The U.S. IGY stamp

The centerpiece of my IGY collection is the U.S. commemorative postage stamp issued during the IGY. I'll introduce the stamp in today's post. In future entries, I'll discuss in more detail various aspects of the stamp, and look at a number of covers (envelopes for postal use) that contain it. And as part of our IGY journey, we'll also look at IGY stamps and covers from other countries.

Most stamp collectors prefer mint (not postally used) stamps, such as shown by the scan of my IGY stamp below. The condition of the back of the stamp is also a concern. More value is attached to fully gummed and unhinged stamps. I know, some of my entries may cause you to think I am unhinged, but in this context it means stamps that were not fixed into albums by using adhesive hinges, which remove some of a stamp's gum and decrease its value. The whole issue of stamp "value" can also be complex, since the personal value attached to a stamp according to the goals of the collector may be separate from its monetary value.

One of my U.S. IGY stamps (1957), Scott #1107, 1.5" x 1"

The Scott stamp catalog is the bible for U.S. collectors. I was fortunate to acquire a full set of six volumes from the bookstore at the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte, PA, during a visit. It was a few years old, from 2008, but that year gets me through the 50th anniversary of the IGY. Below is a scan of the basic info on the U.S. IGY stamp:

Scan from my Scott 2008 Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers

The key information contained in a Scott catalog listing is described in this tutorial from the catalog: Understanding the Listings .

The information for the IGY stamp is this as follows:

1. Scott catalog USA stamp number - 1107

2. Illustration number - A554 (illustration caption is 'Solar Disc and Hands from Michelangelo's Creation of Adam" '. A later post will have more to say about the design of this stamp.

3. Listing styles - here just a Major listing of 1107

4. Denomination - 3¢

5. Basic information on stamp
        GEOPHYSICAL YEAR ISSUE 
        International Geophysical Year 1957-58
        Designed by Ervine Metzl
        GIORI Press Printing
        Plates of 200 subjects in four panes of 50
        Perf. 11 (perforations are the little holes that allow stamps 
            to be separated, in this case 11 per 2 cm)

6. Color - black & red orange

7. Date of issue - May 31, 1958

8. Catalog values
        Unused - 20¢
        Used - 20¢
        Plate block (P#) of 4, unused - 40¢

A few items of interest about this stamp:

1. It was issued one day after my 8th birthday.

2. This was the fourth U.S. stamp (after Scott #1094 Old Glory, #1096 Magsaysay, and #1098 whooping cranes) printed using the engravure/intaglio method by the Giori Press, which allowed for simultaneous application of two or three differently colored inks. 

3. It was one of the last three U.S. stamps issued with a 3¢ denomination. The rate for first-class postage had been unchanged since 1932, but went to 4¢ on August 1, 1958. The Scott catalog also includes a history of postage rates, showing that this 26-year period was the longest in U.S. postal history with no rate change.

4. The Scott catalog also lists elsewhere the quantity of each commemorative stamp issued. Over 125,000,000 subjects of the IGY stamp were printed, for a U.S. population in 1958 of 175 million people. This was a typical run for that era. Up until then, the largest quantity printing had been 2.9 billion for #1008, the NATO issue (1952), followed by 2 billion for #732, the National Recovery Act issue (1933). For comparison, the biggest seller in U.S. postal history was the Elvis Presley stamp (#2721, 1993) at 517 million copies.

Addendum (Dec. 5, 2020): The relationship between stamps printed, sold and saved seems a bit complicated. The number of stamps printed is shown, for example, in the Scott catalogs. As a 2001 report from the USPS Office of Inspector General describes, stamps from local post offices can be returned and destroyed, perhaps on the order of one billion per year. Of course, some stamps that are bought are never used, and can be channeled to collectors like us. This random-ish post says that the popularity of stamps is assessed by the number of stamps saved, determined via an annual survey by the U.S. Postal Service of 10,000 households. I have not found a verification of that, which seems to be different from the USPS Household Diary Study.

