Noted People in New Zealand Aviation History

I have been having a look at the official Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (DNZB) to see how many people who made significant contributions to New Zealand's aviation history have been the subject of biographical notes. These are the 25 names that I have found so far:

Henry van Asch
Jean Batten
George Bolt
Alfred Brandon
Keith Caldwell
Norris Falla
Lawson Field
Oscar Garden
Esmond Gibson
Hilda Hewlett
Leonard Isitt
Cyril Kay
Edward Kidson
Fred Ladd
Fred Lucas
Malcolm McGregor
Bert Mercer
Keith Park
Richard Pearse
Geoffrey Roberts
Leo and Vivian Walsh
Leo White
Harry Wigley
Rodoph Wigley
Henry Wigram

I will add a few more as I find them.

"The Nature of Technology" by W. Brian Arthur

I recently finished reading economist W. Brian Arthur's very interesting new book, The Nature of Technology - What It Is and How It Evolves. Formerly at Stanford, Brian Arthur is now associated with the Sante Fe Institute and PARC. He is noted for his work on complexity theory and increasing returns to scale.

In the book Arthur uses a wide definition of "technology" and offers an excellent plain language explanation of its relationship with science and the economy ("The economy is an expression of its technologies."), and the process of innovation that has wide application. His writing benefits from the fact that, as well as being an economist, he trained as an electrical engineer. A particular attraction for me was his use of examples of aeronautical technology.

A review of the book appeared in the New York Times on 19 October 2009 and the American Scientist carried an interview by Greg Ross with Arthur about the ideas.

The book deserves a wider readership.

Primary history sources on Aeropolitics in the 1940s

Those with an interest in international aeropolitics will know that some of the most critical decisions were made in the 1940s, during and in the aftermath of the Second World War.

This was the period that saw in 1944 the drafting of the Chicago Convention, that lead to the founding of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Three of the key players in Chicago were the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. In total 54 countries participated with the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia deciding not to attend, Argentina not being invited, and Germany and Japan excluded.

It also saw the negotiation of bilateral air services arrangements UPDATED (note in particular the "resolution" at the end of the document) between the United Kingdom and the United States in Bermuda from 15 January to 11 February 1946. Bermuda 1, as it is now called, become a model for thousands of subsequent bilateral air services arrangements as attempts to establish a widely-accepted multilateral agreement covering all then five "freedoms of the air" failed.

With a particular interest in what happened about the "fifth freedom", a major subject of contention in Chicago, and limits on foreign ownership and control of international airlines (El Salvador was very far sighted on this at Chicago but gained no support), I have recently been hunting on the web for some of the primary history sources for this period and have found some interesting "nuggets", examples of which follow.

ICAO has now made available some of the original documents UPDATED from the Chicago Conference (1 November - 7 December 1944) relating to its founding.

From the United States:

• A large 259-page collection of papers relating to the Chicago Conference, including the lead up to it
• A 27 June 1949 secret bulletin reporting on post-Bermuda British Commonwealth developments that were of concern to the United States
• An oral history interview with George P. Baker

From the United Kingdom:

• A 12 February 1946 oral question and answer in the House of Lords about the outcome of the Bermuda negotiations
• A 21 February 1946 report from Flight magazine on the outcome of the Bermuda negotiations
• The Hansard transcript of the 19 December 1946 House of Lords debate of the Air Navigation Bill that was among other things to implement to Chicago Convention

From Canada (there is more material available for the late 1940s in the civil aviation sections of Documents on Canadian External Relations):

• A memorandum dated 13 February 1946 assessing the implications of the Bermuda agreement for Canada

From Australia (there is more material available in Documents on Australian Foreign Policy which has good indicies):

• A secret cable from London on 2 January 1944 reporting on the UK government's assessment of the likely United States position
• A cable from Hodgson (Secretary, Department of External Affairs and member of the Australian delegation) on 28 November 1946 reporting on progress at the Chicago Convention
• A secret cable from Drakeford (Minister for Civil Aviation and head of the Australian delegation) on 5 December 1944 asking whether to sign the Chicago Convention

Australia, supported by New Zealand, had what was in retrospect one of the most idealistic/bizarre proposals at Chicago.

