ger-miles and twenty-five billion ton-miles of cargo. The resultant congestion threatens to overwhelm most major air terminals. "Airports handled some seven million departures in 1965. If only current types of aircraft were available, they'd be faced with' handling twenty million departures a year by 1975. However, with takeoff and landing as the DC-8 and 707 aircraft now in service. larger craft, such as the 747, the 1975 airport load can be held to Cost of a Superjet: about $20 million. With this price tag, notes perhaps twelve million departures." Along with providing a relief valve for the expected buildup in Baugh, the Model 747 has attracted the largest preproduction orderinthe history of the industry. Already, $2,500million in orders air traffic congestion, Schleh elaborates, the 747 opens the way to have been placed by major airlines including two by Air India interior design concepts unapproached in today's jetliners. "Paswith financial assistance from the U.S. Government. One reason sengers will occupy a spacious cabin that's nine feet wider than for the buying enthusiasm, he adds, is the prospect of Boeing 747 current commercial craft. Even in an all-economy configuration operating economies. When phased into airline inventories, the accommodating 446 passengers, seats in the 747 will be ten per craft will reduce seat-mile operating cost (i.e., cost of flying a cent roomier than those in present tourist units." Two aisles running the length of the cabin plus five cross aisles, plane one mile divided by number of seats) by twenty to thirty per cent; cargo ton-mile cost will be lowered as much as thirty to he adds, will afford unparalleled ease of movement. Other notable forty per cent. features: five complete galley units; eleven to sixteen lavatories; Underlying these economic advantages is the plane's prodigious an upper-level lounge or stateroom reached by way of a circular payload capacity. The 747 will be offered in three configurations: stairway; ten-channel stereo sound system; and twenty-eight- by (1) all-passenger, carrying 350 to 490 persons; (2) all-cargo, with seventy-six-inch motion picture screens, largest yet developed for room for some hund red tons-more than twice that of current jet passenger planes. The craft may even include twelve-inch TV sets, freighters; and (3) convertible, With,features that permit a speedy ten suspended in each compartment, for taped telecasts or live alteration to cargo, passenger or combined use. pickups via communications satellites. There's pressing need for just such a mammoth craft. Every Just as it offers extraordinary passenger accommodation optwelve seconds somewhere in the world, reads a sign posted in a portunities, the giant craft imposes, as well, a heavy imperative on lobby here, a Boeing jet is landing or taking off. While it hints at design safety, Schleh emphasizes. "The safe transport of 350 to the phenomenal growth of air traffic in recent decades, it reveals 490 people, obviously, is a weighty responsibility. A principal nothing of traffic forecasts for the near future-forecasts that safety concept in the 747 will be the tremendous redundancy of are alarming. flight control system throughout the plane." Says Keith Schleh, another Boeing customer engineer: "Com(A reflection of that redundancy: the 747 will be equipped with mercial airlines are now logging about 175 billion revenue four complete main landing gears, thereby providing an added passenger-miles and some 4.5 billion cargo ton-miles per year. margin of takeoff-landing safety.) By 1975the yearly haul is expected to reach 500 billion pas-senActually, commercial aviation's safety record-less than .35
Statistics tell the story: Powered by four turbofan engines, each generating 43,500 pounds of thrust, the 747 has an overall length of 231 feet and a tail as high as a five-storey building.
continued
left, dramatizes size of 747's passenger section. The craft will accommodate as many as 490 persons. All-cargo version, below, will have room for 100 tons of freight-more than twice the capacity of present-day jet freighters. Sectional mock-up,
Miss M. Lakhanpal, a researcher, charts the reactions of a guinea pig's heart auricle to artificial stimulation. At far left, a contraceptive drug is fed by mouth tube to {l monkey ..
