Happy 66th birthday, IGY

Today marks the 66th anniversary of the beginning of the IGY. 

An earlier post discussed the role of President Eisenhower in the IGY, including a video of his speech for its opening,

The Eisenhower Library lists a number of online docuuments about the IGY. That web page also excerpts a quote from President Eisenhower's speech in a video from the post above, that "the most important result of the International Geophysical Year is that demonstration of the ability of peoples of all nations to work together harmoniously for the common good. I hope this can become common practice in other fields of human endeavor."

Apropos of the international aspect of the IGY, I recently bought  my first IGY-related cover with United Nations stamps.

Cover IN245 in my collection

The stamps are United Nations (New York) 49 and 50 in the Scott catalog, representing weather satellites launched by the World Meteorological Organization. The role of the WMO in the IGY was mentioned in a previous post .

The postmark was from the USS Wyandot, dated during the IGY, and the cachet lauds its roll during Operation Deep Freeze, which provided critical infrastructure in support of the IGY program in Antarctica.

As Eisenhower hoped, if only that IGY and United Nations spirit of international cooperation in the name of scientific advances for the good of humanity were more widespread today!

Recent 65th anniversary of the issuance of the U.S. IGY stamp

The U.S. IGY stamp was issued on May 31, 1958. Recently we saw the 65th anniversary of that date. Happy, birthday, 1107! Congratulations on becoming a senior citizen.

I recently bought a cover which contained 5 of these stamps. 

Cover IGY 254 (front) from my collection

Cover IGY 254 (back) from my collection

This cover has several notable characteristics:

1. It is franked with a block of  four IGY stamps (Scott 1107).
2. The block has a first day of issue (5-31-58) cancellation for this stamp.
3. A single additional IGY stamp on the cover was cancelled (using a barrel/football) with a postmark from Quaker Hill, CT, on 7-26-1958. The cover was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. L.C. Maples in Quaker Hill.
4. Typed on the cover: "Carried on USS Skate (SSN578) on first under-ice crossing under North Pole. Achieved 12 August 1958." 
5. The cover is signed by James F. Calvert, the distinguished commander of the Skate.
6. Typed on the cover: "Courtesy of F.G. Weigle", an acoustic physicist who sailed on the Skate. I'm not sure exactly what "courtesy of " means in this case; perhaps he typed on the text and secured the signature.
7. The front includes the Artmaster IGY cachet (Mellone 4).
8. On the back of the cover is a nice cachet noting the USS Skate's polar ice cap cruise during the IGY.

The USS Skate (SSN-578) was: the lead ship of the Skate class of nuclear submarines; the third nuclear submarine commissioned by the U.S. the second submarine to reach the North Pole (8-11-58 during this voyage, after the USS Nautilus had done so in 1957); the first to surface at the North Pole through the ice cap (in 1959); and the first to make a completely submerged trans-Atlantic crossing.

The history of this cover is not 100% clear to me. I assume the International Geophysical Year FDC was produced first. The cover was postmarked again on 7-26-1958 in CT, near the ship's home in Groton. This date was before the Skate departed for the North Pole  on July 30. But the text says the cover was carried on the USS Skate's voyage underneath the polar ice cap. So I don't understand how the dates mesh. Could it have been postmarked before the ship departed, traveled on the ship, and then delivered after the expedition without an additional franking? Or sent on the ship without a postal marking, managed by Weigle, and then mailed to Quaker Hill upon its return (I lean towards this interpretation)? Or could there be another explanation? It may be worth noting that the submarine base in New London, CT, the Skate's base, is only 4 miles from Quaker Hill. Thanks for any suggestions.

I appealed for help to better understand this cover to the Facebook group of the Universal Ship Cancellation Society, and although I got some appreciation of the item, no one completely answered my questions. If any of you, dear readers, can shed additional light, please let me  know.

Hungarian National Committee for the IGY, Sopron, and the Pan-European Picnic

I recently bought an interesting item on eBay, one for which I was the sole bidder, so it was not very expensive. It was a sheet signed by the members of the Hungarian National Committee for the IGY. Countries participating in the IGY had national committees to organize and guide the work done by scientists from that country.

Members and signatures of the Hungarian National Committee for the IGY

I am assuming the officers were the key figures on this committee. Prof. A. Tározy-Hornoch is listed as academician, president of the committee, and representing the field of geodesy (shape and gravitational field of the Earth). Prof. L. Egyed is listed as secretary of the committee, representing the field of seismology. I found a little more information online about these two scientists.