What started as an homage to Diana Rigg became a commentary on "filthy stamp collectors" and popular culture

I was going to post a couple of more legitimate commentaries on IGY philately before this one, but a chronological synchronicity convinced me to move this to the top of the queue.

After Diana Rigg passed away recently, I went back to look at some old episodes of The Avengers (not the contemporary movies of the same name), but the spy-fi series starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed. I chose Series 4 from 1965, the year that Ms. Rigg playing Mrs. Emma Peel replaced Honor Blackman (who was on her way to playing Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, and who also died this year) as Steed's colleague. I watched this show as a teen, and was, how should I say, rather impressed at the time by Ms. Rigg's élan. The stories were a bit fantastical, silly even, but tongue-in-cheek. People did suffer and die, but the violence was not graphically gruesome like in detective shows of today. Steed and Mrs. Peel might have had a relationship, or not, but they were always collegial, successful, breezy, and completely free of the angst that plagues contemporary tv detectives (such as Jasper Teerlinck, in a recent favorite PBS show of mine, Professor T.).

The episode I watched this week was #9 from this series, The Hour That Never Was. While I was playing with this post yesterday, I saw in the thorough description of this episode in Wikipedia that it had been first aired on Nov. 27, 1965, 55 years ago to the day! Can't remember if I saw it back then, but that meaningful (?) coincidence moved this post to the top of my queue. (And apologies for difficulties with image captions.)

Episode title, The Avengers, series 4, episode 9 (1965)

Our intrepid investigators, Mrs. Peel and Steed

The philatelic commentary of interest appears while Steed is exploring an old RAF base, and runs into a dumpster diver, Benedict Napoleon Hickey (played by Roy Kinnear). Their exchange inexplicably veers into some nasty invective about stamp collectors. Beneath is a video clip, and a similar series of screenshots:

Hickey: " ... "I detest was or violence ..."

Hickey: "... or stamp collectors."

Steed: "Stamp collectors?"

Hickey: "Filthy habit, collecting stamps."

Hickey: "All that old saliva."

Hickey: "More diseases get spread that way."

Hickey: "Generations of old saliva."

Hickey: "Foreign saliva, too"

Ha ha, that's pretty funny. My experience with stamp collectors is that they are really a rather fastidious lot.

It is interesting to note how philately is treated in popular culture. A recent American Philately Society talk by Howard Summers, who has also written a book on this topic, focuses on Stamp Collecting in Popular Culture:

My own recent encounters with such intersections come from:

1. watching the movie Charade (1963), where Audrey Hepburn finally realizes (spoiler alert!) the money her dead husband left to her was in the form of valuable postage stamps on an envelope;

2. reading the alternate history novel The Plot Against America (2004), by Philip Roth, in which the pre-WWII protagonist, young Philip, is an avid stamp collector, and an admirer of the First Collector, President Franklin Roosevelt; and 

3. reading another alternate history novel, The Man in the High Castle (1962) by Philip K. Dick, in which a collector of Americana in a post-WWII occupied America comments on analogies to stamp collecting, and how collectibles are authenticated and acquire their value:   " 'I am a collector,' Major Humo had explained. ... It was on the order of coin or stamp collecting; no rational explanation [for the addiction to collecting] could ever be given."

First stamp scan with my new scanner - and happy Thanksgiving

Yesterday I bought an Epson V600 scanner. It got high marks in reviews. As I continue to catalog and blog about my stamp collection, I plan to do many more scans of stamps and covers. Plus, I have thousands of personal prints, slides, and negative film to start scanning for a digital archive, and one nice thing about this scanner is that it will do all three of those media. I was debating whether to wait to see whether a better price became available during the holiday shopping season, but by asking a customer rep online I was able to get a 10% discount, so I bought it while it was in stock at my local office supplies store.

Here is my first scan of a stamp and its souvenir sheet, the same Moldovan stamp that was on the maxicard from my last blog. I used a black backing paper to better show the perforations. I am very satisfied with the result!

