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Summer Session Kansan
Friday, July 19, 1957
'Operation Deep Freeze' Aided By Air-Borne Methods
When the late Richard Evelyn Byrd first flew over the South Pole 28 years ago, he opened the way for an air-borne technique of transport and supply that has now made possible the first scientific station at the bottom of the world.
At that station, American scientists and Navy men are probing icebound secrets of earth and universe as part of the research program just getting under way for the International Geophysical Year.
Their work, like that at other bases of the United States all but "Operation Deep Freeze," marks the culmination of Admiral Byrd's lifetime leadership in assaults on the frozen continent to the south.
Reached Ends of Earth
"No man in history contributed more to the knowledge of the Arctic and Antarctic than Byrd," writes Melville Bell Grosvenor, editor of the National Geographic Magazine, in the July issue.
"What the round earth was to Columbus, what circumnavigation of the globe was to Magellan, polar exploration was to Richard Evelyn Byrd. If Columbus was Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Byrd, first man to fly over both Poles, was Admiral of the Ends of the Earth."
Dr. Grosvenor recalls how, as a junior member of the National Geographic staff in 1925, he welcomed young Byrd at the Society's Washington headquarters.
"Straight as a jack staff, handsome and forthright," Lieutenant Commander Byrd had some bold ideas to offer on exploring the Arctic from the air.
His project appealed strongly to the Society, already keenly interested in aviation and air photography. Byrd's naval aviation unit joined the seagoing, Geographic-backed Donald B. MacMillan Expedition.
From a base at Etah, Greenland, north of what is now Thule Air Base, Byrd and his companions covered thousands of square miles by plane. With Floyd Bennett, he became the first man to fly over Greenland's icecan.
Prophhetically, he began a story in the November, 1925, Geographic with the words: "Aviation will conquer the Arctic—and the Antarctic, too."
Sun Compass Invaluable Gift
Editor Grosvenor points out that an important contribution made by the Society to Byrd's earlier exploits—in addition to financial and research aid—was a sun compass. Invented by Albert H. Bumstead, the Society's chief cartographer, this sun compass was constructed especially for Byrd's use in polar areas where neither the magnetic nor the gyroscopic compass works properly.
"It was the sun compass," Byrd said later, "that made it possible for us to fly with confidence to the North and South Poles and to find our way back to our bases."
Five times, beginning in 1928, Admiral Boryd led major expeditions into the South Polar mysteries. On his last trip south during the 1955-56 phase of the most ambitious undertaking of them all—U. S. Operation Deep Freeze—he was in overall command of a job involving the use of thousands of men, a dozen ships, and scores of aircraft.
Of the many articles that Byrd wrote for the Geographic on polar subjects, the latest appears in the July issue with the tribute paid him by Dr. Grosvenor. Written as a salute "To the Men at the South Pole," it turned out instead to be his farewell. For his death, on March 11, 1957, occured only four days after he made final corrections in the manuscript.
In these, the last words Admiral Byrd wrote for publication, he turns the spotlight on today's scientific leader at the South Pole, Dr. Paul A. Siple.
Young Stiple, winner of a Boy Scout contest for the honor, accompanied Byrd on his first expedition into the Antarctic. From then on, he was staunch companion and friend on all Byrd's expeditions. With 17 colleagues, he has now dug in for a long polar winter such as no other man have ever experienced.
Dramatic Story Tape-Recorded
Dr. Siple's tape-recorded running account of the establishment of the South Polar base and the problems the wintering party faces there forms the third article of the Antarctic trilogy in the July Geographic.
"It already has grown much colder," he dictated to the tape that was to out on the last plane before winter night set in. "The warm zero weather of summer is only an elusive memory."
"Calculations show we may have to endure the frightening unknown of 120 degrees below zero, or even lower.
"But the weather, after all, is one of the reasons we volunteered to come here...to study weather and stars, to measure earth tremors and magnetism, to investigate ions in the upper air and eons of time, recorded in depths of glacial ice beneath us."
However trying the physical conditions at the South Pole Station. life there today is luxurious compared with the hardships undergone by Amundsen and Scott on their historic treks to the Pole in 1911 and 1912.
Robert G. Schmidt, a chemical engineer, has been named project manager for the new $4 million plant of Callery Chemical Co. in Lawrence.
