Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THE NEWBERRY SUN. NEWBERRY. S. C. Washington Di&est; Will Stratovision Arrive? They're Working on It Nov/ ByBAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. * WASHINGTON.—“Is television here to stay?” That has been the favorite crack in AM (regular broad casting) circles for some time. Now it’s been displaced by another: “Will stratovision arrive?” It it doesn’t, say the enthusiastic stratospheric promoters, millions of people in rural areas will be unable to receive television programs tor ye? n, it ever. What is “it”? “The stratovision system simply nts the antennae and television transmitter in an airplane flying in lazy circles above the earth,” they explain, "and the shortwave sent out from this airborne antennae blankets the earth’s sur face like a great inverted ice cream cone and covers an area approxi mately 500 miles across.” Since television waves travel in a straight line and net in high, leaping loops like long wave radio, their range is limited, fast as human sight is limited. You can’t see nearly as far on a level city street as you can from the top of a mountain. That parallel isn’t an exact one, but it’s a good rough comparison. So television waves have to travel an a special cable underneath tne ground (co-axial cable), or else leap from one high tower to an other (microwave relay). And the farthest they can travel is some 35 to 50 miles. But stratovisioiv waves come from a transmitter as high as the plane carrying the transmit ter can fly, 30,000 feet, we’ll say. What abont storms? Well the stratospherites say they miss most of them at that height, and anyhow, they can use more than one equipped plane, so they can shift the point of transmission •f a program from one to the ether and thus dodge the storm. They insist that they have al ready demonstrated that this is possible, that they can deliver. I haven’t seen any of the recent tests so I don’t know. Naturally the oldtimers (although the oldest oldtimers in television are still pret ty new) are skeptical. After a test held recently in Zanesville, Ohio, for the benefit of newspaper and ra dio folk, many were still skeptical. It was admitted that conditions on the test day were not ideal by any means and it was claimed that there was interference from other stations which would be eliminated. Variety magazine’s correspondent, a keen observer of radio, said: "Demonstration proved that the higher the altitude, the clearer and more extensive the pick-up. For all practical purposes, though, the spe cific, physical certainty of the un derground co-axial or the thru-the- air, microwave relay would seem to have the networking edge for the time being.” ("Be not the first by whom the new is tried. . The backers of the new system, Westinghouse Radio Stations, In corporated, think differently. Their This is the experimental strato vision station—a modified B-29, flying at an altitude of 25,000 feet. request for a commercial license was turned down by the FCC last month but they expect require ments to be altered. Glenn Martin, whose aircraft company thought enough of the idea to WKk out the developments of the aviation end said: “Flying tlys transmitter is one of the greatest single ad vances in the history of televi sion.” I talked with one of the very earnest young men who are at tempting to convert the skeptics. He seemed to have no doubts that the method equalled any other. In fact he thought that competitors would fight it because it was so good. The whole thing is a young man’s idea. He is C. E. (Chili) Nobles, 30-year-old radar expert whose wbrk in that field was a valuable war time contribution. He is a Texan (hence the nickname, I suppose) and the story is that the idea first struck him when he was flying a plane high above his home. As he ran over the various fig ures which were in the back of his mind, the number of miles his home was from the nearest big city, the altitude and the various other cal- BAUKHAGE dilations formulae, logarithms and assorted humorous material which an electronic engineer toys with in stead of reciting limericks to him self to pass away the time, he sud denly thought: "If I only had a television transmitter with me, and my folks had a set, and if I had some other planes for relays, they could get the same televi sion programs New York does.” *T suppose long hours of intense work on military radar had so crowded my mind with details of its operation that I looked for radar possibilities in everything I saw.” the young stratovision creator said afterward. “Radio already had proven its adaptability and value for airplane communications and in navigational aids, including blind flying. Turning these facts over mentally, I concluded that Westing- house already had at hand basic engineering information which seemed to Justify the ambitious plan.” He sold the idea to Westinghouse and Glenn Martin and they went ahead and backed his extensive, not C. E. Nobles, originator of the stratovision airborne television system, is shown at the twin video monitoring boards in