JF Ptak Science Books

General Groves on The Possibility of Blowing Up the World and What Comes Next (1945)

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Yesterday I wrote a post about Robert Oppenheimer's 1945 Congressional testimony on the economics of using atomic bombs over conventional bombs. In an earlier section of the same volume¹ publishing the Oppenheimer statements there are also testimonies of some other Los Alamos and atomic bomb figures, including Harold Urey, Irving Langmuir, and Vannevar Bush. And Leslie Groves. General Groves of course was the military chief of the Manhattan Project and ran it with some interpersonal difficulties but with great success with Robert Oppenheimer, who was in charge of the scientific cadre.  They were an odd pair but worked well enough together to push through an enormous project of absolutely fantastic complexities and depths. In questions from six Senators Groves addressed a number of wide-ranging issues about the bomb, though what particularly appealed to me today was his observations on the possibilities of the U.S. precipitating some sort of event with atomic weapons that would bring an end to the world. The question came from  Senator Richard Russell (Ga.) who (with some difficulty) asked after this possibility. Groves responded with brusqueness and a sort of common authority, which I reprint below. 

“Senator Russell: General, the papers tell us that some of the scientists are of the opinion that if a large number of these [atomic bombs] were exploded over the world that it would reach out into the elements in the atmosphere and instead of being a world we would just be a new star, and all life on the planet would be extinguished almost automatically. Do you have any theory on that to give us?

General Groves: My only theory is that I don't worry about it because if it happens it will be all over and we won't have that to worry about. We won't have to explain that one but the theory is not concerned with getting a number of these bombs but with getting one that is big enough to do that. No one knows what that size is. It is all highly theoretical...It is more or less the kind of thing that they [physicists] will discuss as a possibility when they are just sitting around talking theoretically they may be able to prove that such a thing is possible but the best advice I have and I certainly don t hold any personal views or knowledge on the subject but the best advisers tell me that they are not a bit worried, and I personally am not worried. I feel it will be beyond my lifetime and then I will let the next generation worry as to whether they are going to blow themselves up or not.”

And there you have it. 

Notes:

1. HEARINGS BEFORE THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON ATOMIC ENERGY UNITED STATES SENATE SEVENTY NINTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION PURSUANT TO S Res 179 4.  A RESOLUTION CREATING A SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE PROBLEMS RELATING TO THE DEVELOPMENT USE AND CONTROL OF ATOMIC ENERGY.  USGPO, 1945.

J. Robert Oppenheimer on the Economics of Atomic Bombing (1945)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2811

On the heels of the sale of a letter [https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2013/03/william-shockley-on-the-economics-of-atomic-bombing-1945.html] written by transistor pioneer and then mega problem child William Shockley on the economics of atomic bomb a friend told me about a potentially similar account by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Leaving the modern racist Shockley behind in this post for time consideration, the Nobelist (sharing the 1956 award with co-workers Walter Brattain and John Bardeen), the man wrote an appraisal on the monetary aspect of conventional vs. atomic attack for one of the Vannevar Bush groups in 1944/5. It may seem pretty harsh—especially when he came out with the unsurprising finding that the economics of the situations were firmly positive for the use of nuclear weapons—but it was a job that someone had to do, somewhere, and Shockley turned out to be that person, probably to the surprise of very few.

Oppenheimer is a different story. Philosophically conflicted and occasionally torn, the man who announced himself as the “destroyer of worlds” while still bathed in the light of the successful atomic test shot in the Jornada del Muerto also contributed some thought to this issue. The original reference to this was told to me to be in Scientific Information Transmitted to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission...June 14, 1946, a set of seven slender volumes prepared under the direction of the always-present Bernard Baruch. The reference came in the first volume (which also has a short and simple and brilliant 18-page history by Richard Feynman and Robert Bacher of atomic energy and the building of the atomic bomb) in a paper by Philip Morrison in which he records a one-line quote of Oppenheimer's overall assessment of the dollars and cents of atomic bombing. The Oppenheimer quote was referenced to its source in a Congressional special report on atomic energy published a few months earlier in 1946, and there he speaks for about one page on these explosive economics.