Moldova 2016 stamp and souvenir sheet - Struve Geodetic Arc

I did not note in my last blog the rich content on this stamp and sheet. The inscription on the stamp itself indicates the country, year of issue, and denomination (there are currently about 17 lei to the U.S. dollar, so this stamp is equivalent to about 35¢). The vignette (image) on the stamp shows the triangulation survey through Moldova, the capital Chișinău and the Rudi Geodetic Point from the survey. There is an image of World Heritage Site memorial obelisk, and its latitude and longitude (although by my calculation those coordinates are 4 km off from the location shown on Google maps).

On the remainder of the souvenir sheet, you can also see: the meridian at 26°43' east longitude; the full survey transect which nearly followed this meridian; an image of the intrepid surveyor Struve; vintage theodolite and transit level surveying equipment; the names of the ten countries transected; and the UNESCO World Heritage Site icon. Nicely done!

To those celebrating, Happy Thanksgiving. Here is my wild turkey Wildlife Conservation stamp (1956, Scott 1077), heavily cancelled, from my childhood collection.  Gobble gobble!

Wild turkey portrayed on one of three U.S. wildlife conservation stamps, 1956

Crosswords, geodesists, goals of the IGY, the Struve Geodetic Arc, Moldova, my dad ... my stream of consciousness for today

For the past six years or so, crosswording has been one my hobbies. After starting with the easy ones in the local newspaper, I moved on to those in the NY Times. The NYT puzzles, edited by the noted enigmatologist and table tennis player Will Shortz, get more difficult during the week. For a few years I only did Monday and Tuesday, then added Wednesday, and gradually the rest of the week. Ok, I seek a little help (cheat) sometimes, just like in golf, but I've now solved over 1000 NYT puzzles, including the last 250 in a row.

Friday's puzzle had a clue that probably was difficult for some, but with one or two letters already filled on crosses, I immediately realized that for the clue at 16-across, "Experts in determining the exact size and shape of the earth," the answer was "geodesists."

NY Times crossword of 11/20/20, including the 16-across clue for the answer "geodesists"

I took this as a sign compelling me to write today's entry, and to briefly describe the scientific scope of the IGY. There were 14 designated areas for scientific pursuits during the IGY. One source where the list is enumerated and described is in the book IGY: Year of Discovery, by Sydney Chapman (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1959, 111 p.). 

My copy of IGY: Year of Discovery, by Sydney Chapman

In the chapter on The International Geophysical Year, Chapman, who was president of CSAGI (French acronym for the Special  Committee of the IGY), lists these areas as:

1. World Days and communications
2. meteorology
3. geomagnetism
4. aurora and airglow
5. ionosphere
6. solar activity
7. cosmic rays
8. longitudes and latitudes
9. glaciology
10. oceanography
11. rockets and satellites
12. seismology
13. gravity
14. nuclear radiation

Of these, both #8 and #13 are used to determine the size and shape of the Earth, which comprises the field of geodesy. Until the IGY, few geodetic measurements had been made on Antarctica. During the IGY, new measurements there and elsewhere around the world refined our knowledge of the dimensions of our planet, which were soon detailed even further after the launch of satellites that orbited the Earth in accordance with its gravitational field. 

Recently I bought a maxicard because of its relationship to geodesy, and also to my father. In philately, a maximum card (maxicard) is a postcard with a postage stamp on the back of the card where the stamp and card thematically match. The cancellation or postmark is usually related to the image on the front of the card and the stamp. Collecting such cards is the object of maximaphily, and also a specialty area of postcard collecting. This card bears a stamp in the form of a souvenir sheet, and a first day cancellation from Moldova, honoring the bicentennial of the initiation of the Struve Geodetic Arc survey. The terminus of the survey line in Moldova, marked by the monument shown on the stamp and on the maxicard, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Front and back of my Moldovan maxicard on the Struve Geodetic Art