I have come across a reference to an article by Dutch aviation historian Marc Dierikx, "Shaping world aviation. Anglo-American civil aviation relations, 1944-1946", in: Journal of Air Law and Commerce 57(1992) nr. 4, p. 795-840 and suspect that he has made use of many of these sources.

I will look to add some more to this posting when I find more sources.

"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell

I have recently finished the book "Outliers - the Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell. It was a quick and enjoyable read.

I was not so fast to read his first book "The Tipping Point" after its publication suspecting that other books I had read covered the point he was making better but in the end did not regret doing so either.

What first attracted me to buy Outliers was Chapter Seven "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes". This focuses on cases where copilots sometimes have shown too much deference to the captains of the airliners leading to disastrous outcomes. Gladwell focuses on the terrible run of crashes that Korean Air had. He looks at something called the Power Distance Index (PDI) developed by Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede as a partial explanation of why pilots from some cultures are safer than others, with a suggestion that those from New Zealand might be the safest (see page 209).

This led me to hunt on the web for some more serious reading on this subject and I came across a paper Culture, Error, and Crew Resource Management by Robert L. Helmreich, John A. Wilhelm, James R. Klinect, and Ashleigh C. Merritt from the University of Texas at Austin.

Other chapters also contained interesting ideas, some of which I could personally relate to. There are lessons for those interested in educational performance, particularly about the pay off from putting in hours of hard work to master mathematics, computer programming or music for example.

Reviews of Outliers have appeared in:

• the Independent
• the Telegraph
  
• the Times
• the Guardian
  
• the New York Times
• The New Republic NEW
  

"Fire & Steam" by Christian Wolmer

I have recently finished reading "Fire & Steam - How the Railways Transformed Britain" by transport journalist Christian Wolmar.

It is a very good history of the development of rail transport in the United Kingdom. It is particularly interesting on the relationship between the rail industry and successive governments over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is a real lesson in the need to clarify objectives and not be surprised if an industry struggles when required to meet conflicting ones imposed by government. It is also a lesson in the complexities of the transport system.

One comment in the book in particular struck me as worth thinking about:

"... expenditure on roads has always been deemed to be investment, while rail spending has been classified as subsidy." (page 284)

Reviews of Fire & Steam have appeared in:

• the Independent
  
• the Guardian
  
• the Times
  

This book is clearly written by an advocate for rail but deserves to be read not just by rail enthusiasts.

"Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt

I recently finished reading the book Traffic - Why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us) written by Tom Vanderbilt.

It was solid going but gave me an excellent insight into many of the issues my road transport colleagues at the New Zealand Ministry of Transport are grappling with, both on the safety and infrastructure sides of research and policy development, as we try to reduce the road toll and congestion.

The book is very good on the psychology of driving. The author also examines in some depth what we might regard as counter intuitive behaviour, like how removing traffic signs can make a road safer. His insights on cultural factors were also very interesting. Personally one of the key lessons I took out of the book is how unsafe it is to drive while talking on a cell phone, even a hands free one.

Reviews of Traffic have appeared in:

• the Financial Times NEW
  
• the New York Times
  
• the Daily Telegraph
  
• the Sunday Times
  
• Wired
  

The author has a good web site including a weblog, How We Drive, relating to traffic issues.

Eric Beinhocker on complexity economics

I have recently finished the book The Origin of Wealth - Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker from McKinsey & Company. For those interested in some provocative, non-conventional - some might say leading edge - thinking about economics, it is well worth a read.

I was intrigued to find that the key ideas in the book are neatly summarised in a presentation UPDATED (.pdf) given by the author in April 2007 that is on the UK Cabinet Office web site.

Countdown to startup of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer-long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France just outside Geneva, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September, and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C.

On 30 June 2008 The Guardian published a number of articles about the LHC and what it is hoped to discover. (See previous post.)

On 2 July 2008 Scientific American carried an article about what five physics Nobel prize winners thought about the LHC.

On 31 July 2008 The Economist ran an article, noting the LHC's US$10 billion cost.

On 1 August 2008 The Boston Globe had a story with a magnificent set of 27 photographs from CERN of the equipment that makes up the LHC.

By way of comparison, the London Underground's Circle line is 22.5 kilometers long.

Data visualisation research paper

I have found a July 2007 research paper on Data Visualisation from the Australian Bureau of Statistics particularly interesting. The key part of the paper is in the section on “Applications of Data Visualisation” (click fourth from bottom on the left-hand list).