Mornin g After" p ill, devised specifically to suit India's family planning requirements, is one of eleven potentially important projects now in the process of development at the Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow. The Institute's scientists expect that the new pill will need to be taken only once on anyone offive days after the coital act and would combine simplicity with effectiveness and low cost when mass produced. Contraceptive pills for oral use have, of course, been developed in the United States and other countries. These pills are hormonal agents, which interfere with ovulation. Apart from the element of cost, the pills have to be taken at regular intervals for a period of twenty days each month. But India's large mass of unsophisticated village women cannot be relied upon to follow a strict time schedule. Supported by grants from the Government of India's Ministry of Health and Family Planning, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lucknow Institute is engaged in a detailed study of the physiology of reproduction and contraception in the hope of finding a simpler but equally or more potent drug for production in India. This study, aimed at determining how the genetic process can be arrested after release of ova, is progressing satisfactorily. The Institute's researchers have developed a synthetic compound which prevents implantation of the zygote or fertilized ovum in the womb of experimental animals. Tests on rhesus monkeys, which are biologically similar to human beings, have been successful, and further pre-clinical trials for
THE SEARCH FOR A"
Efficacy of new contraceptive drug is proved by dissected mice at left. Pointer indicates no pregnancy in mouse which was given drug, while foetuses develop in non-treated mouse.
any possible toxic or other adverse reaction are in an advanced stage. If these trials, and the clinical tests which will follow, are successful, Indian scientists will have made an important contribution to birth control techniques. Allied to this research, which is headed by Dr. A. B. Kar, Deputy Director of the Institute, is a scientific study of the loop and its sideeffects on the monkey and human sysDr. A.B. Kar
tems. While the loop has been hailed a'S a simple and useful mechanical contraceptive, there have been some misgivings about its possible adverse effects such as bleeding or injury to the genital organs resulting from its long-term use. In this investigation the rhesus monkey, whose reproductive system closely resembles that of the human, has again been a valuable partner. At the Institute two hundred female monkeys have been wearing the loop for over three years. Groups of these animals are examined at varying intervals after insertion of the loop. It has been found that the loop causes only minor abrasion at some points and bleeding, when it occurs, is transient; it stops when the organ adapts itself to the loop. Even this bleeding might be prevented if a prophylactic drug, which the Institute has tried and reported upon to the Ministry of Health, is administered when the loop is inserted. In any case the bleeding is purely a local effect or trauma arising from the introduction of a foreign body into the system, and not due to any derangement of the reproductive mechanism. Careful microscopic and biochemical examinations have revealed that the genital organs remain normal
in spite of the loop. If the loop is properly and gently inserted by a competent person, says Dr. Kar, it should cause very little discomfort. In fact he compares the slight discomfort involved with that experienced by a person who has a denture fitted for the first time but soon gets used to it. There are, of course, many designs of the loop in use allover the world. In Dr. Kar's view the design of Lippes' loop, as manufactured in India, is completely satisfactory. In India the urge for intensive drug research is motivated not only by the Welfare State's interest in improving standards of public health, but also by the need for building an adequate scientific base for the indigenous pharmaceutical industry. Although the industry's progress since independence has been phenomenal-current annual turnover being about Rs. 175 crores against Rs. 10 crores in 1947-it still depends on imports of certain essential ingredients and lacks the know-how of some manufacturing processes. Foremost among the objectives of the Lucknow Institute are the development of substitutes for imported basic material and of the requisite technical know-how which will enable the industry to operate without foreign assistance. Processes for the manufacture of some drugs have been developed in the Institute's. pilot plant and technical personnel from industrial concerns has also been trained as a part of this programme. Monkeys are not the only animals which figure in the Institute's work. Its massive, three-storeyed animal house contains more than 18,000 animals and birds including cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats, mice, chickens and crows. This scientific menagerie is an essential part of the researcher's stock-in-trade, and animals are always on the test tables for day-to-day experiments. Elaborate apparatus records their blood pressure, respiration, muscle continued'
