THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH,
SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1949.
BIG
BEN
IS
90
10 MEN
As the pubile know 14-
DIG Ben was 90 on May 31,
BIG
Only once since it started service in 1869 has the clock falled because of a nechauten) fault. That was in 1044 when the pendulum- suspension spring broke.
Until 1913 the clock had to be wound by hand. It took two men five hours on three days a week.
Then a motor-driven winder was installed and now it only takes 40 minutes three days a week to wind the clock.
The only war-damage it received was in 1941. An AA shell slightly danaged Its tower,
Although known as Big Ben, the clock's correct name is the Grent Clock. Il Ben is the
bell which was named after Sir Benjamin Hall. Then Chief Works Commissioner.
Bly Ben was first cas! In 1850 but in 1857 i 4t long eluck was discovered and the bell had to
be broken up. In 1058 13g Ben I was cast and today:
Bang
дл
is still used
seen by the main. tenance men.
Get Him
"Dashed if this isn't a fine timo for the best man to tell me that ho put my ring on Royal Forest in the Dorby."
London Express Service
Be good, you men!
RODENTISTEXT7228(435231-
NEW YORK.
HEN television was one of those what-
won't-they-think-of-next topics, the prospect - that seemed to titillate a great many was that of a television-telephone, over which you might be seen in embarrassing circumstances.
The parties would be visible to each other. and, my goodness, there you'd be with practically. nothing on.
It was by no means a silly idea. The no-stone- unturned-leaving Germans had such instruments operating by 1938, connecting four cities. But not home-to-home, and no one
phoned and caught Gretchen clad only in a bath towel.
oye
That joking carly specu- lation hit close to the bull's in another respect. This sorcerer's dream, this ability to make men and women suddenly visible afar without their knowledge, has turned out to be one of TV'a most beguiling and worrisome powers.
For people have not yet learned that they are likely to become television per formers at any minute..
Out
of This! Na 6
by ERNEST DUDLEY (The Armchair Detective)
M
INGING
LAYNE, vaudevilla
female-Impersonator, is in the tolls of alluringly ovil May Hemm and satanically handsome Skull Duggery. one-time Illusionista
have turned blackmallera.
Suppose
TV cameraman pictures the crowd at some sports event. He is hunting tor
reaction shots,
perhaps ***Joy
In the
enst stands, de- Jection in the west.
TV may be watching
by
ROBERT
So television loses a friend,
M. YODER
"In don't believe anyone will
As TV reaches out hungrily for something to put on the air you will be under this fanelful, new surveillance more and more of the time,
The man who took his sceralary to lunch had some ebande lo duck if his sister-in-
law came in, as usually she did. There is no way of telling when television is looking
'Shown up
---PETRILLTEL SEU P2212271520ZGJATATA
As the baroness
said in the bath.
N
TOKYO,
masks to Indicato that you're
Tho samo O visit to Japan is not supposed to tee them. thing applies -10%
There are so actresses on the completo without a
the rest of tho old traditional night or two at a The women's parts are taken by it hasn't been. Japanese stage. country where Japanese Inn, and if the inn men, some of whom are sold to bombod, indur is at one of the hot springs be so natural that mothers send trialised, or pina- that are common in this vol-
their daughters to them to learn tored with: "No" deportment. canic country, no night is complete without a visit to the communal bathroom.
At the play
Parking" notices
by the occupying Powers
To look at the. This takes the place of the show I went to in Tokyo.
was a ghost play, A fellow azalean growing lounge In a European hotel, and took his girl friend into a wood, wild, at the pic- everyone mecia there in the but they'd hardly sat evening for a gossip and a good when who should turn up but pines,
down turesque stunted and the old soak. Yes, everyone.
the spectre of his former whimsical shells The American occupying sweetheart.
on the seashore, troops.are now usually given This cast quite a gloom over you'd think that bathrooms of their own but the proceedings, and the three the normal evolutionary pro- when I explained that I was of them moved round the wood cesses of botany, and blolcgy an English reporter, and not a for about an hour with the had been replaced by a system G.I., I was - invited to use the break-neck speed
of doped under which only the artistically BAMO bathroom as everybody tortoinss It was thic clsc.
most fittest forms of Japanese life An offer I accepted for
eternally
drawn-out triangle were allowed to survive. ------ professional reasons, of couros, I've ever seen, but the audience
the natural Turning from and not out of mere curiosity. loved It.
beauties of the country to those Ghost plays are of artificial origin, the baroness specially popular and I next discussed the original In the summer three monkeys-which I have because they now seen-that neither hear, make sou shiver
nor ace evil. They are and to cool you on wood on a templa down. In win- building at Nikko, one of the ter, when there beauty spots of Jopan.