It analyses existing data visualisation tools and techniques, covering dashboards, sparklines, search clouds, mindmap searching and treemaps, as well as Gapminder and Nationmaster. Also covered are stories created through user input and improving static two-dimensional graphs.

Old New Zealand newspapers now available online

I have recently come across Papers Past from the National Library of New Zealand. It gives on-line access to scans of many provincial newspapers in the period up to 1915. Many are searchable.

Back in 1979 while at Otago University I did some historical research using old newspapers. It would have been so much easier, and less hit and miss, with this free resource.

Papers Past should be of great interest to history students and those researching their New Zealand ancestors.

I have already found the name of my great uncle, James Douglas, who in July 1903 as a young child fell through ice and drowned in the river at Waihao Downs (Otago Witness, 22 July 1903), as well as interviews with two of my great great grandfathers, John Douglas (Otago Witness, 22 February 1879) and William Mosley (Otago Witness, 4 May 1878), about their farming in Otago in the pioneering period of settlement.

George MacDonald Fraser obituaries

Obituaries have now appeared in the Telegraph, Times, Independent, Guardian, New York Times, and Globe and Mail (see previous post).

Author of the Flashman historical novels dies

The news media is reporting today the sad news that author George MacDonald Fraser has died aged 82. I have all twelve of his well researched and at times very funny novels about the nineteenth century adventures of his fictional hero/coward Sir Harry Flashman. As I write this the 2 January 2008 report from the BBC of the news of his death is its most frequently emailed article. Other new media to report on his life include the Independent and the Times.

I am also sad because no package of papers on Sir Harry's adventures during the US Civil War or the Franco-Prussian War, alluded to in the novels, has been found.

Special Report on Air Travel in The Economist

This week The Economist magazine contains a special report on air travel entitled Fear of Flying with eight articles on the subject.

I have personally subscribed to The Economist for many years and keep all the back issues. For clear and concise writing on many of the subjects that interest me it has few if any equals.

"The Leading Edge - An Adventure Story" by Dick Georgeson and Anna Wilson

I have recently finished reading this excellent autobiography. Dick Georgeson, the nephew of famous jet boat inventor Bill Hamilton, grew up in the South Island high country and was a pioneer glider pilot in New Zealand. He set many gliding distance and altitude New Zealand and world records as he explored the mountain waves that form in the lee of ranges. The stories of coping with extremes of heat, freezing cold, turbulence and flying in cloud are somewhat awe inspiring. Breaking records is not easy! The Mackenzie Country in South Canterbury where Dick Georgeson often flew has subsequently come a world-class centre for soaring.

A Listener article published in 2003 provides some more information about Dick Georgeson that was not included in the book.

Personally I have been up in a glider twice on trial flights but while I was flying powered light aircraft wasn't tempted to take up gliding as a hobby. My wife was involved in a gliding club in England when she was younger.

"The Southern Octopus - The Rise of a Shipping Empire" by Gavin McLean

I recently finished reading this very good history of the Union Steam Ship Company covering the period from the company's founding in Dunedin by James Mills in 1875 until it was purchased by P&O in 1917. The book was, I think, adapted from Gavin McLean's PhD thesis.

What struck me were the parallels between some of the issues facing international shipping in the late nineteenth century and international aviation in the late twentieth century. New technology, alliance arrangements, competition regulation and management performance all loomed large albeit with the shipping fleet moving at about one thirtieth of the speed of modern jet aircraft.

The book is also a good reminder that Dunedin was once the commercial capital of New Zealand.

I studied history at the University of Otago a year behind Gavin and very much respected his thesis supervisor, Associate Professor Gordon Parsonson. Gavin has gone on to be a prolific author of New Zealand history.

"747 - Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation" by Joe Sutter

I have just finished reading this excellent book completed in 2005 by the legendary "father of the B747" aeronautical engineer Joe Sutter. Born in 1921, he still works as a consultant for Boeing. I found the book hard to put down and finished all 263 pages around 24 hours after I purchased it.

It tells a superb story about the development of the Boeing 747 placed in the context of other aviation developments from around that time - the original B747 first flew on 9 February 1969. In addition, the book offers concise technical insights into airliner design.