As I said it is far easier finding this thinking in Shockley—but for Oppenheimer as disagreeable as this thinking might've been, it was still a pertinent question and one that needed to be researched and answered, and I believe Oppenheimer did just that, with no extra-emotional attachments to the issue. It was an issue/problem/question, and the scientist answered it.

So for the general interest I'm reprinting Oppenheimer's testimony on this one aspect of the use of the atomic bomb, which you will find below.

• The source: Hearings before the Special Committee on Atomic Energy, United States Senate, 79^th Congress, first session, pursuant to S. Res. 179, A resolution Creating a Special Committee to Investigate Problems Relating to the Development, Use, and Control of Atomic Energy. Part 2: December 5,6,10 and 12, 1945. USGPO 1946.

“Senator Hart [Thomas C. Hart of Connecticut]. Doctor I think perhaps you may be misunderstood at one point on account of brevity.

You said that atomic weapons can be cheap instruments of devastation and then explained it briefly.

I think it would be better for purposes of the record if you expanded that.

Dr Oppenheimer. Well I have seen a figure I don t know whether it is a reliable figure but it is surely not a crazy one that it has cost us in this war $10 a pound to deliver explosive on the enemy. I am unable to give an accurate cost figure on atomic weapons partly because I don t know and partly because if I did know it I would be prevented by that knowledge from saying it but I think that I can say that even taking account of the in some ways diminished effectiveness of concentrated bombing it is somewhere between 10 and 100 times cheaper to deliver atomic weapons which is simply in terms of the area destroyed it is 10 or 100 times cheaper.

I don t know if it is 10 times or 30 times and this will depend on policy but it is an enormous factor. It is not a trivial change.

Senator Hart. Cheaper for instance than TNT?

Dr Oppenheimer. That is right and I am using a figure which may well be criticized but which is I believe the figure used by Army Ordnance for over all cost of delivering a pound. You can see what that means if you take a round figure of 10,000 tons as a possible effective equivalent for an atomic bomb. That is 20,000,000 pounds which is $200,000,000. Now without revealing any secrets I can say that an atomic bomb and the equipment for delivering it is not going to cost that by an enormous factor.

Senator Hart. But those large TNT bombs which are the usual comparative figure though the destruction in any one point any one small area is by no means as great it is sufficient and is spread over a wider area is it not?

Dr Oppenheimer. I used a somewhat conservative figure of the 10,000 tons rather than the actual equivalent in part to take this into account. The actual atomic bomb releases more energy than this.

Senator Hart. But it is true that the comparison as is usually made is a little faulty because of the respective areas involved?

Dr Oppenheimer. What I would say is this and I will be somewhat sharper about it if you wish. For the equivalent tonnage the factor of cost will be more than 100. For equivalent area it will be somewhere between 10 and 100 and that is to try to take account of this effect which you mentioned. Of course if you want to knock out three houses somewhere you will not use an atomic bomb.

Senator Byrd [Harry Flood Byrd, Virginia]. Doctor, when you spoke of destroying the stock pile of bombs would that mean too destroying the organization and the factories that made the bomb?

Dr Oppenheimer. In the first place I did not speak of destroying it. I was asked about it.

Senator Byrd I understood you to say that if you had faith in other nations you would then favor the destruction of the bombs we accumulate during this period before we can ascertain what other nations are going to do.

Dr Oppenheimer I would say this country should do for the problem of atomic armament what we expect other nations to do If we expect them and are convinced that they wish not to arm atomically then I think that we should not arm atomically and if we want to keep the plant some place. I think we should have that plant completely open and should allow the representatives of the powers with whom we are dealing to know as much about what we are doing as we would want to know about their plants..."

A Massive Triple Tandem Triplane (1921)

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What we see here, below, is a rather extraordinary flying machine, a mammoth beast with 8,000 square feet of wings (more than 40% greater than that of a 747). It was a triple tandem triplane, which is a glorious-sounding and possibly epic description of the aircraft—a plane with three independent triplanes fixed to one fuselage. The article appears in Popular Mechanics for May 1921, and describes this aeronautical attempt as the work of Giovanni (Gianni) Caproni (1886-1957), which was to be a transport for 300-mile round trip excursions at about 80mph cruising speed. It was powered by 8 12 cylinder 400 hp Liberty engines operating on push/pull arrangements on different wings, carrying a crew of eight and 100 passengers. Unfortunately the flying boat crashed on its second test flight, and then the remains were towed badly toward shore, and that was the end of the plane.

