Letters: Picture this
I have just come across the interesting article on the history and
development of the Fax machine (‘Just give me the fax’, 13 February). This
awakened memories for me. In the autumn of 1937 I joined the drawing office
staff of what was then John Thompson Watertube Boilers Ltd of Ettingshall,
Wolverhampton (now, through many changes and takeovers, a part of
Rolls-Royce).
Among the many contracts then in hand was one for an Australian power
station ‘Newport B’ and John Thompson’s Melbourne office was responsible for
the erection and commissioning.
One of our design directors at Ettingshall occasionally clarified design
points with Melbourne office by sending them what he called ‘picturegrams’.
This was done via the Post Office and it involved the making of a sketch
of the item to be clarified, with the important lines accentuated, and of a
specified size for transmission. Confirmation to Melbourne would always
follow by airmail, taking longer, of course.
Perhaps other readers may have had experience of this ‘picturegram’ process.
L. C. Dipper
Wolverhampton
Letters: Tree power
Recent articles in New 杏吧原创 have covered methods of reducing global
warming by the generation of electricity by alternative technology. Trees
appear to be a key consideration for landscaping, carbon fixation and soil
conservation. New work on plant neurology suggests that plant cells react to
movement, perhaps by wind, and cause a change in electric potential.
Is anyone by genetic engineering designing a tree which could produce
electricity without going through the carbon cycle? What a wonderful
prospect this would be, compared to the steel, silicon and concrete
structures creeping up on us.
If anyone has any suggestions, we are a small discussion group, named after
an 11th century monk of this Abbey, who was the first man to fly, and we
would be pleased to assist on this project.
Maxwell Woosnam
The Eilmer Quorum
Malmesbury, Wiltshire
Letters: Jurassic classic
Has anyone else noticed that all the advance publicity material for the new
film Jurassic Park actually features a Cretaceous dinosaur?
Dougal Dixon
Wareham, Dorset
Letters: Ornamental
The Warren Spring/Technical Development (UK) controversy (Technology, 15
May) raises a wider issue of some importance. I am particularly aware of
this because I have seen the disputed ‘commentary’; it was passed to me by
an Ecoflow dealer some weeks ago, bound to what appeared to be the full
texts of the Laboratory’s two reports. I commented adversely, at some
length, on all three documents.
The reports clearly reveal a fact which is inferable from your article –
that the contracted study was incapable of yielding firm evidence either
for or against the manufacturer’s claim for the Ecoflow. To obtain such
evidence, a different and far more expensive study would be required.
Why then did Warren Spring undertake a largely ornamental study?
Apparently, because the customer requested it and the laboratory had a
financial target to meet. To what extent is this typical of the approach of
agentised government research and development to commissioned work? One
hopes that financial imperative has not overshadowed professional judgement
in the agencies to an extent that valuable resources are being committed
widely to work of doubtful purpose and value.
David Adair
Pangbourne, Berkshire
Letters: Defence drain
I was very interested to read Michael Kenward’s article ‘How the West could
lose the peace’ (8 May). May I suggest that his understanding of the
situation is exactly wrong. He appears to be claiming that massive national
investment in defence-related research and development has been of great
benefit to the British and US economies. Rather surprising then that the
two most industrially successful countries during the cold war have been
Japan and Germany, both prevented by their constitutions from developing
large collections of military hardware.
Michael Kenward provides a couple of minor examples of defence
technologies, which have contributed to the development of commercial
devices. This is like trying to justify the cost of the Apollo Moon
programme on the basis that it gave us nonstick frying pans.
Recently, our hallowed leaders were extolling the virtues of spending tens
of billions on the new Euro-fighter, in order to preserve a few thousand
defence jobs for another five years. The sums simply don’t add up. If the
money spent developing Nimrod, Trident, etc, had been invested in things
which were actually useful, Britain could still have been a major industrial
nation.
What we are left with is the pathetic sight of some of Britain’s
potentially most important technological companies – GEC, Plessey, British
Aerospace, and the like – almost wholly reliant on contracts from the
Minist ry of Defence. As for selling fighter aircraft, and myriads of other
weapons systems, to Middle Eastern and developing nations, well, we all know
how beneficial that is.
Martin Morrey
Loughborough, Leicestershire
Letters: Yes, but who?
It has been some time since I have read an article as sane as Bob Whelan’s
‘Who will foster the seedlings of the future?’ (Forum, 15 May). I agree
completely with his main assertion that ‘we should be investing much more in
technology and engineering’ in order to improve economic growth.
The problems are: who are ‘we’ – the government, when it has a huge budget
deficit? the private sector, which in Britain does not have that great a
record in investment? – and how do ‘we’ invest?
Even ignoring this, Britain would need a miraculous culture change. Where
are all the engineers and technologists going to come from, when education
levels are so poor compared to those of other countries? Are they going to
be given enough status and money to be attracted to British industry? Is
wealth creation going to be encouraged instead of sneered at?
Are the British public and government committed to economic growth and
wealth creation, enough to make them willing to undergo the large social
changes required? I don’t think so.
James Upson
London
Letters: Paradise found
I have only just seen your article titled ‘Satellite uncovers ancient
Arabian river’ (This Week, 3 April). It struck me because several years ago
I began an article on the role of the Sumerian legends of the land of
Dilmun in the origins of utopian thought. I put this theme aside in favour
of an easier piece on utopian thought in the city laments of Mesopotamia.