The maxicard's topic is the Struve Geodetic Arc. I hadn't previously known about this milestone achievement until I stumbled upon this card and stamp. The Struve Arc was a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Norway and then through 10 countries and over 2,800 km. It ends on the Black Sea after traversing what today is the country of Moldova. The survey, carried out between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, represented the first accurate measuring of a long segment of a line of longitude. This helped to establish the exact size and shape of the planet and marked an important step in the development of Earth sciences and topographic mapping. It is an extraordinary example of scientific collaboration among scientists from different countries, and of collaboration between monarchs for a scientific cause. Thus, it presages the IGY-era study of the dimensions of the Earth as well as the international cooperation that was a hallmark of the IGY.

My father Morris Sternberg was born in Besserabia in 1906, later emigrating to the U.S. in 1927. At that time, Besserabia was in Romania. Not long before, it had been part of the Ottoman Empire, and not long after it became part of the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the USSR, Besserabia became part of the country of Moldova in 1991. If I ever visit my father's birth region, I'll now hope to also visit the monument honoring the Struve Geodetic Arc.

Thanks to my cousin Mary Ann, who provided the photo of my father with her parents.

My dad Morris (left), his brother Aaron (right), Aaron's wife Pauline (center), ca. 1941

Sleuthing out Punch magazine's IGY Antarctica cartoon

I was searching reddit for any IGY posts, and I came across an IGY cartoon at 

https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/gv3mhk/punch_magazine_cartoon_satirizing_the/

Scan of the cartoon from my newly acquired copy of the Punch Almanack

So, I thought I'd like to own an original of that cartoon. That took me on a bit of a wild ride, albeit successful in the end.

First, it's not from the extant Punch Magazine, Spirit of the [San Francisco] Peninsula magazine, which hails from California. It's from the influential British magazine of humour [British sic] and satire Punch, which was published between 1841 and 2002. Punch invented the meaning of the word cartoon as we know it today, first associating it with pictorial satire and eventually with any humorous drawing. A somewhat similar magazine today on my side of the pond would be The New Yorker.

There seems to be no index of Punch issues available online, despite the efforts of a Franklin & Marshall College librarian to help me. There is an online index of Punch cartoons, where you can search for IGY to find our cartoon, here or here. (My own family members, consider a print of this cartoon as a holiday gift.) You can see the word ALMANACK and the date of Nov. 5, 1956, at the top of the image in reddit (although not in the images on the Punch website). The metadata for the images of this cartoon on the Punch website show the information 1957.2.ALM.tif, so I was baffled by the apparently conflicting dates; the IGY did start in 1957, after all. For reasons unclear to me -- I don't even get much of the droll British humor in Punch, and I certainly don't understand the purpose of the Almanack -- the annual Almanacks were issued ahead of the years they referred to. Thus, the Almanack for 1957 turned out to have been published in 1956. An interlibrary loan book from 1957 by the cartoonist Russell Brockbank, The Brockbank Omnibus, had a lot of his specialty motorist cartoons, but not the IGY one I hoped might be in there. Finally, I looked for copies of a Nov. 5, 1956 Almanack issue on eBay, where I could also see that this date did not correspond to the dates of the regular weekly issues. Two eBay vendors of this Almanack kindly confirmed that it was indeed the issue with the desired IGY graphic. Whew! A lot of work for a cartoon. Once I got the issue, I could see the combination of information represented on the cover.

Outer cover of my newly acquired Punch Almanack

In any case, I think the cartoon is slyly satirical. On the one hand, it shows the British, American, and Soviet teams occupying their respective Antarctic bases, from where they would presumably cooperate in the scientific endeavors of the IGY. Yet there is a propagandistic jab at the different cultures. Penguins in the British camp are forced to endure a highfalutin British literature discussion (Brockbank was Canadian). Meanwhile, birds at the American base can enjoy a game of baseball, if they have not overindulged in alcohol. And the Russian camp is dominated by detainment and surveillance, harangues and regimentation. And there is that chasm separating the East from the West.

