IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Reports from other countries

Finally, here is a summary of the last article from the first issue of the IGY Bulletin (along with some philatelic extras). I'm planning/hoping that in September I can catch up with the August and September 1957 issues. This is the first of occasional articles reporting on the IGY activities of other countries.

Australia

The article briefly describes various scientific activities planned for the Antarctic IGY stations at Macquarie Island, Mawson, and Davis. These stations are listed in the Wikipedia list of Antarctic stations I referred to before, including Davis and Mawson as Antarctic stations proper, and Macquarie Island as a sub-Antarctic station. The sub-Antarctic is a region located roughly at latitudes between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The sub-Antarctic region includes many islands in the southern parts of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans; Macquarie Island is shown in the map below. Davis and Dawson are both shown on the map of Antarctic stations we looked at before.

Map of Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic (antarctica.gov.au)

Mawson was named in honor of Australian geologist and polar explorer Douglas Mawson. Sir Douglas (not to be confused with the Sir Douglas Quintet) first opened the base at Macquarie Island in 1911. He was honored on a stamp in my collection for the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT - a part of East Antarctica claimed and administered by the Australian Antarctic Division) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition.

Scott #L7 (1961)

The L designation is not one of the standard Scott stamp classification categories. I don't know what it designates, but I'm guessing something referring to the fact that the AAT is just an Antarctic claim, not internationally recognized as Australian land (which is a story for another day). AAT stamps can be used in mainland Australia as well.

Have a look at the current web page for the Australian Antarctic Program.

Sweden

The Swedish ship Lommaren carried a neutron monitor as part of an effort to better locate the geomagnetic equator and the latitudinal dependence of cosmic rays. The geomagnetic pole and equator are tilted (to a first order) relative to geographic coordinates. This effort was complicated when a solar disturbance affected cosmic ray fluxes, since expansion of the heliomagnetic field causes a decrease in the cosmic ray flux at the Earth's surface. 

Sweden, by the way, did not issue an IGY stamp. Its stamps for 1957 and 1958 were not that interesting, unless you are a big fan of King Gustav VI Adolf.

United Kingdom

In preparation for IGY atmospheric measurements, British Skylark rockets were being fired at the Woomera Range in the outback of Australia. Woomera was originally established in response to the U2 missile program of Nazi Germany. England was too densely populated to locate such a range. Woomera, the largest land-based test range in the Western world, is about the same size as all of England.

As this article from the The Postal Museum of Britain explains, the UK did not issue an IGY stamps. The idea was considered, designs were submitted, but it was decided that too many stamps were already on the docket.

Design proposed for a UK IGY stamp, the Queen looking on as always

IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Status report: seismology, gravity and longitude & latitude

This was the first of three articles in the IGY Bulletins that will present the status of activity in each IGY area. Recall that from my post of Nov. 21, 2020, these areas are:

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

For the three areas covered in this IGY Bulletin article, what were some of the IGY goals? I'll number these areas according to the list above.

8. Longitudes and latitudes objectives included:

• precise determination of latitudes and longitudes, to within a few feet
• determination of the shape (figure) of the Earth
• measurement of irregularities in Earth's rotation 

12. Seismology objectives included determination of:

• Antarctic crustal structure
• Antarctic ice thickness
• layers and their thicknesses in the ocean crust

13. Gravity objectives included:

• augmenting the global network of gravity measurements, especially in the Southern Hemisphere and polar regions
• better determination of the solid Earth's response to the tides
• enhanced measurement of gravity at sea

I assume we will see results of these pursuits in future issues of the IGY Bulletin, to be summarized here in future posts.

In my geophysics courses at Franklin & Marshall College, I taught all three of the topics that are the subject of this Bulletin article. Geophysicists often distinguishes between "pure" and "applied" geophysics. Pure geophysics (aka physics of the Earth, or solid Earth geophysics) is more or less the physics of the Earth in its natural state, including earthquake seismology, geomagnetism, and the gravity field of the Earth. Applied geophysics involves surveys (e.g., seismic, gravity, magnetic, electrical), using natural or artificial energy sources, to locate things in the Earth's subsurface of economic or cultural interest such as hydrocarbons, ores, and archaeological structures. 

As our geosciences curriculum at F&M changed over the years, I taught separate courses on solid Earth geophysics and applied geophysics, and courses that somewhat combined these topics, I can count 9 or 10 textbooks on my bookshelf that I used for these courses. I probably changed them more than was necessary, but I was constantly trying to find that "better" (also in print, up to date, and not too expensive) guide for undergraduates who typically had more interest in geology than geophysics, and often came in with only modest quantitative skills. 

Below are the covers of my favorite three of the textbooks. A common thread is that they are all explicitly written for geologists, without too much calculus, and more compatible with the students I taught.

It IS rocket science

After the last post on rockets and space, I thought I would trot out a couple of my memorabilia items. First is a book that came out during the IGY to tout the U.S. IGY satellite program. It was written by the prolific polymath and popular science writer Willie Ley, published in 1957 by General Mills. I wonder if this had anything to do with GM's biological warfare programs? Holy (holey) Cheerios! The 44-page book discusses plans to launch at least six Vanguard three-stage rockets during the IGY, carrying satellites as payloads. Unlike other noted rocket scientists, Ley was appalled by the rise of the Nazis and left Germany in 1935.

Ley had become interested in spaceflight after reading German rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth's book about spaceflight. Oberth was one of three early 20th century rocket flight visionaries, along with American Robert Goddard and Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

I have two commemorative postcards that with cachets by the Hermann Oberth Society. That Society has since merged with others to become part of the German Society for Air and Space Travel. The stamp on each card is the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) 1961 15-pfennig stamp portraying Martin Luther, Scott catalog Germany #828. Both cancellations are dated June 26, 1964, from Darmstadt, for the 13th Rocket and Space Travel Days. The top cachet depicts NASA's Project Gemini (1962-66), and the other honors Project Apollo (1961-72). 

I've previously showed you a 1964 first day cover with the Robert Goddard stamp that I collected in my youth. I also have two Soviet stamps of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The first is the 40-kopeck Scott catalog #1991 (Russia, 40), issued on Oct. 7, 1957, just three days after the launch of Sputnik 1. I assume this stamp was waiting in the wings pending the Soviets' first satellite launch, since it does not commemorate an anniversary date of Tsiolkovsky's birth or death. 

With a little more prep time, the USSR issued a stamp on Nov. 28 1957 (Scott #2021), with the same design, and an overprint which translates as "Oct 4, 1957 - First artificial satellite in the world." The bragging rights were duly earned.

If you want to see even an older space movie than First Man Into Space (last post) about extraterrestrial travel, how about Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon, 1929)? Directed by Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M), it was an early sci-fi silent epic, just as the movies were adding sound. Parts are impressive, parts are silly by today's (or my) standards. Shaving an hour off the 2:50 run time would have made this story a bit tighter. Yet there was some decent rocketry stuff in the film, due to credited assistance from Hermann Oberth, and (according to Wikipedia) an even more substantial but uncredited input from Willy Ley.

I used to launch Estes model rockets with my sons, which became the basis for a couple of science fair projects. I also used rockets for some enrichment activities on the laws of motion with high school student gifted programs. Hmm, maybe I should do another countdown?

Son Max on the launch pad with his 6th grade science fair project, 1995

Blastoff!