the experi mental stratovision plane. to say expensive, experimentation. I caught some of the enthusiasm which I know "Chili" must radiate from the young man who sat across the table from me explaining the drawings. "Think of what stratovision would mean to the readers of your col umn,” he said. “We only asked for a license for one station but with more we could link up the Pacific and Atlantic coasts so that we could pick up Hollywood and New York studios (I don’t know why he left out Chi cago) with only eight planes flying 400 miles apart. By adding six planes to the system to cover the Northwest and Southeast we could serve 78 per cent of the popula tion!” And once we got the rural televisers looking, I thought, what a lot of new material would be put into the telecasts to say nothing of the greatly broadened market for television sets and advertising which would be created. The first stratovision experiments established the surprising fact that there were lots of television sets in areas which could not possibly be reached ordinarily (by co-axial ca ble or microwave). At the first call for response to the test pro grams many letters came from such areas. Probably amateurs who had built their own sets, and perhaps erected their own anten nae on some high elevation. It would seem that the country is willing to try the Nobles experi ment if it gets the chance. • • • The Russians, after claiming that not Marconi but a Russian invented wireless telegraphy, now are say ing that the electric bulb, the flash light, the transformer and electric welding all started in Russia. Next thing you know they’ll claim an in vention of the one thing which could make Ananias turn in his grave. • • • To get the most fun and enjoy ment from bicycling, it is well to know a few simple things about buying one, says the bicycle in formation bureau. One thing it might be well to know is whether you have enough money to pay for it. • • • The biggest microscope can’t see the cold germ but you can hear a couple of thousand coming in a sneeze. • • • The garden-type apartment is the latest thing in "tenant convenience,” says ‘the Urban Land Institute. About the only thing I was ever able to plant in an apartment was an electric light bulb but any Wash ington flat-dweller can raise quite a herd of buffalo moths. BOUGH ON SPIES . . . Bep. I. Parnell Thomas (R., N. J.), chairman of the house un-Amer ican activities committee, re leased a report on the group’s atom bomb spy probe which called for prosecution of four Americans suspected of con spiracy with Russia. LIFE AHEAD ... Remember Forrest “Nubbins” Hoffman of Cheyenne, Wyo., who four years ago was near death from a kid ney ailment? He started to school this year. RAIL PRETTY . . . Miss Kath leen Duffy, 21, “Miss North Western,” was selected queen of the Chicago Railroad Fair in competition with beauteous en trants representing other rail roads. BEGORRA, SENOR . .. “KUtar- tan Fanny,” three - month - old Irish wolfhound puppy whose mother came from Ireland, has gone to Peru. The dog was a passenger on a recent one-day flight from New York to Lima via Peruvian International Air ways. ZE CHAMP . . . Marcel Cerdan, the hirsute French fighter, was one of the few who thought he would beat Tony Zale for the middleweight boxing champion ship. He did it, too, by a knock out in the 12th round. HURRICANE HUDDLE . . . The tropical hurricane that battered its way through central Florida is over now, but it was plenty violent while It lasted. Although the main blow missed Miami, winds of hur ricane force occasionally swept through the city, causing many residents to flock into the 59 storm shelters opened by the Red Cross. This is the way they bedded down in one of the shelters while waiting for the storm danger to pass. STASSEN’S BACK IN COLLEGE . . . Harold E. Stassen, former gov ernor of Minnesota and defeated aspirant for GOP presidential nomina tion this year, now has retired into the relative seclusion of the ivied halls of learning. Recently elected president of the University of Penn sylvania, Stassen is shown entering his office at the beginning of the school year. He intends to retain an active interest in politics. ,• GLACIERS ON THE MOVE . . . From two miles up and 10 miles distant a coast guard camera records the Joining of two Greenland glaciers as they proceed to a fjord to deposit their iceberg quota. Under tremendous pressure of mountain top ice caps, these glaciers inch along, winter and summer, moving as much as 50 feet a day—which is pretty speedy for a glacier. ALL DOLLED UP ... In 10 years or so nine-month-old Jesse Rot- man of Chicago might not like to be reminded of the fact that he once looked precious enough to have a doll modeled after him, but he’s enjoying it now. A toy company official was so smitten with. Jesse’s doll-like appearance that he had a life-size replica of him made. Soon thousands of children will be playing with Jesse’s in animate counterparts. Dollar-an-Hour Man W HEN and if Harry Trumar leaves the White House, h« will have saved—up until 1948—just about $4,000 