Bernard Wicksteed
in JAPAN
J
They don't sit bunched
The bath self was like h is no heating, the audience miniature tiled swimining poot shiver without any help from together as we see them in the about six feet square and smel- ghosts. ling slightly of bad eggs, as spa
cheap models at home. They are climbing about an artistic
water frequently does. When Naturally, one of the things the tree. The one that won't listin I entered the room there were baroness asked me in the bath to evil is some distance from the four people sitting immersed to was what I thought of Japan, others, and the fellow with his their necks and as many more and I answered that it soomed hands to his eyes has turned his lounging round the edge. to me to be the living image of head away so that, even if he is une Japanese prints we see 50 tempted to peop through his fingers, he won't see the other two.
Through the steam much of at home. VISIBILITY wasn't perfect. If Nature hazl set out Living snow
I
Tako Fujiyama, for instance.
because of the steam, but deliberately to design a moun- know that any hovereita tain suited to the peculiarities WE also talked about cherry when I say that they weren't awuldn't have done it better. In I in our bath. The main display
all of Japanese brushwork the
blossom, the buroness and
men. However, when In Japanese bathroom do as the shape it is the perfect cone, for which Japan is famous was Japs do, I say. So in I jumped, rising (12,407 feet) from the finished what I arrive, but and found myself, talking to a plain, without a rival or peer in there were a few trees in bloom baroness. She told me la charm, the neighbourhood.
in the mountains on the way to ing English that she when't
the spa. a baroness really, us all tiles
I first Baw Fuji from the
They were lovely enough to have been abolished in Japan B.O.A.C. flying-boat that brought give you an iden of what the since the war. "But," she said us up from China. There were country must be like during "there's nothing to stop you clouds as we approached and those four or five days when the calling yourself an ex-baron or the pilot took us above them to whole land seems to be covered ex-baroness, is there?"
give us a better view. There with drifin of living an she was, the most famous moun And $0, havinst got I replied that I was sure fain in the world, a pleture of thoroughly soaked, the ex- there wasn't. (I always agree symmetry glistening in the sun. baroness rose from the bath and, with baronesses in the bath, ex- or otherwise, don't you?)
Then we ran into cloud again deftly manipulating her towel,. and thought her lost until a fow bowed herself out, remarking as From titles we got on to the maminta later the reappeared she went how glad she was lo
have met me. Japanese theatre. ("Been to through a thinning haze, dressed, any good shows, Baroness?" this time, entirely in pastel I said. "It's been a pleasure to
"Don't mention it, Baroness, asked). Although they are not shades, with the previous sharp bath with you." half os diverting as the baihs, ness of her contours softened by Japanese theatres have their ratn.
charms.
$1
#
Just for the record I think I
several times.
For one thing,' the It was
a lovely sight, but ought to tell you that she was scenery is often changed while somehow not new. I'd seen it grandmother IT can blab to the acting is still going on, the all before in pictures on a dozen over, and old enough to be mine.
that
wearing you scene-shifters
black drawing-room walls. were out with Janet,
TV Marge
at the football
and possibly it gains a damage have a cause for complaint if it can show the Smiths that the suit, although things are in a televison shows him at an affair Joneses could easily have got Jumble on the score.