Prof. A. Tározy-Hornoch (1900-1986) was a university professor in Sopron and one of the most prominent figures in 20th century Hungarian geodesy. He is the eponym for Hungary's Tárczy-Hornoch Antal Geodetic Laboratory, used for the development and calibration of geodetic instruments and devices. 

According to Wikipedia, Prof. László  Egyed  (1914-1970) was a professor at the Geophysical Institute of the Eötvös-University in Budapest. He published over 100 scientific articles. He wrote the book Physics of the Solid Earth in 1956; I don't think a translation exists, but it would be interesting to read this book to survey the field of geophysics just prior to the IGY. 

Egyed was a supporter of the expanding Earth hypothesis, a suggested alternative to plate tectonics. According to this post from Scientific American, Egyed based his thinking on variations of the sea level in the geological past, concluding that today's continents are the remains of the ancient crust of a smaller planet, surrounded by younger rocks generated along fractures at the mid-ocean-ridges. Popular Mechanics had an article describing expanding Earth ideas in more detail.

This document is reminiscent of my last post, about my one-page exhibit which included covers featuring three key personnel of the U.S. National Committee for the IGY: Joseph Kaplan (chairperson), A. H. Shapley (vice chairperson), and Hugh Odishaw (executive secretary).

I could not easily find much information on Hungary's activities as part of the IGY, but it did establish the Nagycenk Geophysical Observatory in 1956-57, operated during the IGY and since by the Geodetic and Geophysical Institute of the Earth Science Center, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The observatory makes continuous records of Earth electrical currents, atmospheric electricity, ionospheric and meteorological observations.

In 2009, I was at a geophysics conference in Tározy-Hornoch's Sopron, the XIth International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) Scientific Assembly. I sent myself a postcard prepared for the event. It is franked with what seems to be a somewhat standardized Hungarian postage stamp, similar to Scott 3926a, showing a surveying compass and map of Hungary. The word Belföld means domestic (I think), so other stamps were added to make the international postage. Magyarország is Hungarian for Hungary. The non-standardized label on the stamp margin gives the date and place of the IAGA meeting. There is a corresponding IAGA 2009 cancellation of the stamps. Maybe Prof. Tározy-Hornoch himself walked the halls of the conference building in an earlier era.

Front of self-addressed postcard from IAGA 2009, Sopron

Back of postcard from IAGA 2009, Sopron

While I was in Sopron, I took a wonderful bike ride into the countryside, where I saw the impressive Fertőrákos limestone quarry (photo at right). The quarry was used as early as Roman times, but nowadays there are concerts in an amphitheater among the cavernous excavations. This was also the area of the so-called Pan-European Picnic two decades earlier in 1989, the first place where East Germans on holiday were allowed to cross the border unimpeded into Austria and the West. Soon afterwards the Berlin Wall fell (I stood on top of it in the week before Christmas, 1989), and then everything else! 

This exhibit in Sopron commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Pan-European picnic

Once I got to the Neusiedler See on my bike ride, a cold beer really hit the spot

My third annual one-page philatelic exhibit - administrator-scientists of the IGY

The American Topical Association has now posted its 3rd annual round of 1-page exhibits on philatelic topics.

In 2021, I contributed a 1-page exhibit derived from my IGY collection, showing one IGY stamp from each of the 19 countries that issued IGY stamps between 1957 and 1959.You can find a copy of my exhibit here.

Last year, using my other philatelic collection on North American earthquakes, my 1-pager was about the encounter of the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides, with the Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933. You can see that poster here.

This year I have returned to the IGY for my ATA 1-page exhibit.  After I bought the IGY cover signed by Lloyd Berkner that I shared in my last post, I decided to do my exhibit featuring covers signed by significant figures in the IGY. That exhibit is posted here, or you can see it below. It shows 5 first day covers bearing the U.S. IGY stamp (Scott 1107) and involving arguably the top 5 (or at least 5 of the) most influential CSAGI (Chapman and Bartels) and U.S. (Kaplan, Shapley, and Odishaw) officers of the IGY. Four of the covers are signed. The Kaplan cover has no signature, but it does include a cachet with his picture.