a year out of the total $75,000 annual salary which the pee pie of the United States pay their presidents. In the year 1948, thanks to a Republican tax cut, Mr. Tru man will save more. | The President sat down with pa per and pencil the other day and figured that his job as president had paid him only $1 an hour—up until the GOP tax cut. He estimated that, getting up early in the morning ai he always does, he had averaged* 4,200 hours a year on the job. After taxes and other heavy expenses oi entertaining and travel, he saved $4,000 the first y’ear and $4,200 the second—or about one dollar an hour. However, in 1948, thanks to the Republican tax cut, his net income will be $12,090. “And I vetoed that bin,” chuckled the President. Today Mr. Truman is out on the hustings trying to break through his usual wall of bodyguards, servants and secretaries in order to show the people his human side. The truth is, that despite the steady stream of callers Truipan receives daily and the reams written about him, only a few close friends know the real man inside the White House. Actually, he is a lonesome man. Not many people know, for in stance, that Truman keeps two large anthologies of poems on a desk by his bedside and, before dropping off to sleep at night, likes to prop him self up in bed and read from the classics. His favorites are Shelley and Keats, but he can also recite at length from “Alice in Wonderland.” One passage the President likes to quote is the Red Queen’s remark to Alice: “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” Truman also likes to read history —especially the biographies and au tobiographies of his predecessors— because, he told a friend, “It i» men who make history." • • • Historian Truman Truman’s secret ambition is to write the history of his own admin istration, but it will have to wait until his term is finished. “There are times when I make np my mind I am going to do it and I start assembling my thonghts,” he confided to a friend. “Then the pressure work forces me to drop it. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.” He complained that the public never knows the true history of a period until long after it is past and sometimes forgotten. “The trouble,” he grumbled, “is that people have to depend on Drew Pearson and the Alsop brothers for their information.” As a boy the President used to crawl out of bed at 5 a. m. to prac tice on the piano for two hours, and he still gets up early. He has more important things to do now. * • • Presidential Peeve President Truman’s pet peeve is the way Senator Ferguson of Michi gan has handled the former war in vestigating committee. "/ built that committee into one of the finest on the hill,” the Presi dent complained bitterly to an as sociate. "Since Ferguson has taken over, he made it into a garbage company.” * • • Merry-Go>Round George Allen, ex-White House Jester, is reported pulling backstage wires to block the sale of the gov- emment’e Cleveland blast furnace to Henry Kaiser. George, a director of Republic Steel, performed one of the greatest political favors for Tru man. He persuaded Eisenhower not to run for president. . .. Joe Jacobs, a career man, will be new U. S. am bassador to Czechoslovakia. . . . The Republican national committee has hired Fred McLaughlin, high- powered Boston public • relations man, to make a political survey in the so-called border states. . . . CIO officials believe that Communist-con trolled and left-wing CIO unions will split off from the national organiza tion by the end of 1948 and form an all-left-wing third party labor move ment. • • • Under the Dome Down-to-earth Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley isn’t the kind who will pull his rank—even on an enlisted man. Not long ago a sergeant was assigned to help Bradley move some belongings to his new quarters. In stead of turning the job over en tirely to the sergeant. General Brad ley pitched in and helped haul the baggage himself. In fact, Bradley made eight trips, the sergeant only seven. . . . President Truman has told intimates that if he’s re-elected. Secretary of the Army Royall won’t be around much. INTOXICATED AUTO DRIVERS Another annual conference of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Commissioners has just been held and we never read its speeches and • conclusions without feeling that old time vaudeville is back. This time the usual alarm over the souse at the auto wheel is voiced and the belief expressed that “chemical tests be made to determine the degree of drunken ness of any motorist arrested for, or suspected of, being intoxicated.” What difference does it make? Is It okay if the driver of a high powered car is only slightly pickled? Is it an extenuating circumstance if he is only half drank? Is-there a fine line be tween roaring down a crowded street two-thirds intoxicated and 100 per cent cracked? A We cling to the childish notion that the wheel of a sedan, bus, beach wagon or truck is no place for an operator who is even partly stiff. And, while we are aware that the courts are hard to convince, we