What an amazing curtain-fall we all watched in the dwindling days of the 1980s: In Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia Communist governments either resigning immediately or promising free elections in the near future; in Bulgaria discussions between the government and the opposition; in Romania, a revolution against the Communist dictator that sadly broke the pattern of reform without bloodshed; the Soviet Union making it all possible by refusing to intervene. Who would have believed it could ever happen? It’s a jolt to those of us who think of history as moving only in majestic cycles. Here is history, with a grin, doing a swift, undignified backflip!
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by Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi; Congressional Quarterly Press; 435 pages. Franklin Roosevelt gave 998 press conferences during his twelve-year stint as President. That’s an average of 6.9 a month, which seems about right for a man who had to explain what he was doing about a national depression and a world war. In contrast, Richard Nixon gave only 37 during his nearly six troubled years in office, averaging one press conference every two months. What this statistic means, the editors of Vital Statistics leave up to the reader. That’s just as well, because interpreting the data in this book is half the fun of reading it.
To a generation of soldiers coping with their experiences in the Vietnam War, the affliction is called posttraumatic stress disorder. To the generation that fought Hitler it was combat fatigue, and to their fathers who had served on the Western Front, shell shock. Whatever the name, the roots of PTSD go back well beyond the American Civil War, and in a powerful essay, the military historian Roger J. Spiller seeks out the historical antecedents of one of the bleakest legacies of our effort in Southeast Asia.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike turns fifty this year, and it has so transformed travel in this nation that it is difficult now to imagine the country before it was laid down. Our first superhighway was a superb piece of engineering from beginning to end—but that beginning goes back to the day of the railroad barons and a line that William Henry Vanderbilt eventually abandoned. Dan Cupper tells the whole story and shows how nineteenth-century railroad engineers put their impress on the automobile age.
A marvelous menagerie of animal sculpture … the latest installment in our American house-styles series, this one focusing on Addison Mizner’s Mediterranean fantasies … the amazingly influential Dorothy Thompson … historic Las Vegas … and, in keeping with the vernal richness and promise of the season, more.
Albert B. Stephenson’s “Secrets of the Model T” (July/August) revived my memory of two Fords—a 1915 touring car and a 1921 coupe. Mr. Stephenson touched on many of the T’s idiosyncrasies, and I should like to add one more, the lighting system.
Early models depended on acetylene to fuel the headlights. By 1915 the two electric headlight bulbs, wired in series, were powered by the magneto. At highway speed (thirty miles per hour) the lighting was adequate. At ten miles per hour there was only a glow, unless the driver depressed the left foot lever to low gear while advancing the throttle lever with his right hand. If one bulb burned out, the other could be rewired. It would burn brilliantly but briefly before failing. The single tail light was kerosene and produced mostly heat.
By 1921 the essentials of a modern electrical system—steady lights, battery, generator, and even a starter— were available.
British Airways’ “Privileged Traveller” program will be of special interest to World War II vets visiting England. Available to people sixty years of age and older, it offers an additional 10 percent discount on virtually any discounted U.S.-Great Britain fare; waiver of all cancellation and change-of-reservation penalties normally attached to discounted fares; and 10 percent discounts on all land arrangements that are part of BA’s vacations programs. Benefits may be extended to one companion over the age of fifty traveling the same dates and itinerary. For details contact British Airways (1-800-247-9297).
George F. Paul’s letter in the November 1989 issue says it was a fairly long wait until laterally cut disc recordings became either cheaper or better than vertically cut cylinders, which would tend to make one wonder how the disc won out.
In point of fact, the disc recording was both cheaper and better. Disc records were cheaper to make because they could be molded, while cylinders had to be individually cut: The “flashing” where the two mold halves meet occurs on the unplayed edge of a disc, but twice per groove in a cylinder. (Eventually, the cylinder people solved that, but it took a while.) That being the case, I imagine that either the price of disc recordings soon dropped below that of cylinders or an increased profit margin on discs encouraged dealers to push them.
Discs are also a far more compact storage medium. Discs stack flat, with little wasted space; when you store cylinders, you store a quantity of air inside each one’s center tunnel.