major health problems. The current research aims at gaining further knowledge of the disease and developing more potent drugs for its control. Activity at the Institute, which was opened in 1951, is organized mainly on a tension, electrical activity of the brain, project basis, and work is proceeding curreaction to heat or shock and variation of rently on eleven projects. Apart from those these phenomena under the influence of already mentioned, there are projects covdrugs. From these experiments, some pro- ering study of pathological conditions in longed over years, may emerge new, valua- tuberculosis, leprosy, diseases of the nerv:ble remedies for baffling, obstinate diseases. ous system, heart diseases, viral infections In one typical experiment, for example, and development of prophylactic or curaelectric current is delivered to a mouse to tive drugs to combat these diseases. induce convulsions; its reactions to an antiOf particular interest in this context is epilepsy drug are then studied and recorded. the Institute's project for collection of In another experiment, part of the re- plants from different parts of the country search on filariasis, an Indian jungle crow and subjecting them to a series of comis subjected to different stimuli and its prehensive tests to ascertain their medicinal blood examined for micro-filariae. The properties. Ancient Indian medical treaobject is to see if filaria germs which nor- tises make mention of many such plants mally reveal themselves only at night when and Indian scientists have investigated some the patient is in deep slumber, can be made of these claims in different centres of the to appear during the day. It has been found country. The Institute has launched a that many of these crows are infected with massive programme co-ordinating, for the a disease closely akin to filariasis in humans first time in a single institution, the collec-known in its penultimate form as ele- tion of these plants from all over the counphantiasis because of a massive swelling of try, their identification, processing and legs. The incidence of filariasis in India is testing on an extensive scale. About 1,100 plants have been collected on the increase and within a few years it may well become one of the cou:ltry's so far and extracts have been taken of some
The drug researcher inevitably deals with life and cannot be too careful or too scrupulous in carrying out his investigations.
800 and tested for their reaction to various disease-producing germs. Their effects on the heart and nervous system have been studied, as also their potency in combating. such diseases as diabetes and cancer. The thoroughness of the Institute's testing and screening system may be gauged from the fact that most plant extracts-and also synthetic compounds-have to -undergo as many as sixty-five different tests. Of the plants tested, thirty-four have shown anti-cancer properties and a further thirty a variety of other biological activity. Some of these plants, after further trials, may conceivably be useful for treatment of hypertension and heart diseases or as tranquillizers, pain relievers and antiallergic agents. One drug of plant origin developed at the Institute is now under clinical trials for treatment of leucoderma and another for use as a neuro-muscular blocking agent in majorsurgicaloperations. The study of Indian plants as a possible source of anti-cancer drugs is being undertaken in collaboration with the United States Public Health Service and has been in progress for about four years. The U.S. Government made an initial grant of Rs. 279,000 to assist the project and has recently agreed to provide a further sum ofRs. 1,020,400to finance the investigation
hands and knees. The King saw that by keeping low, close to the ground, all of them could remain concealed until they reached the wall and in its shelter could make their way towards their quarters. So, the crowned heads of England, the Royal Family, held so high in the affections of all of us, crawled on hands and knees to the wall. Then, still more or less on all fours, they made their way to the castle door and disappeared inside.
As Supreme Commander of the Allied forces which landed in France on June 6, 1944, Ike directed the largest invasion force ever assembled in history. AFTERTHELJ\NDINGSon the morning of June 6, the battling stayed tough and constant. For weeks the front was quite fluid and though the duties at headquarters were heavy, I managed to visit our forward units with some regularity. General Haislip, one of my oldest friends, was commanding the XV Corps and I determined to visit him. As I reached his headquarters about noon, his greeting was almost surly: "General, I think you should turn around and go back right away." "What's the trouble?" I asked. "We've got Nazi artillery firing on our flank and we think there's a counter attack building up that just might overrun the area." "Well, Ham," I said, "I'd like to see the development of their attack and I'm really confident you can handle it. Besides, I don't see you running." "Of course we'll handle it!" he said. "But in the meantime we could get some nasty artillery fire and you might get into it." I reiterated, annoyingly, "After all, you might, too." "This is my place!" he insisted. "But I don't want you here. Don't think I'm worrying about your possible demise. I just don't want it said that I allowed the Supreme Commander to get killed in my corps area. Now if you want to get killed, go into some other area." I said I was going to stay for lunch, at least. That lunch was a comedy, served
in speeded-up, double-quick time, under Haislip's none too gentle prodding. Just to plague him a little more I said, "Now look, Ham-you can bring this lunch in as fast as you want but I'm going to enjoy it. I had no breakfast and I ate last evening out offield rations and I'm not going to be hurried. You fighting guys serve good food." He consented to my having thirty minutes for lunch. At thirty minutes plus one, he took me for a ride, saying that there was something interesting he wanted me to see. After a couple of minutes, I remarked, "Okay, Ham, I'm just smart enough to know that this is the same road I came in on. What was it you wanted to show me?" "I want to show you the shortest way out of this corps area!" he said.