For which admission is paid-a scata for them prize fight or a football match, match. for instanco even if he hoped not to be seen there
TV is the most remarkable tattle-tale of all me, n fact that makes no one happy. In many a shemozzle. evitably It Is going to produce
Caught out
THV
HERE'S a fine- looking man taking the sun
•
the
It can show a customer that If you expedited his order, as "It is a chance he took. Ho promised, you did. It from wasn't buying 'privacy, as he race track. It can inform your might be in a night club, and wife that `the away-from-home even in the night club his real conference included an informa- beef would be against the pen Uve session at the Club Hotchn. prietor"
It can show conslituents, by puro accident, that their folksy
at a Florida race track. "Look, A cass conducive to BULD- old M.P. atops at mighty flossy Emily Jen't that Me Brown, our NESS involved a New Yorker hates once he leaves the home Or he may banker?" He gave it out that who spied his, Lace in dve feat town. have nothing he was going to Baltimore for of alni in a movie-crowd scene. more in mind a minor operation.
You may as well start getting He went to court, hoping to used to it. enjoin the showing of that part in which be appeared. New -(London Express Service) York had the Arst Right-or-
than to show To have his outing reported that an awful so inexorably is likely to make lot of people. Mr B. sore, just as he had been left home, congratulating himself work, and tele-
on sur Privacy statute,, but the court old-fashioned risk would not help him. vision receivers viving tho
from meeting somebody this home.
who
10
come
here
on
hot
Belp Carton-Insurance Agent on the trail of May and Skull, tracks them to a
dorelict saw-mill by, the marshes bonlid Golders Green.
May and Skull trap the unsuspecting Bulp Carton, stunning him with the post- Budget nows (false, of course), that boer ja. to be nationalised and given kway free. They rope the unconscious Bulp Carton to ainblo,
Siige
"Then' Skull conceives a Dendiau, plán, Dang elbow greas47, Cand
'other krease from an old tin), he sela the. machinery going that drives the groat 'circular saw, Hạ. pushes the table with
•B6lp Carton tied to it in front of the sindranding aaw so that he must inevitably
be sawn in half.
May, who always had an eye for show-. manship for the ack insists that Blaip Carton, should be fully conscious to meet his doom. Sa sha puta a lighted cazıdla beneath Snip Carton's bara fenka
Skull, glancing out of the only window, with in-apart fron bars, notices tho marsh-floods rising rapidly. With cruci satisfaction he calculates that in half an hour all traces of mis cold-blooded crims will de, utterly submerged, sunan DA
Advising May to stop gloating and make Įtumappy, akull and his pocomplice exit Gio, a flash amid diabolical laughter, triple-
looking the heavy door behing them, thigh My The candle-fisme revivas Snip Cartos. Inistrenes? Agent--who- egents, to with the #zhasily circular, saw whirring over “nödror”......... Salg And the marsh-flood pudde rising sveria Pyhitherm Bo, onde maxinlits us to TOVISI FORTHEIM, DUT/OFFTAUS £;All Ebs oluns fifiare in the ploturautem Man
out of
or this It isn't co much that TV Arelle day. treads unknown legal ground
Mockery case
|||||||||||||||||||||483392971|83|||328
A CASE conducive If ho halls a
to CAUTION arose moment for a and figure before his friends,
from a travelogue, refreshing
his enemies, his boss, and his a camera tour of New York. Much of what seems The 'camera paused for a long glimpse of two wife. young girls in over-caution is simply courtesy, moment on a big-city character, the east stand, On one programme originat- a woman of no great charmi that is likely to ing in night clubs, little cards who was peddling in
when it flashes a citizen's face. TV
be the moment are placed on certain tables. district.
one of the girio Is a warning that those areas
poor
Axes her gar will be in camera range. The To conserve energy in the ter. It may be friendly suggestion is that you summer hent, she was peddline she thought une was look- haul out of there if you are sitting in
Ing.
forgetting supposed
to be
that she might
of meeting
the
attending a figure
Historical beaten.
go on display Society.
in homes,
a chair-a shapeless looking thoroughly
The lady sued and won. It The headaches, if any, are was true no one had obtained clubs, and bor ikely to be acquired out in the her permission, She felt sho unpredictable world, on remote had been mocked, and doubt- Well, the TV
reporting less that had a bearing on the programmes cameraman sports events or other news. damages.
