War Gases Wheel Chart

Prior to the start of the Second World War the British Government thought that German bombing would be more devastating than it actually was. They also thought that the Germans would use chemical warfare and drop gas bombs on British cities. An advisor to the government – Liddell Hart – told the government to expect 250,000 deaths in the first week of the war alone. The fears were not unreasonable. War gases had, had a terrible effect on soldiers in the First World War.

Children were evacuated from major cities, everybody was given a gas mask and information on war gases was issued.

In 1938 WA & AC Churchman issued a set of 48 cigarette cards  dealing with  Air-Raid Precautions. Fifteen of the cards dealt with precautions against gas attack.

The full set of cards.

The pamphlet below was issued by the Ministry of Home Security. Though the gases listed sound very nasty they were mainly of WW1 vintage and the advice was out of date. In the late 1930s the Germans had developed far deadlier gases, including the nerve agents  tabun and sarin. Gas masks would not have been much use. Sarin can kill by being absorbed through the skin.

The same information was also distributed in the in the form of a wheel chart.

An alien message in our DNA

The BBC’s World Service Discovery programme [podcast] recently broadcast a piece on SETI and the Drake Equation. This included a segment [at 13 minutes into the podcast] from Professor Paul Davies [link  link] about his theory that our genes may contain a message placed there by aliens who visited our planet  millions of years ago.

Imagine an alien starship visiting Earth one to two million years ago. They want to leave a message for other explorers who may visit later. Perhaps millions of years later [slower than light travel has long time scales]. The problem is how to leave a message that stands a chance of enduring. Any building will soon disappear. Any message carved into a mountain would erode. A monolith would be swallowed by the earth.

Probably the only message which will stand a chance of enduring is one which multiplies, disperses and constantly renews itself. A living creature. So they created Homo Erectus, embedded a message in his genes and set him loose. Then they departed.  Their creation might not survive, but it is the best they can do. Anyway, maybe the message is not very important.

Davies does not think this likely, but suggests that it would be cheap and easy to check with modern technology.

When I read this I remembered that I had seen this idea, of an alien message in our genes, many years before. In a science fiction story.  A bit of research recovered the story. It appeared in the July 1965 edition of Analog Science Fiction. The stories title was Though a Sparrow Fall and the authors name was given as Scott Nichols. Nichols was a nom de plume of a well known author called Thomas N. Scortia. The three page story was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1966.

The story is  remarkable imaginative given that it had only been twelve years since Crick and Watson had published their articles in Nature about the structure of DNA.

The punchline is excellent.

Three Nestler Cold War Calculators

These cold war calculators were produced by the West German slide rule manufacturer,  Nestler. All three appear to be designed for military use, rather than civil defence or war gaming purposes.

Commander’s Weapons Effect Estimator

The Commander’s Weapons Effect Estimator would allow military commanders who were considering using nuclear weapons to estimate the damage done to various targets by air burst and ground burst nuclear weapons. One side could calculate  the damage resulting from an air burst; the other from a surface burst.  I do not think that any of the scales deals with fallout. The amount of fallout generated would be the main difference between air and surface bursts.

BRL Nuclear Weapons Effects Computers 1, 2 and 3

Nuclear weapons effects computers one and two were produced by  Blundell Rules Limited [BRL] of Weymouth, England.   They have BRLs name on the back. Number 1 dates from about 1960.

They could be used calculate the  consequences of a nuclear attack on a British target, most likely a city. The magnitude of the burst is set (in kilotons or megatons) and the calculator estimates, for various distances from ground zero, the damage to buildings, the crater dimensions, the percent of the population killed, trapped, and seriously injured. The back of the calculators have tables that estimates the extent of the resulting fires.

Number three’s design is significantly different and  does not have BRL’s name on its back. Number one was issued to the Royal Observer Corps during the Cold War. I do not know if versions two and three were also used by the ROC.

The shaded areas under the cursors are a scanning artefact and are not present on the calculators.

Forgotten History

I will keep updating this list of objects or practices which were once common but  rarely or never appear in books, films or on TV.

1.    Addiators – mechanical pocket calculators.  These were made by the hundreds of thousands up to 1975.  I have several posts on these.

2     Moonlight towers – an early form of street lighting.   Many cities had these towers.  See my post on these.

Strange History – Moonlight towers

The excellent Low-tech Magazine has a fascinating article on moonlight towers.