 

When the Opposite of an Idea is the Better Idea (1922)

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Here's a suggestion for a new category for this blog: Ideas That May Be Better Backwards. The idea is presented in this wonderful image from Popular Mechanics in 1922 and features an endless trolley/conveyor of food that moves past stationary diners at a restaurant. You'd sit down, and gobs of food would be presented on an endless conveyor, moving along at probably 1 mph. This idea makes sort of very quick 3-beer sense, until you think of the probable waste and the cost of machinery and energy that it took to trundle the food along, and then replacing all of it that went cold, and so on. It seems to me the opposite might be the better if not still-bad idea: putting the patron seating area on a revolving stage and have a central location for the food where they'd take what they wanted. The conveyor-of-food idea withers next to the great Automat, where people would simply walk up to a long bank of small windowed receptacles with different foods inside, drop a few coins into the slot opening the lovely little (but thick) door, after which you'd simply find a place to sit and eat. (This automat was a German 19th c idea, and it became popular in the U.S. in the 1930s'-1960's, with Horn & Hardart leading the way with 30 or so locations in NYC. The H&H variety closed up by the early 1990's, their locations converted into Burger King meat/fat/carb slingshops.) Here it is:

 The image reminded me of one I saw for the very restrictive penitent/observer prisoner in chapel at Pentonville Prison in 1855--I know it is hardly similar whatsoever to the food-on-a-belt, but the two did come together somehow in my head:

[Source: lost! Apologies.]

The Jevons Logic Machine (1870)

JF Ptak Science Books  (This is a null post, carried over from the bookstore section of this blog--I'm sharing it in the bookseller format to simply share the info on this fascinating machine.)

W. Stanley Jevons, On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1870, pp 497–518. This is an extract from the volume, containing the entire article, plus its three engraved plates showing the works and interior of the machine. This is very tastefully bound in paper covered boards with a paper spine label. This is the first description of the one the preeminent. 

Jevons was a polymath and one of my favorite thinkers of the 19^th century. He worked across many fields but seems to be remembered today mostly and unfortunately for his theory of the relationship between sunspots and economics cycles. He is not so well known as the inventor of one of the earliest pre-modern computers and particularly for it being the fastest machine of its kind ever invented.

“In 1870 a British scholar, W.S. Jevons, built the first computer designed to solve logical problems. Inspired by Boole and Babbage, Jevons built a mechanical device implementing automated deduction...”--Paul Amblard, “A Finite State Description of the Earliest Logical Computer: The Jevons’ Machine”, in the Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science book series (SECS, volume 434)

“The creation of analog computing devices is both relevant and significant to the development of modern computers, but was there no early pure mechanical digital apparatus, given the advent of Boolean logic and Venn diagrams in the 19th century? One individual in particular began a small, but significant movement that transformed digital theory into mechanical devices that, while lacking the sophistication and power of later electronic digital computers, did, nevertheless, function in a digital mode. The person responsible was the Englishman W. Stanley Jevons (1836–1882).”--George Buck and Stephen Hunka, "W. Stanley Jevons, Allan Marquand, and the Origins of Digital Computing" in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1999.

 

Flying to India from London at 93 mph (1928)

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These oblique cross-section and cutaways have been near-and-dear imagery for a long time, and I've probably made 50+ posts on this blog sharing them. This drawing is by S.W. Clatgworthy and appears in Popular Mechanics for March, 1928-- it depicts the not-identified and brand-new "Short S.8 Calcutta", which made its first flight the month before.  The airplane was designed for the Mediterranean leg of the London-India service of British Imperial Airways (1924-1939 when it merged into BOAC and then in 1974 became British Airways) and was the first stressed skinned metal hulled flying boat, and was constructed by Shorts¹. Its three Bristol Jupiter engines pulled the aircraft along at about a 100 mph cruising speed, which no doubt made for an exciting and relatively fast (by 1928 standards) trip to the East.  The aircraft was pretty large for the day: 66' long with a wingspan of 93' and a height of 23'. It was probably noisy but relatively comfortable, the passengers being served food and drinks by a steward. Far less comfy were the pilot and navigator, who as you can see were in an open cockpit. 