Bonus points if you know of a famous cartoon character from the 1950s who was featured in an entire book themed on the IGY. First person to comment on this entry with the correct answer wins a surplus item from my collection. I'll be posting on that book later.

I couldn't resist pricing out this Almanack issue. I never did understand the British currency system, which also changed in 1971. The cover price is 2/6, or 2 schillings (will Curt make it into the Hall of Fame this year?) and 6 pence. With 12p to the schilling and 20/ to the pound at that time, this was 2-1/2 schillings, a half crown, or 1/8 pound. The exchange rate to dollars in 1957 was 1 pound = $2.80 U.S., so the magazine cost the equivalent of 35¢. The price of a Life magazine at the time was 20¢. For comparison, the Federal minimum wage in 1957 was $1.00. (Btw, $1.00 in 1957 adjusted for inflation to today would be $9.31, so the current Federal minimum wage of $7.25 is effectively 20% lower than it was in 1957. Take that, service workers of America!)

Thursday morning addendum: the last word I needed to achieve "genius" level in the NY Times Spelling Bee game today was -- penguin!

Beer Nuts, an IGY era snack food

Recently I received another package that I would argue (but not too forcefully) is related to the IGY era. It was a shipment (shown below) of one of my favorite snacks, Beer Nuts. The Beer Nuts name was trademarked in 1953, and thence began the heyday of this sweet and salty beer accompanier. My friend and colleague Ann Steiner was excited to hear of my Beer Nuts jones, since she grew up as a neighbor of founder Russell Shirk in Bloomington, IL. I usually mail order a winter's supply of this hard-to-find sweet-and-salty pleasure around this time of year (they are too sticky during the heat of summer). 

Over the years I've owned a couple of Beer Nuts t-shirts. This photo with my sons Sam and Max was taken in Florida in December, 1987. Max and Sam have become much better golfers. I am still puttering around on the links.

To paraphrase one of our Supreme Court justices: I liked Beer Nuts. I still like Beer Nuts! One small part of the culture of the 1950s which survives until this day.

A philatelic shoutout to the Navy and Air Force on Veteran's Day: Operation Deep Freeze

Below you will see images of the obverse and reverse sides of another recent cover acquisition. Nothing special about the stamp here. It is a definitive stamp (i.e., a regular issue with a generic design to be sold over a longer period of time) , Scott #1041 (too bad it is not the valuable 1041a double print error), as opposed to the commemorative stamps (stamps issued for a limited period of time that commemorate a person, place, thing, or event) that I will most often feature.

But the postmark, cancellation, and cachets are what count here. A  cancellation is used to deface or "kill" a stamp to prevent its reuse. A postmark is used to indicate the Post Office of origin and date and time of mailing. The circular date stamp shows a postmark date of July 4th (American Independence Day), 1960, at the South Pole Station, Antarctica. This slogan cancellation includes five killer bars and the slogan "U.S. Navy, Operation Deep Freeze."

The Amundson-Scott South Pole Station was built to support researchers during the International Geophysical Year. The U.S. Navy was charged with providing logistical support for the U.S. scientific efforts of the IGY. Construction of the South Pole Station started in November 1956, and was completed in February 1957, a few months before the official beginning of the IGY. Previous scientific stations in Antarctica were located near its seacoast. The South Pole station has now been continuously occupied since it was built. You can see some of the Navy's construction and logistical  endeavors in this early Operation Deep Freeze video .

(By the way, many topics I will discuss have very good write-ups in Wikipedia which I will consult, but I will tend to opt for more idiosyncratic hyperlinks, since you'll certainly consider visiting Wikipedia yourself for more details.)