hold the cause of safer traffic will never be aided by the discharge of wild drivers on a ruling that the chemical test revealed the maniac wasn’t as drunk as he seemed. • -The motor vehicle commis sioners noted “difficulty proving reckless driving due to drunk enness and other factors” in the courts. Difficulty is an un derstatement, brother. But the politicians, the fixers and the smoothies in the profession of law will give their customary all-star performance, even against a chemical report. « And you will be surprised how many judges will rule that the lad who drove through the school zone in an alcoholic haze should be* freed with a $5 fine and put back into heavy traffic with bis breath still showing. • Motor vehicle commissioners, you amaze us. You know very well that there is no serious enforce ment of motor vehicle laws any where, that the highways are jammed with drivers with one or more arrests for drunkenness, that politicians leap to the rescue of the fricasseed operator with the speed of light and that too many motor vehicle commissioners, being po litical footballs themselves, express resentment only at annual conven tions. The convention delegates also came out for more stringent operating license tests. This ac tion was also in the orthodox pattern. This routine has been followed ever since the “999” first frightened horses in the streets of Detroit. Pay no at tention. The prevailing tests wouldn’t prove a man fit to op erate a scooter in a back alley. Anybody is allowed to drive an auto who can wiggle his ears, give his full name correctly and promise not to drive while blindfolded. • There was never a time in his tory when there were so many auto drivers loose who have never been told it was wrong to pass cars on the right side, turn corners Inside the center of intersections, take sharp turns at 50 miles per hour, beat the traffic tight and re gard the white line as wholly fic tional. Back to, your comers, com missioners! And how abput a chem ical test to determine sincerity in the war against murder on the broad highways everywhere? (You, too, judge!) New Car Complaints The Auto Club of New York says it is deluged with complaints about new model automobiles. Buyers charge that they are hard to han dle and park, that the business of building fenders and lamps all into one sheet of metal make repairs exhorbitant, that the bumpers are useless and that many so-called in novations are a pain in, the neck. B- _ Well, It seems to this depart ment, too, that the car builders have a lot to answer for. We have seen some models on which the “bumpers” could be used only in jest. They are so close to the body that, by the time the bumper is hit, the rest of the car has been wrecked. • I • Drama Critics Disagree "Even a little bit of Morey Amster dam would be quite a lot in the happi est of circumstances. He is a mediocre wag with tiresome persistence”— Brooks Atkinson. • "Amsterdam has a nice per sonality.”—Robert Coleman. • • • "Henry Wallace Blames North fos Southern Egg Hurling."—Headline. • Just trying to bring on an other civil war, oh, Henry? Mother, you know what won derful relief you get when you rub on Vicks VapoRub! Now... when your child wakes up in the night tormented with a croupy cough of a cold, here’s a special way to use Vicks VapoRub. It’s VapoRub Steam —and it brings relief almost instantly! Put a good spoonful of Vicks VapoRub in a bowl of I water or vaporizer. Then your child breathe In the soothing VapoRub Steam. Med icated vapors penetrate deep into cold-congested upper bron- X tubes and, relief with' every breath! .W Va^RuU V 7 DAYS WILL DOIT YES, in just 7 days... in one short week. .»• a group of people who changed from their | old dentifrices to Calox Tooth Powder aver- aged 38% brighter teeth by scientific test. Why not change to Calox yourself? Buy Calox today ... so your teeth can start looking brighter tomorrow! CALOX McKesson A Robbins Inc, Bridgeport, Comu ITS ASPIRIN AT ITS BEST St.Joseph aspirin WORLDS LARGEST SELLER AT 10 TO RELIEVE MISERY OF C0LDS$& jjQUID OR TABLETS-SAME MSTIHin CONSTX?^' ' PEP? Comes from a clear intestinal . * tract—for 50 years Lane’s turn been a chosen household remedy 1 tst miisi iciei in run st RHEUMATISM NEURITIS-LUMBAGO MCNEILS MAGIC REMEDY BRINGS BLESSED RELIEF I Largs Bottle,:« n—l’UO-SnuH Siz* Mel » CtITItl: III HIT II IIKCTEI « f mu tiai im stills •< n iqt w itciin it rikt I lucltll III! Cl, 1st, JltHlirim I, Ttownl When Your Back Hurts - And Your Strength and Energy la Below Par It may be caused by disorder of trie- ney function that permits poisonous waste to accumulate. For truly many people feel tired, weak and miserable when the kidneys fail to remove excess acids and other waste matter from tbs blood. You may suffer nagging backache, rheumatic pains, headaches, dizziness, getting up nights, leg pains, swelling. Sometimes frequent ana scanty uriba- tion with smarting and burning is an other sign that something is wrong with the kidnevs or bladder. There should l treatment is wiser than neglect. Doan’* Pills. It is better to rely on s