My ATA 1-page exhibit for 2023

In an earlier post, I mentioned that CSAGI's (Comité Spécial de l'Anée Géophysique Internationale) five officers (see photo below) included Sydney Chapman (president) and Lloyd Berkner (Vice President). That post included the cover with Chapman's signature.

 A meeting of the Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year, known by its French acronym CSAGI, in Brussels in June 1957, included Vladimir V. Beloussov of the Soviet Union, left, Lloyd V. Berkner of the United States, [Marcel] Nicolet [of Belgium], Jean Coulomb of France, and Sydney Chapman of the United Kingdom (NASA)

 

The U.S. National Committee for the IGY included Hugh Odishaw as its executive director. I also previously showed my cover signed by Odishaw.

I couldn't really find any online sites that describes the U.S. IGY Committee. In another earlier post, I mentioned that I own a copy of the Proposed United States Program for the International Geophysical Year, 1957-58, a 105-page document published in 1955 by the United States National Committee for the International Geophysical Year. It states in the introduction (p. ix) that organizations critical for each nation that developed its own IGY program would be the "adhering bodies" which would provide the focuses (foci) for those national committees and their programs. In the U.S., this body was the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. In turn, the Academy organized the U.S. National Committee for the IGY to "plan, direct, and execute the IGY program." The Committee members were listed inside the front cover shown, where you will see the names of Kaplan, Shapley, and Odishaw.

People on the U.S. National Committee for the IGY

I found a rather informative, chatty and interesting transcription of an oral interview with Alan Shapley by historians of science Ron Doell and Fae Korsmo, much of it about the IGY and its organization. Lots of interesting history and anecdotes, including about Chapman, Bartels, Kaplan and Odishaw, told with humor and some colorful observations of various participants. The interview was done in 2003, by which time Shapley had long survived these other luminaries (Chapman, 1888-1970; Berkner,1905-1967; Kaplan,1902-1991; Shapley, 1919-2006; Odishaw, 1916-1984), so that allowed him to be quite candid about the IGY program and its personnel: 

"Berkner was the wheeler-dealer" in the formulation of the IGY. 

He "didn’t want to be involved nationally in the US program ... So they hit upon Joe Kaplan, of UCLA, whose claim to fame was not really in geophysics. But he identified what are now known as the Vegard-Kaplan bands in the spectrum of the aurora. That’s almost the only thing he did except defend their football team." 

"How they hit upon me [Shapley himself], I don’t know."

"Chapman that said he had to solve or take the problems globally instead of as polar-wise [like the First and Second International Polar Years]. So I don’t think Berkner should get any credit for broadening things."

"Merle Tuve ... was a member of the US National Committee, and he was a very feisty person. A wonderful person, in contrast to some of the other people." 

"Odishaw’s first reaction on the International Geophysical Year was 'What the hell is that?' "

"Hugh and I were buddies. Joe Kaplan was a mouthpiece. Not to denigrate him, but Hugh and I did all the tactics and strategy."

"I was Staff Sergeant for the whole US program. Hugh and I were running the U.S. program. We manipulated Joe Kaplan as necessary."

Next year I may do a similar 1-page exhibit with signatures of 5 other prominent IGY scientists. Stay tuned.

A notable new acquisition - an IGY first day cover signed by Lloyd Berkner

 I recently was lucky to find a cover with a specific signature I had been looking for, at a modest price no less.

Lloyd Berkner signature on cacheted first day cover for U.S. IGY stamp            (cover US250 in my collection)

The first day cover features the U.S. IGY stamp (Scott 1107). The cachet is a common one by Art Craft, with one image showing (seismic?) measurements being made in Antarctica, and the other a montage of a rocket launch/Earth-orbiting satellite/tracking station.

But what makes this cover special is the signature by Lloyd V. Berkner, Vice president of CSAGI. Berkner (1905-1967) had a distinguished career as a radio engineer (including with the 1933 Byrd Antarctic expedition and later with the Navy in WWII), ionospheric scientist, and proponent of international cooperation in science.

Lloyd Berkner (Hales, 1992)

Berkner was vice president of CSAGI, as shown in his signature. "CSAGI is the acronym for Comité Spécial de l'Anée Géophysique Internationale, French for The Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year. This group was formed by the International Council for Scientific Unions (ICSU) to develop and coordinate the IGY. CSAGI met for the first time in October, 1952, almost 5 years before the start of the IGY, and organized a number of meetings after that to coordinate the various national committees working on the different subdisciplines of the IGY" (from an earlier post).

