useful introduction to aeronautics which, in this•*-A fourth edition, has been brought right up to date with concise and reasonably elementary explanations of the principles of suchthings as vertical take-off, convertiplanes, guided weapons and the organization of the airways systems. The authors have carefullyavoided using too technical language, so the book may be under- stood by fathers as well as by their young sons. The diagrams,too, are straightforward and easily understood. "An A.B.C. of Aeronautics" by L. L. Beckford, Cassell andCompany, Ltd., 37/38 St. Andrew's Hill, London, E.C.4. Illus- trated. Price 15s. is an accelerometer? What is meant by a free turbine?What does a gyro do? The answers are in An A.B.C. of Aeronautics, a book which should be particularly useful to theever-growing number of people who read aeronautical literature but are baffled by the new words and phrases they meet. Aero-nautics, like other industries, has surrounded itself with a language of its own. This dictionary is an able interpreter of the everydaylanguage of test pilots, aircraft designers and engineers. OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED High-Speed Aerodynamics, by Prof. Dr. Elie Carafoli. PergamonPress, 4-5 Fitzroy Square, London, W.I. Price £5. Sight Reduction Tables for Air Navigation, Vol. 1. H.M. StationeryOffice. Price 25s. Aircraft Hydraulic Design, by George R. Keller. The IndustrialPublishing Corp., 31 Palace Street, London, S.W.I. Price 32s 6d. "Glorious," by Stanley Devon. George G. Harrap and Co., Ltd.Price 18s. Gas Turbine Materials, by G. Lucas and J. F. Pollock. TemplePress, Ltd., Bowling Green Lane, London, W.C.I. Price 25s. The History of Flying, by Charles H. Gibbs-Smitih. CambridgeUniversity Press, 200 Euston Road, London, N.W.I. Price 3s. Zusammensetzung und thermodynamische Funktionen chemischreagierender Feuergase von Kohlenwasserstoff-Luftgemischen, by H. J. Kaeppeler and G. Baumann. Verlag Flugtechnik Stuttgart, Rankestrasse23, Stuttgart-Sillenbuch. Wonderama, by Angela Croome, edited by Eamonn Andrews. Adprint,Ltd., 37 Hertford Street, London, W.I. Price 7s 6d. Wings of Youth, poems by Leonard Taylor. Rolls House PublishingCo., Ltd., 2 Breams Buildings, London, E.C.4. Price 12s 6d. Flight Overseas, by Henry B. Lent. The Macmillan Company,10 South Audley Street, London, W.I. Price 21s. The Brockbank Omnibus, by Russell Brockbank. Michael Joseph,Ltd., 26 Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.I. Price 21s. Jet Aircraft Power Systems (2nd edition), by J. V. Casamassa andRalph D. Bent. McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.", Ltd., 95 Farringdon Street, London, E.C.4. Price 60s. British Battleships, by Dr. Oscar Parkes. Seeley, Service and Co., Ltd.,196 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W.C.2. Price 6 gns. TITANIUM ELECTROPLATED A NEW YORK report says that laboratory experiments by the**- U.S. National Bureau of Standards have indicated the prac- ticability of electroplating, on a commercial scale, light metals suchas magnesium, titanium, zirconium (and their alloys) from solutions. Deposits are obtained by electroplating the metals or theiralloys from organic solvents. Until now electroplating of these materials has not been commercially practicable, because themetals could not be deposited from aqueous solutions in normal fashion. Plating from a bath of molten light metals also provedgenerally unsatisfactory, resulting only in a deposit of flakes or particles. National Bureau of Standards workers dissolved complex com-pounds of the metals in ether, ethyl alcohol and other organic or o: gano-metallic solvents and plated from these solutions. Afters'adying and eliminating many solvents, some of them too dmgerous for commercial use and others not chemically satis-fy ;tory, they found the ethers, particularly ethyl ether, to be the most effective for organic plating baths. Boro-hydrides, hydridesand halides proved to be the most amenable solutes. The experiments also indicated that commercial applications ofthe process could make use of economical conveyer systems rather than fixed-electrode and batch-production methods. GARRETT'S GENEVA OFFICE AN office has been opened in Geneva by the Garrett Corporation•**• to give European customers more direct service and provide additional liaison with companies with which it has licensee manu-facturing agreements. On the staff at Geneva are Mr. B. S. Clark (formerly of Rotol, Ltd.), as the Corporation's senior foreign repre-sentative; Mr. H. W. Whitelock, foreign operations representative; Mr. John Q. Adams (primarily working for Garrett's AiResearchAviation Service Division as sales representative for its"Maximiser" kit for DC-3 aircraft) and Mr. Warren J. Sweetnam, field servicerepresentative for Garrett's AiResearch manufacturing divisions.
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