John Stockton

New Scientist 2nd January 1975. Vol 65 No 930.

The cover price of 20p (£1-52 after 50 years of inflation) is not the only difference between 1975 and today. The majority of articles in the publication are not written by journalists, but by experts working for institutions or within industry. Writers include a professor of biochemistry at McMaster University, the director of hardware and quality assurance at International Computers Ltd, a research fellow at Middlesex University, a research assistant at at UCL and a researcher at Exeter University.  A profile of the Soviet environmentalist Alexander Vinogradov was written by Boris Belitzky, a science journalist at Radio Moscow.

While the access to writers who were directly involved in research might be advantageous for a publication, the possibility of an article suffering from a partial view would have had to have been countered by the ten-strong editorial team. Another interesting difference between today and fifty years ago is that now every hospital trust and university has a communications department which would be involved in the contacts between staff and editors. Half a century ago hospitals and universities were much more under the control of doctors and academics.

The Comment section of issue 930 is a half-page piece by the editor Bernard Dixon about the energy crisis and economic turmoil caused by inflation and scarcities. Before global warming was identified as a threat, the drastic oil price increases of 1973 as well as the perceived future shortages of oil and pollution by toxic combustion products were the main reasons to to seek energy efficiency. In his editorial Dixon announced "New Scientist will be holding a conference in London to examine the technical and political possibilities for greater self-sufficiency for Britain, in food, energy and raw materials". Half a century later new houses are being built in the U.K. without solar panels and with heat insulation standards that are the lowest in Europe. Many solar panels are imported from China.

Today we are concerned by the addition of Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere and the resulting global warming, but the energy crisis of the 1970s was seen mostly in terms of the need to extend the post-war boom in industrial production. The lack of awareness of climate change is illustrated by two items in issue 930.

Firstly a job advertisement from the Open University Energy Research Group for a job vacancy for a research officer (£2400 -£2900 pa) to assist with research into "a selection of novel sources of liquid fuels such as oil shales, liquid hydrogen and oil from coal."

Secondly, the 'patents review' section has a review of German proposal (BP 1 371 269) to create drinking water in the Sahara and in Arabia by using natural gas. "The gas escaping from oil wells is frequently burnt off because it is uneconomical to collect, store and transport." The German patent states that water created by burning the hydrogen in in natural gas could be collected and purified into drinking water. Almost as an afterthought the item mentions that the energy from burning the gas could be used for local electricity generation.

New Scientist carried advertisements in the 1970s. Just inside the cover is a full page advertisement for Hoechst inflatable buildings, to be used mostly as warehousing. The value of the pound was falling at a disturbing rate. Inflation was 19% in 1974 and would reach an all time peak of 25% in 1975.  Using the slogan "how we beat inflation by inflation" the copy offers inflatable air halls as a quick and easy way to avoid the increasing cost of building materials. Apparently the price of the electricity needed to keep these structures inflated was not a problem in 1975. The fabric used was Hoechst's brand Trevira. "PVC coated fabrics made from this are waterproof and rotproof, but most important, airproof. So all you have to do is inflate, and there's your building."

Ironically, the 'technology review' section has an item about the challenge of setting safe exposure levels to vinyl chloride, used in the manufacture of PVC. the new standard in the U.K. was to be 50 parts per million compared with the U.S. standard of 1 part per million. Exposure to vinyl chloride gas has been associated with liver cancer.

In a strange echo of more recent times, an item about the use of roof beams made from high alumina cement (HAC) in 1170 schools raised the issues of how testing and remedial action was to be paid for.  At the time of printing 433 schools had not been tested and 241 were affected or closed. "The Inner London Education Authority is in a fortunate position because it has the back-up of the Greater London Council's (GLC) Scientific Branch which has the necessary equipment to test for conversion in samples of beams. Other local authorities have to contract out the testing to independent consultants. At £20/test ( £151-97 at 2024 prices ) the cost of this work can be considerable." The perceived need to save taxpayers money by building low quality school buildings is more than reminiscent of today's reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAC) fiasco. 

The GLC was abolished in 1986, but even if it still existed it is difficult to imagine that, after 45 years of privatisation, a local authority would be allowed to have their own Scientific Branch. A pervading assumption behind most of the output of New Scientist in the 1970s was that government had a responsibility to oversea many aspects of science and technology - that governments should actually govern by providing itself with the resources needed to make peoples lives better. Inside the back cover of issue 930 is a full page advertisment for the National Research and Development Corporation (NRDC) which invested by direct funding by the taxpayer in new inventions and designs that would contribute to the British economy. After mergers with other departments the organisation was privatised in 1995. Today countries such as India still have a commitment to direct government involvement in the development of technology.

The letters page of New Scientist is interesting. In issue 930 J.H. Burton from Cheshire wrote in response to John Tinker's article "The end of the English landscape". The issue of farming, conservation and landscape is a huge subject that cannot be covered here, but I admire Mr Burton's admonishment of Jon Tinker's use of extrapolation from statistics of current trends. "To illustrate the dangers of extrapolation it is only necessary to consider that, according to figures published by the Federal Populations Commission, by the year 2020 all the population of the U.S. will live in California, own power boats and suffer from venereal disease."

Point taken.