One of Berkner's greatest contributions to international science was his suggestion that after the First International Polar Year in 1882-83 and the Second International Polar Year 25 years later in 1932-33,  a Third International Polar Year should be scheduled twenty-five years after the second, instead of after another fifty years. Initial plans for this 3rd IPY took place in April, 1950, at a dinner party at the home of James Van Allen in Silver Spring, Maryland (where I lived from 1968-1972). Sidney Chapman later suggested it be called the International Geophysical Year (Korsmo, 2007). Berkner argued that technologies developed during World War II would enable improved studies of Antarctica, that 1957-58 would be a year of sun spot maximum, and that those present at the party would presumably still be alive and able to participate in such an endeavor in 1957-58 but not 25 years later in 1982-83 (Hales, 1992).

I have this book, published shortly after the IGY, in my library: Science in Space, Lloyd V. Berkner and Hugh Odishaw (editors), McGraw Hill, New York, 1961, 458 p.

The 20 articles review basic science that can be done in space and the use of experiments in space to learn about the Earth and our solar system.

I'll return to Lloyd Berker and Hugh Odishaw in an upcoming post.

Yesterday was the birthday of the first postage stamp

The stamp considered by most to be the first adhesive pre-paid countrywide postage stamp was issued on May 6, 1840, or 182 years ago yesterday (I thought that was today, but I hadn't yet corrected my watch date after the 30 days of April).

I knew the year, but not the date, which I just came across while reading a general book on stamp collecting that I recently purchased: Guide to Stamp Collecting, by Jiri Novacek, Chartwell Books, Inc., 1989, 224 pp.

The Penny Black (Warwick & Warwick;
not from my collection!)

As the story goes, in the late 1830s, Englishman Rowland Hill proposed to introduce stamps as we know them today. Until then, the posting of letters was paid by the recipient, based on the distance traveled and number of sheets of paper. On this date in 1840 the Post Office issued a black 1 penny stamp known as the Penny Black (duh) along with a blue version of the same design with a face value of twopence. The stamps did not bear the name of the issuing country, but carried an image of the queen (then a young Victoria), still true for British stamps. Postage rates became based on the weight of the letter, but remained uniform throughout Great Britain regardless of distance sent.

According to Warwick and Warwick Auctioneers, 68,808,000 Penny Blacks were printed; around 1.3 million still exist, a 2% survival rate. The value depends largely on physical condition, the printing plate used, and the appearance of the margins. You can buy a Penny Black on eBay starting at about $100, or you can buy a top notch version for tens of thousands of dollars. I don't think I'm gonna go there, though.

Graham Beck has a nice video post on the Penny Black in his YouTube channel Exploring Stamps:

One-page philatelic exhibits for the American Topical Association

The American Topical Association has, for the second year, solicited contributions for a gallery of philatelic exhibits that are just one letter-sized page. "The My One-Page Exhibit! Program is an ATA initiative to encourage new and experienced exhibitors to create single-page presentations of philatelic material that especially interest them."

Last year I had a 1-page exhibit derived from my IGY collection. It seems that the ATA did not keep links to last year's exhibits active, but you can find a copy of my exhibit here.

This year I have a 1-pager about the encounter of the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides, with the Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933. You can see that poster here, or below.

Since I recently discussed the slide rule in a post about the IGY's Phototrack program, you might be interested to look at the 1-page exhibit about the slide rule portrayed on stamps, of which the author David Walker found only 11 examples. He also shared with me a 2015 article showing philatelic examples of slide rules from the Slide Rule Gazette. 

And, of course, you can browse the other exhibits on quite a variety of topics.

While I'm at it, Happy May Day. Wikipedia says "May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice." In kindergarten, I participated in the Maypole dance

while wearing pink pants with suspenders. Hmm, I need to find that photo.

Wikipedia goes on to say about May Day: "In 1889, it was chosen as the date for International Workers' Day by the Second International, to commemorate the Haymarket affair in Chicago and the struggle for an eight-hour working day. As a result, International Workers' Day is also called 'May Day', but the two are unrelated."

In a short investigation, I came up with three U.S. stamp that honor labor or unions. These are:

• Scott 1082 (1956), for Labor Day (I know, not the same as May Day), featuring a design from the mosaic mural at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington. I have this stamp in my childhood collection:

• Scott 988 (1950), honoring Samuel Gompers who helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881, later reorganized as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) with Gompers as president.