Following defeat of the Nazis in 1945, Ike had many encounters with Russian leaders including Joseph Stalin and Marshal Zhukov. FORTHEGOVERNING of defeated Germany, the country was divided into four sectors, one each to be administrated by the Soviets, the French, the British, and ourselves. Periodically, the representatives of these countries, Marshal Zhukov of the Soviet Union, General Koenig of France, Marshal Montgomery of Great Britain, and myself, met in Berlin. In general, these meetings were friendly, but at times there was acrimonious debate between the Russians and anyone of the Western Allies about Russian interference with their forces in the city of Berlin or when they accused us of infractions of agreements. Marshal Zhukov was rather standoffish with the other two representatives but between him and me there grew a relationship that permitted a frank exchange of views and a degree of mutual understanding. There was a sort of soldierly camaraderie that, under the circumstances, was useful. He and I talked at length about the war. He was particularly interested in the logistic arrangements that had enabled the Allies to make rapid advances across the whole of France. Indeed, he and Marshal Stalin later made this the subject of long conversation with me in Moscow. They could not understand our demo-
cratic institutions, either. In Berlin one day, Marshal Zhukov came to me with a scowling face to speak in abrupt terms about what he called a personal insult. The Russians were receiving many of our news periodicals, including magazines. In one of the weeklies, a story about Zhukov was published which alleged, among other things, that he was shorter than his wife and that he had three children. I tried to convince the Marshal that while this and other errors were regrettable, they were not official and were not meant to belittle him. He was unmollified. He said these were deliberate insults and he wanted to know what I was going to do to punish the responsible journalists. My efforts to explain the workings of a free press were futile; had the matter not been serious, my failure would have been funny. I explained that one of the reasons that I fought in the war-and, indeed, why my nation was fighting-was to defend the right of free speech and of a free press. The Marshal would not admit that such a thing could exist. Again and again, he said, "Uyou were described like this by any publication in my country, I would see that it was eliminated immediately." I pointed out that it was, first of all, not my inclination to silence all critical journals, and that we had libel laws, and a suit could be brought in court against a publication that printed falsehood and in so doing damaged the victim. But these were the limits of our legal reaction to this kind of story. The best I could get out of Zhukov was that he knew that I believed what I said but he was convinced that the United States Government could control any publication and anything printed in it, if it really so desired. Months later, when I attended ceremonies celebrating Red Army Day, I found Marshal Zhukov and his wife greeting people in a receiving line. His first words to me were: "Now-do you think my wife is taller than I am?" (She was not, of course. And he had two daughters.) I again confessed to the inaccuracies of our newsmagazine's story. This matter settled, he took his wife by the arm, abandoned the receiving line completely, led us to a comfortable corner, where with the aid of an interpreter we chatted amiably. END
Union of versatile talents "IN THE 1950s the whole design climate was permanently changed by the work of Charles and Ray Eames," concluded one architectural magazine; "by a few chairs and a house." The couple, in their California house, applied prefabrication far ahead of its time; the home is built of factory parts ordered from catalogues. The' original chairs, of moulded plywood, set .other designers around the world experimenting with lightweight seats. In every creation of this couple, architect Charles and painter Ray, is the fresh sophisticated twist of old ideas and their trademarks of practicality and surprise. They won the Kaufman International Award (equivalent to a Nobel Prize in design) for their total contribution: furniture, toys, games and audio-visuals that make absorbing play out of technology's complexities and science's mystery. Their exhibit on urban planning shown recently in Washington, D.C., their sketches for a new national aquarium in the nation's capital and ideas for a movie on cosmic distances are examples of their widely divergent interests. END Ray and Charles Eames, above, photographed in the California home which they designed. W(Jrk~.: ing on a film, below, they plan sequences, then post them on' ':storyboard" along the 'Wqll.