The printed cachet, like the slogan on the cancellation, honors Operation Deep Freeze. I find the cachet a bit confusing, since it is labeled as ODF 1959-60, which corresponds to the postmark date and to Operation Deep Freeze 60 (for the 1960 fiscal year). Yet the map highlights the TRAIL that was forged by an overland tractor train that left out of the Little America V station in late 1956 to establish the Byrd Research Station over 600 miles away. Perhaps this date refers to the 1960 construction of a second underground facility at the Byrd Station. I assume the photo insert is of the eponymous polar explorer Admiral Richard Byrd, who commanded the U.S. Navy Operation Deep Freeze I in 1955–56, when the South Pole Station was constructed. 

I don't know if the "South Pole" beneath the address to Bert Smith has any significance. 

On the back of the cover, there is an additional rubberstamped cachet. I like the way the logos for the USN and IGY, the military and scientific collaborators, bracket the Navy sailor with the sailor's hat holding up the world via Antarctica. "Deep Freeze V" is actually a misnomer for what is properly named Operation Deep Freeze 60 (since Deep Freeze I was in 1955-56).

If you want to know more about Operation Deep Freeze, especially the role of the U.S. Air Force's airlift support, consult: Operation Deep Freeze - 50 Years of U.S. Air Force Airlift in Antarctica, 1956-2006; Ellery D. Wallwork and Kathryn A. Wilcoxson; Office of History, Air Mobility Command, 2006.

New philatelic acquisitions, Brussels World's Fair (1958)

Two new philatelic items arrived in the mail yesterday. Both are related to Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, which was held April 17-October 19, 1958, during the International Geophysical Year. The ambience of techno-optimism and internationalism of this Expo was consistent with the scientific endeavors of the IGY. Since I have already collected much of the low-hanging fruit of IGY-related philatelic items, and I want to keep collecting, I am now broadening my scope somewhat to include items such as these related to the themes of the IGY.

Shown below (these and future images of stamps and memorabilia will be scans of items I own, unless otherwise stated) are the two first day covers, with cachets. I'm not going to assume everyone here is a philatelist, or a geophysicist for that matter, so I will try to define or provide links for terms as we go. A cover is an entire envelope with the stamp in place. A first-day cover (FDC) is an envelopes postmarked on the date of issuance for a a particular stamp, usually from one designated post office. A cachet is a special design on a cover, made by companies or sometimes individuals. 

The first cover bears a U.S. stamp, with a Scott catalog number of 1104.

Note that this cover was addressed and mailed. The cachet appeals to me because it has a clean deign, is colorful, and combines an image of the Expo's signature Atomium, a crystalline form, along with a map of the globe, suggesting the universality of the scientific endeavor.

The stamps on the second cover took me a few minutes to find in my Scott catalog. They are listed in the Scott as Belgium C16, C18, and C20, with respective themes of the World Meteorological Organization (weather was a topic for the IGY), the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade, and the Atomic Energy Agency. The prefix C in the Scott catalogs refers to air post stamps.  The cachet shows the Atomium and a stylized globe. Interestingly, these Belgian stamps were only postally valid when mailed from the United Nations pavilion at the Expo. You'll find some details of the stamps here. This envelope opens from the side.

In 2012 I visited the site of Expo 1958, and could still be impressed by the spirit the Atomium invoked, as well as by the views from the top.

Remembering my Mom on her birthday, and the start of my IGY collection

 Today I'm thinking of my mother, Johanne (de Haas) Sternberg, born in 1916. The picture below shows me and her, taken for my kindergarten graduation, May, 1956, a year before the start of the IGY. My pants were pink!

Mom's life was affected dramatically by World War II. First, her family was forced to leave the Netherlands to live in England during the war. There she met my father, an American GI, who convinced her to move to the U.S. to marry him after the war. Some time in the late 1950s, I started collecting stamps, relying in part on mail from relatives in Holland, England, Belgium, the USSR (where Dad was from, in what is now Moldova), and Israel.

This was my first (or at least an early) album, Minkus dated 1961, which I still have:

And included in that album is the 1957 U.S. commemorative stamp for the IGY:

Much, much more on this stamp to come in future entries!

But for now, happy birthday, and thanks, Mom!