• Scott 2848 (1994), honoring George Meany, president of the AFL from 1952-1979 (spanning the IGY).

Other International Years observed by the United Nations

Sorry about the greater than usual number of typos in the last post. I correct errors I find afterwards in the blog, but those edits are not forwarded to subscribers. I always thought that posts went out the next morning once the blog was published, but that one went out in the evening after my afternoon's work, before I came back to do another proofreading.

I've been a little blah on blogging lately, but I found a topic that tickled my fancy. I was cleaning up some piles of stamps from my childhood collection when I came across a couple of other "international year" stamps. That made me wonder about so-called international years.

This web page for the United Nations with a list of international years states:

The United Nations designates specific days, weeks, years and decades as occasions to mark particular events or topics in order to promote, through awareness and action, the objectives of the Organization. Usually, it is one or more Member States that propose these observances and the General Assembly establishes them with a resolution. On occasion, these celebrations are declared by the specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as UNESCO, UNICEF, FAO, etc., when they concern issues that fall within the scope of their competencies. Some of them may be later adopted by the General Assembly.

The list contains 88 international years from 1961 to 2024, with more than one for some calendar years.

The IGY in 1957-58 was not a UN designated international year, coming before such declarations began. In an earlier post, I explained that CSAGI (acronym for Comité Spécial de l'Anée Géophysique Internationale, French for The Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year) was formed by the International Council for Scientific Unions (ICSU), now the International Council for Science. The ICSU's mission was to strengthen international science for the benefit of society. It was one of the oldest non-governmental organizations in the world, its predecessor organizations dating back to the start of the 19th century. Thus, it far predates the United Nations, organized in 1945.

We have seen in an earlier post that the UN was involved in the IGY via the cooperation of the World Meteorological Organization (and perhaps in other ways I am not aware of).

I have put the list of UN International Years in tabular form, which you can see here. A number of these do have scientific or environmental themes. The six such years for which the U.S. issued postage stamps were:

I have the first two of these stamps in my childhood collection, and the last one in my IGY collection. This Fourth International Polar Year followed 50 years after the IGY, which was initially going to be the Third International Polar Year.

World Refugee Year, Scott 1149 (1960), canceled, from my childhood collection, mounted in Minkus' The New World Wide Postage Stamp Album.

World Refugee Year, Scott 1149 (1960), mint, more recently purchased. Designed by Ervine Metzl, who also designed the U.S. IGY stamp

International Cooperation Year, Scott 1266 (1965)

International Polar Year, Scott 4123 (2007)

News flash! I forgot I had ordered another U.S. philatelic item for a UN International Year, and it just arrived. It is an aerogram for the 1983 World Communications Year. I consider this IGY-related, since 1983 also happened to be the 25th anniversary of the first U.S. satellite put in orbit during the IGY. An aerogram  is "a sheet of paper with a strategically placed stamp-like indicium that prepays air mail postage. After the message and the name and address of the recipient are written, the sheet is folded, sealed, and mailed. No enclosures are permitted" (Encyclopedia of United States Stamps and Stamp Collecting glossary). My mother exchanged aerograms (the most economical way to write internationally) with overseas relatives when I was young;  I should have a trove of those sent to her somewhere. The U.S. issued a total of 25 aerograms from 1947 to 1999, when their production ceased due to the decline in postal communications (Wikipedia).

Air post stamped envelopes and air letter sheets (aerograms) have a special "back of the book" (items listed in different categories in the Scott catalogs following regular postage stamps) designation in the Scott catalogs, UC.

Front, World Communication Year themed U.S. aerogram, Scott UC56 (1983)

Back, World Communication Year themed U.S. aerogram, Scott UC56 (1983)

The indicium on the front shows a world map with the locations of satellite tracking stations. The cachet on the front of this first day cover shows a satellite and a tracking station. The satellite looks like a Tiros weather satellite, with panels of solar cells surrounding the body.

The image on the back of the aerogram shows another type of satellite and its partner tracking station. The satellite has solar cell arrays deployed on panels that could rotate to orient towards the sun.

Remember that my first non-summer job with Fairchild Space and Electronics Co. involved working on space power subsystems -- solar cell arrays and batteries -- for communications satellites.