rooms,
can't stare, so The lawyers are not sure how
A casa conducive to LAUGHK-
he averts his far their fancy telescope can 50 TER featured the shy bubbla electronic eyes. In showing people where they dancer, Miss Sally Rand. Mis
Ha hears the
are, as they are TV lawyer say-
·Rand had struck. a photo- Ing: "We're not One of the bost minds among grapher for taking her picture. just sure how them works it out like this: Sho sald in Justification that wo stand, The man or woman who at her privacy had been invaded. legally, oh
on tends a public function pro- The judge remarked dryly that points like this, bably surrenders, to, a certain-if you take a bath and charge Batter not extent. his right to be left admission to watch, you can't show anyone in alone. He has a qualifed right very well object it somebody an unflattering of privacy, but he doesn't have takes a picture of you. light. Probably
It safe,"
we're all right, the unqualified. right to remain Television is a sort of lawyers! but lot's phy unseen.
nightmare, or dream, though The man or woman who is most of the terrors may be just televised watching a parade, about as harmless. A single shot, Tho' camera for instance, probably can't however, can contain the mak- man swings complain, even
If he or she ings of three or four kinds of away, and somewhere shouldn't have been there. -
grief. ́"He must have known there along this brief line he passes, was a chance somebody would a handsome ace him. Televison simply bet man of middle ters that chance. In this sen
Suppose you televise a fat and funny passer-by, pausing before in store window. He's being used for the general amusement, but (he's ... good-natured, and ↑ doesn't do anything about it. But in the stors, window there is a copy- [righted"" map, or picture which OFFICIALLY, this shouldn't have been televised
yenre talking, TV is a fores for good. pleasantly with
the girl next- to him sho looks to be his
daughter. And
home wife/7›zomarka ›
**** Just a chance /
is likely to in the without permission. nation's moral tone. And the thing gola' a little bitterly that Unofficially, it is a little hard fantastic if you assume that the Philip certainly on the man who may be caught derby 1 whistling a coOTV. makes riendo" "wodring a whiskey bidush ») or should not have used without the readily reun
Abymos of the times RELIEF
By Alan Melville
alm is restored. Tho world can breathe once mora!
Go on its businem as it did
before.
The crises of the past fow
months efface
The swift, dramatic moves from place to place. The grlm uncertainty through which wa groped, The secrecy and double
with which we coped: These tenie and hectio
torments of the past Are now, and none too
soon. resolved at last. Calm is restored and life Aceme strangely sweeter; The Aly Khan, has really
married Rita.
Peace has returned. Though almost past. bellet
The nation henye a sigh
of joint relief. Now that this mighty maiter's at an end
To lesser problems we can
row altend.
No longer need wo know
the awful strain
Of following the move- monts of that pipe. The eddies of undertainty
that swirled
Are stilled and óne thing's
settled in the world. Bovin çan, smiler Viskin. sky's almost pally; Ponça has returned.", itita
has married AI
11's quiet again.
No
A more we'll read thore
bita
Describing amuggled exits
from the RIE
Or secret signations of
the pale With only eighly dive
32 reporters there,
Now back to
export drive, we'll
a p
land,
Our
Will soar with this no
* longer on our mind. "The world's perplexities
... will soon be solved N Now, this important prob, jad, lem's boen; resolved.”
Ali's quiet #gwinan♬ juakra' GANG CADETEAN, pumiced fiJUN
Ilita krid Aly: raklly; have ww.cret splicet 34^ang.
HE HAS
--{London Express. Servies)
THE BIGGEST
SECRET IN THE WORLD
NEW YORK.
HOW would you like it if..
when you doodled idly
FREDERICK COOK.
:
fissionable uranium from
AEC laboratory near Chicago. It started by being a pound and _a_quarter-of-uranlum -235-and- ended up by being one-seventh of one ounce a mountain that shrank into a molehl. But it was enough to make trouble for David Lilienthal.
Now tew criticisms dooded
more
on a scratchpad while tele- phoning, a guard leaned Difficult appolutments seem over your shoulder and with to seek him out by irresistible a "Now, now, Sir" look on attraction as a pin rushes head his face snatched the doodle long toward a magnet. away and burned it, just in valley Authority-that
boss nt case your subconscious had Roosevelt cheap-power project One concemed a security been revealing things it in which Wall Street professed ganised, having some of its own
which AEC itself shouldn't?
agents steal bara of uranium
to
A8
ace the
the TennesSOO
great
test
of
burgeoning
or-
Communism-hc from the plant at Hanford.