New Local Plant Managers Named
The appointment of Stanley J. Demski to the post of construction manager for the Lawrence Plant was also announced.
The Lawrence Plant, now under construction, is designed to produce boron specialty chemicals for commercial use. It is another step in Callery's program of research and production in the field of boron chemistry.
Schmidt, who lives in Bradford Woods, a Pittsburgh suburb, received the B. S. in chemical engineering and business administration at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1948.
Schmidt has been with Callery Chemical Co. since September, 1954, in various supervisory capacities. He is a former employee of Iron City Chemical Co. and Pittsburgh Chemical Laboratory. He is a member of the Masonic Order, National and Pennsylvania Professional Engineers Societies and Theta Chi Fraternity.
Mr. Demski received the B.S. inchemical engineering at Pennsylvania State University in 1943. He came to Callery this year from the Celanese Corp. of America plant at Amcelle.
During World War II, Mr. Demski was a Navy aviation radar technician. He formerly lived at Gramlich Rd., Cumberland.
Instead of wet sleeping bags and biscuit-pemmi can, modern Antarctic challengers—once they have built and equipped their quarters—enjoy T-bone steaks, comfortable beds, and movies in snug, heated buildings. Weather permitting, they may even talk by radio-phone connections to families back home.
Trying to reach his wife with word of his safe arrival, one station newcomer was given a wrong number. The man who answered hung up when the caller said, "May I speak to my wife?"
"I wonder," muses Dr. Siple, "if he was able to make his friends believe that he had been awakened at 1:30 a.m., by a wrong number from the South Pole."
More than 5,000 scientists and engineers and 250 million dollars are estimated to be involved in the International Geophysical Year investigations.
Dr. Harris, chairman of Harvard's economics department, has been given a $70,000 grant from the Fund for the Advancement of Education for an extended study of the economics of private education.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—(UP)—Dr. Seymour E. Harris of Harvard University thinks he has the answer to the problem of higher education. He would let each student foot the entire bill.
days of hearings whether the public is "being fooled" about the protection afforded to smokers by "filters."
"In any Ivy League University," he said, "the average family income runs from $12,000 to $20,000. Yet the college charges $800 to $1,000 tuition and then subsidizes each student for another $1,000 out of its endowment.
Right now, he said, too many parents are getting what amounts to a free ride on the coattails of either the university or the taxpayers.
Penalize Corn?
"I think that every student should pay the full cost of his education. If he is poor, then he should pay all he can at the time. The rest he should pay out over his lifetime."
For Tobacco Growers
Earlier, Rep Iris B. Blitch (D-Ga.) said Subconjugate Chairman John Blatnik (D-Minn.) had assured her that he is for the tobacco growers and has no wish to penalize them in any way. Mrs. Blitch said Blatnik told her his subcommittee hearings are not intended to effect tobacco price supports.
An agriculture department spokesman called Neuberger's bill "completely unrealistic."
Sen. Richard L. Neuberger (D-Orle.) yesterday introduced a bill that would cut farm price supports and soil bank payments to tobacco growers. Neuberger, a non-smoker, said it was ridiculous for the government to warm Americans about alleged dangers of smoking while spending millions of dollars to support tobacco growing.
Blatnik said his subcommittee hopes to determine during six
"If we penalize tobacco because of a possible health danger, are we going to penalize corn because we make bourbon whiskey out of that grain?" he said.
Hammond made the prepared statement as an opening witness at House Government Operations Subcommittee investigation of filter cigarettes.
WASHINGTON — (UP) — An American Cancer Society expert told Congress Thursday the "evidence is overwhelming" that cigarette smoking is a "cause of lung cancer."
Witnesses also included a spokesman for the Tobacco Industry Research Committee which has contended that no cause-effect relationship has been established between cigarette smoking and cancer.
Students Should Pay Whole Bill
He said the subcommittee wants to determine whether manufacturers have made "false and misleading advertising" about filter cigarettes and, if so, why federal agencies haven't cracked down.
The society's expert, Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond, also said smoking is a cause of death from heart disease.
'Evidence Is Overwhelming Says Cancer Society Expert
Boxoffice Opens 7:00 Show Starts at Dusk
The Western Union Telegraph Company was formed by financiers Jay Gould and William H. Vanderbilt in an 1881 amalgamation of several telegraph companies.
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