And then, recently, I took the students in my ‘Great Books’ series through
Genesis and pondered again with them the mystery of the missing river of
Genesis 2:11.
Given the persistent legends in Sumeria 6000 years ago that the Blackheaded
People (Sumerians) came to the Land of the Two Rivers from the south, and
their affection in their myth and legend for the mysterious delights of
Dilmun, their Eden, which archaeologists today identify in Bahrain, I think
your Farouk El-Baz has found the River Pishon for us. After all, if you were
Yahweh and wanted to hide paradise from sinful descendants of Adam, what
better place than under the sands of Kuwait?
I think the Kuwaiti tourist ministry should begin plans for floods of eager
visitors, and perhaps contact Disney to plan a theme park. That is, unless a
big guy with a flaming sword shows up to stop the bulldozers.
Michael Orth
San Luis Obispo, California
Letters: Not depressing
In your 17 April supplement, ‘Mind and Body’, Susan Katz Miller suggests
that women tend to become depressed because they require an average of 9.75
hours’ sleep per day, while men can get by on 8.4 hours.
Even if women are awake less of the time, though, they live longer. Current
life expectancies at birth are 79.73 years for women, 73.04 years for men
(1992 Canadian data).
Thus men have a ‘wakefulness expectancy’ of 47.476 years, versus women’s
47.34 years. This difference is less than 0.3 per cent, or about two months.
It really does not seem worth getting depressed about.
Dave Duncan
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Letters: Unblurred vision
In the article ‘Tiny brother is watching you’ (8 May) you show examples of
computer enhancement of deliberately blurred photographs.
I can get a much better simulation of the original by looking at the blurred
version through half-closed quivering eyelashes.
Why is this?
Peter Dean
La Hulpe, Belgium
Letters: What a waste
May I respectfully correct the comment made by Tam Dalyell on the timetable
for the commencement of the new waste management licensing regime (Forum, 8
May). He states that the system came into effect on 1 April 1993. It was
supposed to have commenced by then but the Secretary of State decided to
delay the issue until 1 June 1993. To confuse matters further the minister
has recently announced that this new date cannot be achieved and no new date
is forthcoming. In fact we have had more false starts than the Grand
National.
David Molloy
Humberside County Council
Letters: Deserved place
While I can understand that limitations of space precluded Neil Harris from
naming all 20 universities offering pharmacology degrees (Careers, 1 May),
his abridged list was selective in not including any of the new
universities/former polytechnics. At the University of East London, we have
been running both sandwich BSc degrees and part-time and part-time MSc in
pharmacology for over 20 years.
In offering the three types of course referred to in the article, our
University must be unique, and therefore I believe deserving of a mention
from Neil Harris.
Alun Morinan
University of East London
Letters: Monomania
It has come to my notice recently that monopoles, magnets which have a like
pole at either end and the opposite pole in the middle, are stimulating
extreme interest, especially in Japan. Indeed, I recently received two
samples that had been painstakingly made in Japanese laboratories by placing
steel bars in contra-wound coils in series carrying a DC current.
To me, it seemed that by clamping two ordinary bar magnets together where
their same poles meet, you could achieve the same effect with far less fuss,
so I tried it and it worked. Observations with a compass showed that at a
given distance from the magnet surface, the force at the centre was twice
that at the ends.
Seeing that this worked, I wonder what would happen if the idea was extended
to four magnets linked together at the hub by their same poles, then eight
magnets, and so on until you had a disc with a rim and core of opposite
polarities? And what about extending that to a sphere? What happens to the
core polarity and the magnetic field? What would happen if this sphere were
placed inside another whose inside surface was of opposite polarity, for
example? These intriguing possibilities sprang to mind, and I wonder whether
any of your readers have any answers to these riddles.
Pat Delgado
Alresford, Hampshire
Letters: The mind's eye
It was in the early 1970s that I first discovered the ‘Holister Effect’.
During a visit to the optician’s for an eye checkup I was astonished to
find that, while the optician was inspecting my eyes through his
opthalmascope, for a few moments I saw what, presumably, he was seeing – a
perfect image of my retina. When I asked if any other patients had commented
on this, he said no.
Excited by my discovery I borrowed an opthalmascope and conducted a series
of home experiments. After many attempts I found that by gazing at the
opposite wall while shining the light source into one eye from one side
(about 30 degrees from the axis of my gaze), a position of the light source
could be found which produced a flash of pink light in the illuminated eye
(any small light source worked, the opthalmascope was unnecessary). Holding
this position for a few seconds permitted me to focus on the detailed
structure within the initial blur of pink light: a perfect image of my
retina; sharp black blood vessels standing out in remarkable detail on a
pink background.
First, I assume that the cornea must have a small degree of internal
reflection, probably at its external surface. If so, then when the retina is
illuminated, any point on it will receive a reflected image of a
corresponding point elsewhere on the retina, and vice versa.
I further assume that when one succeeds in focusing on the retinal detail,
the eye lens has adjusted itself to view the reflected image on the
corneal surface. The visual effect is similar to looking out of a window at
twilight and seeing a reflection of the illuminated room as well as the
external view.
I would appreciate readers’ comments on both the phenomenon and my
explanation of it. If neither the nature of the effect nor my explanation is
refuted then I hereby claim the right to entitle it ‘The Holister Effect’.
G. S. Holister
Buis les Baronnies, France