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.