Or if you were routed out of American bed in the middle of the night battled with the financial Utans Washington, to sco if they and rushed down to the office who wanted to keep power in would be missed. They were because one of the typists had private hands.
left a chewing-gum wrapper on A PERSONAL FIGHT the floor and there was SVIBA
pencilled writing, on it?
not. In 10 days they were put
back, and still nobody noticed a thing.
Two years ago be fought and Senator Hickenlooper Bays That, among other things, is won another round with those that Mr Lilienthal has been what it means to be David same interests when they flung guilty of "Incredibló mir Lilienthal (pronounced Lilian overy obstacle they could in his management and maladminis Tall) boss of America's Atomie way to prevent him taking over tration." Mr Lilienthal says it Energy Commission-the man at AFC.
isn't 20, and furthermore that with the world's biggest secret. Since the day he walked into Senator Hickenlooper's charges his present Job, not a day has aro unfair, a smear campaign HE KNOWS
passed when he has not, in the against him, and an attempt to Lilienthal, slz feet tall, 40 battle hard behind the secnes calamity.
midst of his real work, had to raise the begy of impending fast going bald-and no
won with the powerful groups who der, he says a veteran publio servant and now once again, the want to wrest alomic energy AWAY FROM IT ALL epicentro of a
out of the hands of the civilians Congressional
In the old, peaorful days of typhoon, carries in his head the and hand it over to the milit
Tenncasco, Lilienthal liked Secret of Secrets: How many atom bombs the USA. po David Lilienthal has grown,
Through those 10
nothing better than the long YOUTH
horseback rides through the sesses, and where they aro
hardened to attack. "I always mountains alone. He has no keep my suitcase packed," he time to ride now, and has sold says now. "All public servants his horse. Most of the time he are egg-walkers. We learn to works seven days a week, Ho tread warily."
gots to his desk by. 9 am odd•
and
how
ary.
He knows how many are be ing, manufactured long it takes to put them to gether.
Ho knows just how many, thousand mes more powerful The current uproar la Con- several times a week is there they are than the one that greas, largely a personal fight until 30 p.m. Dattened Hiroshima or the one between Mr Lilienthal and the "I can sleep 18 hours a day that sent that fantastic mush lowa Senator Bourke Hicken- when I'm on vacation," he said, room soarin
looper, who doesn't care who "but I find I don't sleep wolf into the sky at Bikini...
ther
Lilienthal, is fired or re-, when I'm on the job.”“ But, like most of the rest of, gns so long as he goes, centres At odd times Lilienthal tries us, he doesn't know any too around security within AEC. to get away from it all by gar
With 70,000 workers and 1,270 dening; at the moment he is clearly what makes the thing separate factories, laboratories, Inying out a formal garden at. work, though he has to protend mines, amees and test areas,
his new house a understand. the scientist this is a wide fald.
in suburban Washingtoiu-
"Worst thing about the job."
of what he does
AN OUTCRY
to elaborato
Jargon The result of know is that, after a lifetime of The trouble began when it he says, "la the secrecy. Nature talking over the day's work was disclosed that AEC had gave me the sort of face that with his wife of an evening, awarded a 2400 fellowship for reflects the emotions and the Just like any other man, he has studies in physics to an alleged thoughts. I've had to disciplina
Communist, had to give that up.
Hano
Hans Frolstadt, myself, and chango all that w
"Now I have developed the longer dare tell her where lie A communities of Congress (both
I've plumbed the has been all day, and the dare houses were, in on It) quos fishy store. not ask. He even thinks twice tioned Lilenthal about it. He depths of reticence to the point before, telling her what he had conceded it was probably a where I know that it isn't only forlunda,
kat, mistake to assist a Communist's what I say that matters, but Trouble and David: Lilienthal : studies, but mid that Frei- even how I say it But thos aro old acquaintances. He has stadt's work was not going to who think I shall crack under been in the thick of it for 18 afford him arcem to anything the strain are wrong. Why, my blood pressure, today Is exactly
EwYears"as long a run for a" tops" confidential anyway Congguan ngantait-wagging24.C
level public oficial' sh Washing Then, thero camo, an outery.