Passing Comments
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Parting with Regret
ANYONE who visited Hastings on June 1 and who believed that the public did not appreciate their road transport services must have received a surprise. That day marked the final run of the last trolleybus in operation there. Crowds lined the streets. Other people were on balconies and windows. Nearly all waved goodbye to the 21-year-old Guy, and many expressed their regrets that the trolleybuses, which have for so long largely served their transport needs, had finished their work, although replaced by such handsome vehicles as the Leyland Atlanteans.
Mr. R. P. Beddow, C.B.E., chairman of the operating company, Maidstone and District Motor Services, Ltd., speaking at the commemoration luncheon, said that there was perhaps food for thought in the introduction of these vehicles on the borders of Neptune's kingdom. Legend had it that Atlantis was an island which was engulfed by the sea as the result of the wickedness of its inhabitants, and he trusted that those responsible for tile sea defences would ensure that the present-day Atlanteans did not suffer the same fate. Looking around, however, he was sure that one could not have wished for a more complete pattern of all the virtues.
Adding to Air Power
THE use of compressed air is growing rapidly and I steadily in many industries, and by no means least in the building and maintenance of roads. Now there is a large and important entrant into the field of manufacturers supplying the necessary equipment; in this case with the ultimate target of providing a complete air-power service, with portable, semi-portable and stationary air compressors, rock drills, paving breakers, shovel loaders and a wide variety of other equipment. Much of this is already being made in this country by the company concerned—the Air Power Division of Joy-Sullivan, Ltd., 7 Harley Street, London, W.1, whose products come from the company's Cappielow factory in Greenock. They are the wholly owned subsidiary of the Joy Manufacturing Co. of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
For years most of the output went to the National Coal Board, in the form of specialized machines, the balance, as oil-well prospecting and drilling equipment, being exported. The latest enterprise is designed to reduce dependence upon the N.C.B. and to improve the employment position in Greenock. A notable achievement, is the production of completely oil-free compressed air. If Karl Marx Were Reborn
IN connection with the present transport position in India, that country's Minister of Transport referred to the manifesto of Karl Marx, which was more than 100 years old. One of the statements in it was that the means for production must be in the hands of the people, or of a particular type of Government. Governments were different then and there was constant war between them and the people. If Marx was reborn today and a new manifesto was to be written, he would have to discard many theories, for now Governments are of the people, and India has a democratic Government. There was a kind of mutual relationship between public and private ownership, and nothing would be done to eliminate the private sector. They were thinking of having more roads declared as national highways and would experiment with an express highway.
Concerning the control of transport, he added that if he were to nationalize, he would certainly not take any hasty action merely to enlarge the proportion held by the State.
Is Knowledge Beating Us?
qo fast is modern progress in rapidly widening directions
that it is claimed that the total of human knowledge is doubling itself every 15 years, and that the mass of information is accumulating far more rapidly than is the equipment with which it can be handled. For example, libraries are constantly looking for more space, and discussions on the storage of facts and figures are increasingly frequent.
In the end, however, does all this mass of knowledge get into the right hands so that it can prove of the greatest value to the present and future generations, or does much of it remain in dusty files? Much of it, of course, appears in the proceedings of various institutes, in technical journals and in books. Most people study fairly closely those in the first two classes which apply to their particular interests, but in the rising tempo of activity and the time spent by so many in watching television, •books are apt to be neglected unless they are highly condensed fOr rapid perusal.