Another fascination in the book are the "warts and all" stories of the office "politics" at Boeing. I had wondered why this book had not been written some years ago. This latter content may not have been included if it had been!

Randy Baseler from Boeing, after reading the book, published on his weblog two interviews with Joe Sutter last year, posted on 22 August 2006 and 16 August 2006.

"The Soulful Science - What Economists Really do and Why It Matters" by Diane Coyle

For those who studied economics over 20 years ago or have a stereotypical view of economic theory as being out of touch with reality (an unfair criticism these days) but think that they understand the basics of the subject, this book is well worth reading for an update on recent developments across the discipline (without the mathematics). Diane Coyle holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard and has worked as a journalist - she was Economic Editor of the Independent - which shows in her clear and concise writing style.

I enjoyed this book. My one disappointment was that there were some areas of the subject, such as economic geography and international trade theory, that were barely covered, something that the author freely acknowledges. I was left thirsting for more.

Illustrated History of National Airways Corporation

I have just finished enjoying reading and looking at the excellent set of pictures in "NAC - The Illustrated History of New Zealand National Airways Corporation 1947-1978" by Richard Waugh with Peter Layne & Graeme McConnell.

The authors, who are members of New Zealand Airline Research, have had the good sense not to try to repeat material in Dr Peter Aimer's book "Wings of the Nation - A History of the National Airways Corporation, 1947-78" about New Zealand's State-owned domestic carrier that was merged with Air New Zealand in 1978. Rather the two books are very much complimentary.

I remember flying in NAC Vickers Viscount aircraft between Dunedin and Christchurch as a child. I still think that the type is particularly beautiful but it was very noisy.

Rev Richard Waugh, in particular, has been involved in writing a number of books printed by Craigs about early airlines in New Zealand, reenactment flights and commemorating many of the airline tragedies that marked that history.

Setback for CERN as Fermilab maths mistake causes explosion

In an 8 April 2007 article the Sunday Times reports on a small explosion on 27 March at CERN in Geneva that has possibly set back by months the multi-billion euro Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project to build an experiment to search for evidence of the Higgs Boson. The cause of the explosion was reportedly a miscalculation by staff at CERN's US rival, Fermilab. Official statements have been made by CERN and Fermilab.

I have been out to the visitor centre, Microcosm, at CERN. It is well worth a look. Ever since studying physics at high school I have retained a fascination for the subject reading popular accounts but thought that my maths skills were not up to taking the subject any further. Maybe they were!

In addition, understanding basic physics is very important for anyone involved in flying.

Web 2.0 - How much of it is hype?

The "summer" holidays - the weather has been unseasonably cold and wet in Wellington, New Zealand, a good excuse to stay inside - have given me a chance to revamp my Home Page, which now links to around 930 sites on the web, and explore some of the new web sites that are part of so-called Web 2.0 phenomenon. Much of this seems to be about getting individuals to generate and select web content, but having had my own home page on the web since 1998 (or was it 1997?), the concept of making "amateur" contributions to creating new content on the web is not exactly new to me. As noted in a previous posting, I started the New Zealand Aviation Yahoo! Group back in 1998. I have also been posting some of my photographs to Flickr since 2005 while more recently have made some very small contributions to Wikipedia in areas where I have some expertise.

Looking at some of the notable new web sites gives me the impression that, while there is much hype, there is now some useful development occurring and it is helping one to find particularly interesting nuggets of material amongst the mass of information now available on the web. For example, I found the 2007 Web Trend Map from Information Architects Japan to be a brilliant way of summarising the key web sites that are part of Web 2.0. The number of private individuals making a solid contribution to this phenomenon actually seems relatively small but this is clearly changing.

My recent exploration of Web 2.0 has included starting this weblog, contributing factual comments to a small number of other "blogs" that cover some of my interests, revisiting digg, and joining Newsvine and reddit. Newsvine, in particular, impresses me. I have joined its small but active Aviation group and started setting up a Column. As for reddit I have yet to see evidence of any great skill in filtering the stories that would be of particular interest to me, something that Amazon.co.uk does relatively well in terms of making book recommendations if one enters and rates previous book purchases.

In the right-hand side column of this weblog I have also been experimenting with the Eurekster swiki software by creating a search engine for Civil Aviation. My initial impression is that this software needs quite a bit more work but please feel free to contribute to improving my particular swiki.