The Annals of the IGY at the American Philosophical Society

I was away for a week, helping son #1 get ready to move back east from California. On the way home, I spent a day in Philadelphia and visited (as an official researcher) the American Philosophical Society Library. It has a full 48-volume set of the Annals of the IGY, not to be confused with the Bulletin of the IGY which I have been reviewing.

According to the APS website,

The American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, was founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin [more on him below] for the purpose of “promoting useful knowledge.” ... We serve scholars through a research library of manuscripts and other collections internationally recognized for their enduring historic value. 

APS Library building

The Annals series was described in Science, Vol. 125, No. 3260 (Jun. 21, 1957), p. 1239:

Pergamon Press has announced publication of the Annals of the International Geophysical Year, which will be the official journal of the IGY Central Committee (CSAGI). The Annals will describe the inception, the planning, the preparations, and the program of the IGY, and in due course the progress and some of the main results. 

Harold Spencer Jones will serve as general editor with the aid of an editorial advisory board that consists of A. H. Shapley (World Days), J. Van Miegheim (meteorology), V. Laursen (geomagnetism ), S. Chapman (aurora and airglow), W. J. G. Beynon (ionosphere), Y. Ohman (solar activity), J. A. Simpson (cosmic rays ), A. Danjon (longitude and latitude ), James Wordie (glaciology), G. Laclavere (oceanography), L. V. Berkner (rockets and satellites), V. V. Beloussov (seismology), P. Lejay ( gravity measurement), and M. Nicolet (nuclear radiation).

 It is anticipated that from four to six volumes of the Annals will be published during 1957 and 1958. Subscription rates are £6 or $17 per volume.

ScienceDirect makes the title and subject index from volume 48 of the Annals publicly available.

The first couple of volumes of the Annals that I looked at were intimidating in scope and length (maybe 10,000 pages total). I will peruse further volumes in future visits to the Library, and likely use some supplementary material, but I think the IGY Bulletin will remain my primary guide to the doings of the IGY.

I received a small grant from the American Philosophical Society early in my career: "Archaeomagnetic Secular Variation and Dating in Israel" ($2100, 1986). It covered most of my expenses for a short visit to Israel to collect some archaeomagnetic samples, and lay the groundwork for further work in this area. I appreciated that assistance from the APS, and now the use of its research library. 

F&M seal

Benjamin Franklin was honored in the name of Franklin College, now Franklin & Marshall College after merging with (John) Marshall College, for providing £200 in seed money for its establishment in 1787. I spent most of my career at F&M, teaching there for 33 years.

First day cover from my collection "franked" with the Ben Franklin stamp (Scott #1073, 1956) commemorating the 250th anniversary of Franklin's birth. Franklin was Postmaster General of [colonial] America from 1753-1774.

This postcard that I own shows the painting Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky by Benjamin West (1816), on which the above stamp design is based.

I just noticed that a Ken Burns two-part documentary on Benjamin Franklin premiers on PBS next week. Could be worth watching!

IGY Bulletin, Number 8, February 1958 - Thule neutron monitor station

One last short article from this issue of the IGY Bulletin.

The Thule (Greenland) neutron monitor station was built for the IGY in 1957 by the Bartol Research Foundation. It was operated by the U.S. Army Signal Corps, which is in charge of communications and information systems support for the armed forces. Martin Pomerantz, president of the Bartol at the time, provided the material for this article.

The Bartol Research Institute is a research center in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware (a 90-minute drive from my location in Lancaster, PA). The Bartol Research Institute currently operates 10 neutron monitor stations as part of the Neutron Monitor Program. Thule, which was put into operation on 27 Aug. 1957 during the IGY, is still running.

Thule neutron monitor, oldest of the monitors operated by Bartol Research Institute. The neutron detector tubes are inside the four white boxes (photo by J Roth, Bartol).

As a reminder of what was in an earlier post, the Bartol says: A neutron monitor is an instrument that measures the number of high-energy particles impacting Earth from space. For historical reasons these particles, mostly protons and helium nuclei, are called "cosmic rays." Because the intensity of cosmic rays hitting Earth is not geographically uniform, it is important to place neutron monitors at multiple locations in order to yield a complete picture of cosmic ray influxes. The neutrons are secondary spallation products derived from cosmic rays interacting with molecules in the atmosphere.

The article goes on to say that the Thule station, 1500 miles from the North Pole, was important because it was closer to the geomagnetic pole than any other neutron monitor. Cosmic rays can more easily funnel in towards the Earth's surface through the openings at the magnetic poles.