Notes:

1. Shorts was the firm started by the Short brothers in Battersea in 1908 and which was the first aircraft manufacturing company to make production airplanes. 

 

A Tank at an Amusement Park (1920)

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There is something lingering and heartbreaking about this image found in Popular Mechanics for July, 1920. The image shows a refitted tank being used as a curious ride at an amusement park. No doubt people wanted to put WWI behind them, as the end of the war was still only two years old or so, and the imagery of millions of people killed during the conflict was still very recent, with the hardships and loss still quite present in the minds of nearly everyone in the world.  That said, the image of the smiling faces on the retrofitted tanks a bit much, seeming to be this side of disrespectful. Seeing the "Jeep" brand doesn't affect me like this--as the logo has almost nothing left in connection to the WWII vehicle, though I do feel a bit annoyed when I see a deluxe High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle  HMMWV, or Humvee) tooling around in the suburbs, begging attention in its mostly-useless incarnation, carrying with them the memory of hundreds of U.S. soldiers being killed in them. I just don't like the idea of desensitizing the imagery of these vehicles into something sugary. 

A Peep into the Future, Technology, and Socialism (1901)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2815  (Thanks to Cosmo Rare Books, where I saw a reference to this work; all images and text for the Wintle article are found at Hathi Trust.) 

W.J. (William James) Wintle, "Life in our New Century", in The Harmsworth/London Magazine, volume 5 (new series) #30, pp 531-538, 1901.

(Source with full text and other illustrations at Hathi Trust.)

W.J. Wintle contributed a sober look into the near-future of technology and society, basing his outlook not so much on possibilities but on existing (or nearly/possibly so) tech, which is a smart move for trying to access the expansion of human knowledge: "To try to peep into the future is the work of the seer or the prophet, and we make no claim to be either the one or the other. But there are certain tendencies of modern progress and discovery which will become translated into actual facts within a very few years, and it needs no prophet to fore cast what these will be."

The author (who contributed regularly to the magazine) raises some interesting and reasonable technical points which for the most part are mostly correct, in a larger and more general sense. The details of the technical developments miss the point and in many cases are superseded by far more elegant inventions and discoveries that would take place in mere decades, if not sooner, rushing the “future” of Mr. Wintle (1861-1934) into a timeline within his own lifetime...which happens all of the time.

For example his discussion of “Hertzian waves” soon gives over to the development of the pocket telegraph. Here though he does raise a very interesting point which to my experience is very scarce—he points out that with this pocket telegraph it makes it possible for a person to communicate with another person without knowing where they were. ("...a system of pocket telegraphy, by means of which a man may carry his own apparatus in his pocket and receive messages even from people who. do not know where he is").

That idea would certainly have been a shocking revelation to the high Victorian.

On Not Discovering X-Rays (1890)

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In the long list of "photographic firsts" the following is a rare case--a first that wasn't a first that may have became a first, though no one recognized it as such until the true first was recognized. Huh?

This is the story of Arthur W. Goodspeed (1860-1943) and William Jennings (1860-1946) and their brief brush with immortality. While using a Crookes tube and  photographing electric sparks and brush discharges in their lab at the University of Pennsylvania in 1890 they produced a photograph of unknown certainty and imagery. They did not pursue the anomaly and stowed the photographic plate away in archives. After the Roentgen discovery in 1895 and seeing the first results in early 1896 they knew exactly what it was they had photographed, and just hadn't recognized that what they were seeing was revolutionary. They retrieved and published the photograph along with their story in Science on February 14, 1896 (vol 3 #59), and a short account of the narrative was published in Scientific American on April 11, 1896, along with the photograph. To their great credit the two physicists made no claim to discovery:

• “We can claim no merit for the discovery—for no discovery was made. All we ask is that you remember, gentlemen, that six years ago. day for day, the first picture in the world by cathodic ray was taken in the Physical Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania."

I reprint the article and the photo below.  

Bomb-Dropping Torpedo Plane Guided by Wireless (1917)

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This illustration appeared in the December 1917 issue of Popular Mechanics, just a year away from the end of WWI. This was a promotion for the idea of a remote-controlled miniature-aircraft, which was equipped with bombs and suggested to be an "irresistible engine of annihilation".  The map displays how the aircraft--or multi-squadrons of them--could be controlled from Dunkirk to bomb targets in Zeebrugge, Bruges, and Thourout, "without the loss of a single flier". 