In the early days of electric street lighting it was difficult and expensive to install street lamps similar to those we know now. Instead, many cities installed moonlight towers. These were towers fitted with several powerful  electric arc lamps.  The light from these towers  could light areas several thousand feet in diameter. Some of the towers were as much as 90 metres [300 feet] high.  The light intensity was apparently about equal to moonlight, hence the name for the towers.

Some European cities had them, but they were more common in US cities [Detroit had 122].  Austin, Texas installed its towers partly in response  to the actions of a serial killer called the Servant Girl Annihilator.

Lighting technology advanced and moonlight towers started to disappear. Now only Austin still has some of its original towers, and San Jose has a single replica.

I have read a fair bit of history but had never heard of these.  Nor have I read about them in novels or seen them portrayed in films [with the exception of the 1993 film Dazed and Confused which featured one of the Austin towers].   A moonlight tower would seem so strange to our eyes that I am surprised that some film maker has not managed to incorporate them into an historical film.

I find it fascinating that things that were once so  common have so completely disappeared from modern memory.

Space elevators and other ideas from science fiction

Click on this link for a list of ten significant technological concepts which had their popular origins in the world of sci-fi. In some cases, a science fiction source was not necessarily the actual originator, but was influential in bringing the idea to popular attention.

The following could be added to the list

Space Elevator – The Fountains of Paradise – A C Clarke

Aquaculture – The Deep Range – Arthur C Clarke

Data Glasses – Virtual Light – William Gibson

Nanotechnology [and particularly the idea of The Young Ladies Primer] – The Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson

eBay locks my account

Recently I received an email from eBay.

“Your eBay account has been temporarily locked because it looks like someone used it without your permission. Your email address may have also been tampered with so you might not have received any emails about the unauthorized transactions.

We went ahead and canceled those unauthorized transactions and credited the associated fees. We assure you that your credit card information has not been stolen because it’s on a secure computer that can’t be accessed by anyone.”

The email went on to tell me that I would have to change my eBay password if I wanted my account unlocked and advised me to also change the password on my gmail account.

 

I had received one of these three or four months earlier and dutifully changed both passwords.

This time I was less gullible.

I rang the eBay call centre [0800 358 6552] and told them that I did not believe that my account had been accessed and that I was the victim of some internal eBay screwup.

That turned out to be true.

eBay logs your IP address when you sign on. If the IP is different it triggers account locking. I had logged on via a VPN in another country and the eBay computers had automatically locked my account and sent out the email. There had not been any ‘unauthorized transactions’ and no need to credit any fees.  That was a lie. I don’t know why they didn’t tell the truth.

I can see that all this is very convenient for eBay, but not so much for their customers. I have several computers and I have to change the password that is stored by Firefox on every one of them.

Given that VPNs are widely used I wonder how many people are being screwed by eBay? I suppose if you have a monopoly of online auctions you can afford to behave in this dishonest and cavalier way.

Atomic Bomb Testing Time Conversion Computer

In October 18, 1947 the U.S. Secretary of Defence established Joint Task Force Seven for the purpose of readying the Eniwetok Atoll for use as a atomic bomb test site.  The task force included representatives from the Atomic Energy Commission, research establishments such as the Naval Research Laboratory and civilian companies; all under the control of the military.

The task force started work when a convoy of four ships sailed from Pearl Harbour. Eventually, some 9,800 people were to be involved in the project. A total of 50,000 tons of material were shipped to Eniwetok. One million feet of submarine cable was laid.

Forty three nuclear tests were conducted at Enewetak between 1948 and 1958. The first hydrogen bomb test, code-named Ivy Mike, was held in late 1952 as part of Operation Ivy, and it vaporized the islet of Elugelab.

Three weapons were detonated on Enewetak Atoll as part of Operation Sandstone in 1948.

Communications must always have been a problem. Multiple organisations were involved in locations which included Bikini, Eniwetok, Kwajalein, Hickam Field on Hawaii, Travis Air Force Base in California, Naval bases in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Washington  and Los Alamos.  Multiple time zones and an International Date Line complicated matters.

The Testing Time Conversion Computer  was used to calculate, convert and coordinate the specific timing of important events between  these locations.

It measures 4 5/8″ in diameter and is made of two white plastic disks held together by a metal grommet. One side performs time conversions, the other side has a map of some of the main locations and the distances between them.

Click on the Cold War Calculators link on the right for more posts on this topic.

This is a very rare item.

The Wordstar story

Only three PC word processing applications have had a dominant market share since 1978.  The first was Wordstar from MicroPro.  I used it until the company faltered in its development programme and made some poor strategic decisions.