The secondary protons and neutrons produced in the atmosphere by cosmic rays are stable, so they provide much information about the distribution of cosmic rays and the geomagnetic field. The neutron fluxes vary with cosmic ray intensity; on the one hand they correlate with flares on the sun which emit cosmic rays, but on the other hand are inversely related to the solar cycle and solar magnetic fields when high (low) heliomagnetic fields shield (don't shield) galactic cosmic rays from reaching the Earth. Bartol gives a thorough explanation.

Thule has a fascinating history as: the home to indigenous Inughuit; the site of a secret U.S. airbase; the main staging point for the construction of Camp Century; the site of a Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) outpost, with radar in order to warn North America of a transpolar missile attack from either the USSR mainland or of submarine-launched missiles from the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans.

A philatelic aside on Thule: I was looking at eBay to see if I could find any relevant stamps or covers. I found listings of five 1937 stamps from Thule. Apparently, stamps for regular mail were not issued from the town of Thule (now Qaanaaq) until 1938. The 1937 "local" stamps were privately printed by the Thule Committee in memory of polar explorer Knud Rasmussen (1879-1933) on the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the most northerly trading post in the world, the Thule Trading station. These stamps are not listed in the Scott catalogue, but you can find them in Colnect.

Thule stamps, not in my collection (Quora)

Two stamps from the Ukraine

I was away for a week in Florida (I'll include some photos in a couple of posts). And this week I have been busy with other things. But before I return to the IGY proper, today I am thinking of Ukraine.

So I bought two stamps to give some philatelic tie-in to my unhappiness at what is going on there. The first is a souvenir sheet (with simulated perforations) commemorating Independence Day of Ukraine, showing a map of Ukraine against the background of the globe, a rainbow of national colors and viburnum bushes in the form of a festive fireworks. Just like the collaborators during the IGY, Ukraine is one country among many in the world. 

Scott #194, issued Sept. 3, 1994 (colnect.com)

 

The current form of the Ukrainian Independence Day holiday was first celebrated in 1991, as the first anniversary of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine passed by Ukraine's parliament in 1990.

In Ukraine, the flowering plant Viburnum opulus is an important element of its traditional folk cultures, and is seen as a national symbol. 

On the other stamp I bought, Ukraine honored the World Meteorological Organization, about which I recently posted. This stamp commemorated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the WMO. The work of this organization was very connected to the meteorological studies of the IGY.

Scott #378, issued March 10, 2000 (colnect.com )

Solidarity with the people of the sovereign nation of Ukraine.

More on macrocards

For some reason, the microcards that were discussed in yesterday's post really intrigued me. I contacted one of Franklin & Marshall College's very helpful librarians, Tom Karel. He told me that the College library did house some microcards. I went over today, and entered a room I suspect is not much used anymore, housing microfilm, microfiche, and yes, some microcards. Wikipedia discusses these technologies in an article on microforms, which says "Three formats are common: microfilm (reels), microfiche (flat sheets), and aperture cards. Microcards, also known as 'micro-opaques', a format no longer produced, were similar to microfiche, but printed on cardboard rather than photographic film."

Here is the shelving for the microcards at F&M, maybe about 50 linear feet, about 150 boxes. (The orange/yellow/gray volumes in the lower right are not microcards.)

Each bound bound carton looks like this:

Almost all of F&M's microcard holdings are of the Landmarks of Science (Series 1), formerly produced by the University of Oklahoma. This case contains work of James Hutton (1726-1797), the founder of modern geology. 

One slipcase can hold about 200 microcards. So the 150 boxes at F&M could hold about 30,000 microcards. This is about 50% more than what was needed for storage of the the IGY meteorological data, as mentioned in my previous blog post.

One Landmark of Science microcard looks like this:

First microcard of James Hutton's Theory of the Earth

Each card is 4" x 6", and contains 100 pages of text. So the 30,000 microcards in F&M's collection would be equivalent to about 3,000,000 pages. 

The pages are too small to read with the naked eye off these cards. But F&M still has a functional card reader, a Readex Microprint Opaque Viewer. (Readex now seems to specialize in offering collections of digitized online primary source research materials.)

The first page of Hutton's Theory of the Earth (1788) looks like this when magnified on the reader screen:

Of course, now we can find the text of this historic work online. Who would've imagined?