• "Will the radio bombing plane and the flying torpedo be similarly evolved in time to crumble the fortresses of autocracy along the Rhine?".

The small inset of the flying machine at bottom right seems to be little more than a bomb (a "mechanically controlled aerial torpedo").

 

 

One of the Earliest X-Rays of "Dots": Medical Imagery, 1896

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In the long line of the history of "firsts" in photography are a number of sub-categories, and subs- to those subs, an example of which is scene in the pages of Scientific American for 1896. Here we have the history of photography=>medical photography=>clinical applications of X-rays=>X-ray photographs=>X-ray photographs of gunshots, or some such thing. Anyway, here in the March 21 1896 issue of the great magazine is one of two articles on the X-ray, the second of which features what may be one of the very earliest--if not the earliest--images made of a human limb peppered with rifle/field canon pellets. This comes only two months or so following the discovery and first imagery using  X-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen (1845-1923) made November 8 1895, the experimental results published soon after on January 8 1896 in his paper "Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen" in the Würzburg Physico-Medical Society.

The interest in X-rays was spectacular, with more than 1000 papers published on the subject in 1896 alone. This is understandable given the revolutionary nature of the announcement plus the relative ease and simplicity of equipment necessary to produce results.  The Roentgen paper was translated and printed in Nature (for the first time in English) almost immediately on January 23 1896, and it was the very next issue in which advertisements appeared for the relatively cheap necessaries (Crookes tubes etc.) for interested parties to produce their own X-rays at home. Absolutely everyone was interested in this discovery. (For the Scientific American there were 9 articles on the X-ray for January-June, 1896, with the first appearing on February 3; for July-December there were 33.) 

The image below was made by Columbia University's Michael Pupin, and was one of the earliest general clinical uses of the new discovery, following what was probably the first medical use (at least in the U.S.) by Frank Austin (Dartmouth) in February 1896. The extraordinary development had an epochal impact on medicine, as now for the first time in the history of the planet a person could see inside a person/living being without cutting them open and poking around.  The X-ray was soon put into use on the battlefield six months later, at about the same time that some of the pioneers (E. Thomson, Morton, Tesla) began to report exposure burns (as some of their photographic exposures using X-rays were 20 minutes long...) 

(By the way this is the man for whom Pupin Hall was named--this place became ultra famous in my mind, anyway, for the seminal work done their in cutting edge areas by Peagram and Fermi and Urey and Rabi and Dunning, among many others. Also Pupin was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924 for his scientific memoir/autobiography, a highly unusual feat for such a subject.) 

 

The Department of Upside-Down--Fishing (1920)

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I should have begun this category/department long ago for the bits and bobs I've seen along the way on this blog. It fits in nicely with the categories on the History of Anticipation, the Department of Found Art and Poetry, the History of Nothing, and that sort. In any event, I'll start it off right here (1.5 million words late) with this unlikely story and fascinating image regarding underwater fishing from a submarine:

Source: Popular Mechanics, October 1920. 

The Urban Rooftop Airport Idea in 1920

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This is another unexpected find of an urban rooftop airport¹/dirigible docking station from 1920.  The idea has a certain amount of sense to it, especially here in the still relatively restricted early history of aviation, just 13 years past Kill Devil Hills, and two past the great expansion of flight following the end of WWI. It is an interesting mix of modernity when coupled with growth of the skyscraper², which is just living through the beginning of its fourth decade.  On the other hand...well, there are a lot of obvious problems with an idea like this, too many to go through in a simple post just intending to share an evocative image. It was a tempting peek into the future, and as we can see one of the dirigibles advertisers "transatlantic", the first of which wouldn't occur by dirigible uintil the Graf Zeppelin in 1928. The planes are way too big, and so on. (Is that the Plaza Hotel in the foreground?) The rendering itself is very pretty, and has a certain Renaissance-y quality too it, especially with the etching-like rendering of the sky.  

If you're interested there are probably ten posts on such ideas in this blog--just enter "airport" in the Google search box for the site and you'll find them.