I, and most other Wordstar users, switched to WordPerfect in the 1980s.   In the 1990s the WordPerfect Corporation also began to stumble, and Microsoft Word became the market leader amongst PC word processing applications.

Wordstar was a remarkably good programme for its time. It had many innovative features. For example, it was the first PC word processing programme to have WYSIWYG. The programme was the product of Rob Barnaby’s programming skills. The success of the MicroPro company was due to the business skills of Seymour Rubinstein. In 2006 the IEEE published an article by Rubenstein on the history of Wordstar.

Seymour Rubinstein, “Recollections: The Rise and Fall of WordStar,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 64-72, Oct-Dec, 2006.

A full history of Wordstar can be found here.

Nuclear Effects Estimator

The calculator is 190mm [7.5in] in diameter. Its three disks are made of metal, probably aluminium.One side can be used to calculate the effect on people, structures and military equipment of an air burst nuclear weapon.  An air burst occurs when a nuclear weapon is exploded so far above the ground that its fireball does not touch the ground and therefore does not suck up dust into the fireball. An air burst produces much less fallout than a surface burst and would normally be employed against an unhardened target such as a city.

The other side of the estimator can be used to calculate the effect of a surface burst. These would be used against hardened targets. A surface burst produces fallout, some of which may drift into the attackers territory.

The acronym CDEE appears on both sides. I think this may refer to the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment, which was based at Porton Down in the United Kingdom. CD 7715 may be the identification number of the device. I do not know what DNBCS means, though the NBC part may be Nuclear Biological Chemical.

The Estimator may have been intended for use by military officers or civil defence units. It may also have been created to be used in modelling different scenarios in war games.

Discounted Cash Flow Slide Rule

Discounted cash flow is an accountants technique for calculating the discounted present value of returns from a prospective investment.

The  rule is 310mm x 76mm and is marked as copyright by the Standard Oil Company of Chicago, Illinois in 1962.  I don’t know if it was only issued to their employees or sold to more widely.  The rule is in mint condition and thought to be rare.

RAF Nuclear Defence Damage & Casualty Estimator

A cold war calculator used by the UK’s Royal Air Force.

Business Applications of Encryption – Part 1

This posting is the first in a series about the commercial applications of encryption. The postings will explain how encryption works, how it can be used in business, and its legal status.

It was once only of concern to diplomats, spies and the military. They used codes and ciphers to try and make their messages unreadable. Encryption was only widely used by commercial organisations during the telegraph era, when some companies encrypted their messages to prevent them being read by telegraph operators in the pay of competitors.

All that changed when the internet was opened to commercial use and e-commerce sites began to appear. Encryption is now an indispensable part of electronic commerce. It is hard to imagine any significant online commercial activity being possible without the involvement of encryption.

Some of the business applications of encryption are obvious. Companies need to be able to communicate securely, and email is not secure unless messages are encrypted. Digital data needs to be stored securely. Experience has shown that there is no way of guaranteeing that data cannot be lost or stolen. No matter what procedures are followed, eventually somebody will make a mistake and data will be leaked over the internet, or a laptop will be stolen. Encryption offers a solution to this problem. Even if encrypted data is stolen it should be unreadable by the thief.

Encryption is also used to secure online banking and e-commerce transactions. How many people would be willing to bank or buy online if their transactions were not secured by being encoded?

Other business applications of encryption are less obvious. How can you ensure that somebody you are dealing with over the internet is actually who they claim to be? How do you authenticate them? If you exchange legally binding documents in digital form how can you prevent them being altered to your disadvantage? How do you prevent someone from repudiating their agreement to a digital contract? Encryption is the answer to all these questions.

Calculators for computers

The early computers were suitable for large scale data processing but not for small scale, ad hoc calculations. These were still performed using mental arithmetic, slide rules, mechanical calculators such as addiators and many other devices.

Pre-printed tables were widely used.For example, if a shopkeeper needed to multiple a price by a quantity to prepare an invoice they could lookup the answer in a book of tables, such as the ‘Ready Reckoner’.

These tables were particularly useful in the pre-decimal UK, where pricing seventeen items at three pounds, fourteen shillings and nine pence each could challenge the mental arithmetic skills of most shopkeepers.

Engineers used slide rules for their calculations and businessmen added and subtracted with hand held mechanical calculators such as the addiator.

Hexadecimal Calculations

The first computer engineers needed to do hexadecimal and other calculations, and, in the period before electronic calculators,  a number of specialised mechanical calculators were developed. Some of these are shown below.