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"I THINK YOU could be a Michelangelo and still be a plain Hoffer'holds that the true believer or convert to a revolutionary working man." movement is a frustrated individual, a permanent misfit in society The speaker was Eric Hoffer, American writer and philosopher, who seeks fulfilment in blind allegiance to a supposedly holy cause. discussing with an interviewer the rare combination of qualities The movement may be social, religious or political; the convert, which have made him a noted author while engaged in manual with his fanatical zeal, is a "guilt-ridden hitch-hiker who thumbs labour all his life. " a ride on every cause from Christianity to communism." Among Sixty-six-year old Eric Hoffer, who recently retired as a dock the groups of potential converts Hoffer lists are: the poor, the worker, indeed belies all conventional notions of a writer and his outcasts, adolescent youths, the ambitious, the inordinately selfish, background or environment. Blinded at the age of seven in an the bored and the criminals. accident, he did not regain his eyesight until he was fifteen and had According to Hoffer, discontent with the existing order is not no formal education. Another formidable handicap was poverty, enough to foster a revolutionary movement. It must be accomwhich soon compelled him to start earning his own living. panied by a sense of irresistible power arising from faith in an But neither poverty nor lack of opportunities for a public infallible leader or in the potency of his doctrine. And, above all, school or university education could hinder his quest for knowl- the movement must be kindled and fanned by an extravagant edge. As an itinerant labourer, washing dishes in restaurants or hope-whether it be the hope of "heaven on earth, of plunder and picking peas or cotton on farms, he spent most of his leisure untold riches, of fabulous achievement or world dominion." The devouring books borrowed from libraries or purchased from his generation which brought. about the French Revolution, for meagre savings. Among his favourite authors, and one who con- instance, had an extravagant notion of the omnipotence of siderably influenced his thinking and style, was Michel de Mon- man's reason and his bou'ndless intelligence. The Bolsheviks had taigne, the sixteenth-century French essayist. Hoffer says: "Mon- blind faith in Marxist doctrine and the Nazis regarded Hitler taigne gave me the taste for a good sentence. I never had the urge as infallible. to write until after I read Montaigne." More than one critic has noted with appreciation Hoffer's Although Hoffer started writing in the late 1930's, scribbling capacity for bold generalization. Many of the inferences which he his notes in fields, railway yards or other odd places in whatever draws from copious examples and puts down in terse, lucid senmoments of leisure he could snatch, it was not until 1951 that his tences, sound like axioms of unquestionable veracity. But excesfirst book The True Believer was published. In the meantime he " ¡sive¡,gen~ralization can also be a source of weakness and error. had settled down in San Francisco, taking up employment as a He seems to paint the true believer in colours altogether too harsh stevedore-a job in which he worked two or three days a week, and gloomy. In fact, except when he is writing about America or earning enough to meet his modest needs. His second book The its common people, his outlook on life is distinctly pessimistic. Passionate State of Mind followed in 1955 and The Ordeal of Hoffer himself stoutly denies that he is a pessimist, although Change in 1963. The latest publication is a volume of essays, The he admits that some of his aphorisms may leave the reader with the impression of unrelieved gloom. Here are two typical specimens: Temper of Our Time, which appeared at the end of 1966. The True Believer-a penetrating analysis of mass movements "A man's heart is a grave long before he is buried. Youth dies, and the people who foster them-created something of a furore in and beauty, and desire, and hope. A grave is buried within a grave literary circles. It was hailed as exciting, refreshing and provoca- when a man is buried." tive. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., well-known historian and critic, "We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our des'Ctibedit as"a btiiliant and original enquiry into the nature of existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We mass movements ... a genuine contribution to our social thought." need as much something to suffer for as something to live for."
Eric Hoffer: Lacking a formal education and engaged in manual labour all his life, Eric Hoffer, who has won fame as a writer and philosopher, is a unique' figure on the American literary scene. Pictures at right show him at work on the docks, talking to a friend and using his moments of leisure to read a book, carried in his pocket, while his co-workers relax.