(Source: Popular Mechanics, December 1920, pg 912.)

Notes.

1. "Airport" and "Air port" first appears in the OED in 1902 in the great Brooklyn Eagle, though I'm unsure of its aviation context ( Brooklyn Daily Eagle 10 Apr. 1/2   "I hope New York will be the greatest airport in the world"). There is a clearer usage in 1914 (Times 16 Mar. 5/3   "The time will come when, with the development of aviation, every town of importance will need an air-port as it now needs a railway station") that leaves no doubt the reference is for airplanes.  

2. "Skyscraper" (and "sky scraper" and "sky-scraper") in the architectural sense draws on a long history of common and colloquial use: it first appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as a nautical term relating to a tall horse (1788), and then used to refer to a  sail (1791), tall bonnet (1800), high flying ball in sports (1842), tall person (1847), exaggerated story (1890), and so on.  The use of the term relating to a tall building (generally 10 to 13 floors high) appears in 1883

Full Text Psychological and Intelligence Tests (1941)

Manual of the Psychological Tests and Procedures in Use at the Neuro-Psychiatric Institute of the Hartford Retreat. Published by the Neuro-Psychiatric Institute of the Hartford Institute, the Institute of Living, Founded 1822. Printed by the Hartford Retreat, 1941. Offset printed, 11” 8”, ca. 125pp. Staple bound, with original wrappers. Condition: very good condition, save that the rear wrapper is missing. NO COPIES are located in WorldCat/OCLC. Provenance: Library of Congress, with their 6mm “LC” perforated in the front wrapper, deaccessioned in the Pamphlet Collections sale. $450

A covering letter for the publication—coming from the psychiatrist -in-chief of the Hartford Retreat—states that “this descriptive booklet has been prepared to enable the members of the Medical Staff to have full information concerning the facilities and services offered by the Psychological Division”. Evidently staff was supposed know the tests and their details and so the tests in their full text were bound together.

This is an extremely interesting and possibly in-house collection of 25 different intelligence tests, personality inventories, diagnostic tests, and a few other miscellaneous exams and tests. Each test is an obvious stand-alone, and I was surprised to see them all together—in general the entire test seems to only rarely be reproduced in full. Included in the publication are:

[A] Intelligence Tests: (1) Terman-Binet; (2) Otis Self-Administrating Test; (3) Kuhlmann-Anderson Test; (4) Weschler-Bellevue Scale; (5) Army Alpha; (6) Army Beta; (7) Arthur Performance Scale; (8) Herring Revision of the Binet.

[B] Personality Inventories: (9) Bernreuter Personality Inventory ; (10) Colgate B-2; (11) Colgate C-2; (12) Pressey X-O Test; (13) Thurstone Personality Schedule; (14) Neymann Kohlstedt Test.

[C] Diagnostic Tests: (15) Jung Free Association Test; (16) Babcock Test; (17) Shipley-Hartford Retreat Test for Mental Impairment; (18) Bolles, Rosen and Landis Performance Tests.

[D] Miscellaneous Tests: (19) Terman M-F Test; (20) Specific Interest Tests; (21) Educational Achievement; (22) Steinquist Mechanical Aptitude Test; (23) MacQuarrie Mechanical Ability Tests; (24) National Safe Drivers Test; (25) Moral Judgment Test.

All of these are listed in the preface of the document and are complete and present. There is a listing for “Rorschach Ink Blot Test” though that test is not present, and it seems as though it was never bound (i.e. “stapled) with the rest of the tests. (There is a small penciled “x”next to this entry, which leads me to believe that it was just never included with the assembly.)

A Review of a WWII German History of Rocket Development Film (1950)

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The gem in the title to this short post bubbled into view while looking through an issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (March 1950) for a biography of Wernher von Braun. The two-page biographical notice was perfunctory and the war years were sanitized (stating that after interrogation there "was no room for doubt" that von Braun's real interests were only in interplanetary travel and high altitude research).  

The review of the German film on rocket development is another story--I've reproduced the eight-page tightly packed review below, as it is very useful and in the face of not having the viewable film it serves as a good outline.

I found the references to "Spaceship I" (pictured above) to be very intriguing, though outside of two images of models for the proposed dirigible-like behemoth almost no other information is presented.