The Overland Train Lives

I ENJOYED YOUR ARTICLE ABOUT THE Overland Train (“Big Wheels,” by Charles W. Ebeling) in the Winter 2001 issue, but I must make a correction to the statement that today it “exists only in memory.” The control car of the Overland Train has been reclaimed and is on display at the Yuma Proving Ground Heritage Center, in Yuma, Arizona. It was originally sold as government surplus, and all the cargo cars and wheels were cut up to be melted down for aluminum scrap. The generators, individual electric engines, tires, and other assorted parts were salvaged and sold. The control car is all that remains of the massive chain of transportation vehicles.

Incidentally, in the photo on pages 28-29 you point out the Jeep on the first cargo car. There are also an M113 armored personnel carrier on the fifth car and a Caterpillar tractor on the sixth.

The LCC-1, the Sno Train, shown on page 31, now rests in a scrapyard in Snowflake, Alaska. And there are still a number of the cargo cars in that area.

Mike Thompson
Curator, U.S. Army Yuma Proving
Ground Heritage Center
Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz.

The Overland Train Lives

THE VERY FIRST ARTICULATED LAND train using electrical power to all wheels (generated by a gasoline engine) was built by Ferdinand Porsche for the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. Before the war he had built taxicabs and fire engines with an electric motor for each wheel, and he extrapolated from that design for his land train.

Professor Peter J. Hugill
Department of Geography
Texas A&M University
College Station, Tex.

The First Remotes

AS WAS NOTED IN THE WINTER ISSUE’S “Object Lessons” column (“The Remote Control,” by Curt Wohleber), evolving technology was a key factor in the ultimate success of the television remote control. However, advances in TV tuner design were as important as those in the remote itself. Before the development of the varactor-based TV tuner, changing channels was done by rotating a knob that positioned a multiconductor switch. The position for each channel engaged a unique combination of inductors, capacitors, and resistors. Remote control of such a TV required an expensive and unreliable motor to precisely rotate the tuning knob. Changing channels was necessarily slow and sequential, and the switch was notorious for becoming unreliable as its contacts grew dirty and worn. The wiggling of the knob sometimes necessary to make a channel work right could hardly be done at all with a remote-controlled motor. And when UHF broadcasts became common, positioning the basic VHF knob to “UHF” engaged a separate tuner and knob, so for remote control of that, yet another motor would have been required.

The varactor is a diode whose capacitance changes with applied voltage. Using it and related solid-state advances, the cumbersome and expensive switch tuner could be replaced by one that could tune the entire TV band with simple applied voltage, using no moving parts. This tuner design became ubiquitous in the 1980s, and it opened the way for the subsequent ubiquity of the remote control.

Bruce Jacobs
St. Paul, Minn.

The First Remotes

I WAS A RADIO REPAIRMAN BEFORE THERE was a TV station in our area, and then a TV repairman. By the time Zenith came out with the Flash-Matic, in 1955, we thought we were in high technology. One of the great things about it was that if you lost your ray gun, any flashlight would do. But one day we sold a big, expensive 21-inch-screen set to a family with a large east-facing picture window. We placed the TV along the west wall. The next morning the sun came up, turned on the TV, and woke the whole family. That wasn’t the worst of it. The motor on the tuner kept changing channels until it burned up. After that, we were very careful about where we put such a set.

Tim Bare
Pryor, Okla.

The First Remotes

I REMEMBER VISITING MY FRIEND ROB’S house when I was a youngster, after his family got one of those Zenith Space Command remotes. The TV would change channels whenever their Siamese cat scratched at her fleas. My buddy Mike almost killed the cat shaking her to prove to us that the bell on her collar was acting as a remote.

Christian Tickell
Virginia Beach, Va.

Edward Teller’s Legacy

IN “WHAT EDWARD TELLER DID” (WIN ter 2001), T. A. Heppenheimer writes, “As a physicist, he had only one really good idea during his career, the TellerUlam principle. …” One may argue over the meaning of “really good idea,” but it is only fair to point out that between 1930 and 1938 Teller made many original contributions to molecular chemical physics that are still used today. He made some of the first molecular quantum mechanical calculations, in 1930, and several of his contributions to the fields of molecular spectroscopy, surface science, and intermolecular interactions are known today by his name and the names of his co-workers: the P’f6schl-Teller potential (1933), the Jahn-Teller effect (1937), and the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller adsorption isotherm (1938), among others. None of these individually was a Nobel Prize-level achievement, but had World War II not directed Teller’s mind elsewhere, he could well have had a Nobel-worthy career as a chemical physicist. However, with the exception of one 1943 contribution to intermolecular forces, he made no major contributions to this field after 1940.

Professor John S. Winn
Department of Chemistry
Dartmouth College
Hanover, N. H.

Edward Teller’s Legacy

WHEN I WAS A STUDENT AT THE UNI versity of California, Davis, in 1976, I heard Edward Teller give a generalinterest seminar about defense strategy to a small number of students in the physics department. His ideas and presentation got my attention and left me with a lasting impression, but that impression was probably exactly the opposite of what he had intended. I left the room convinced that Dr. Teller was an extremely dangerous man in a very important position. I changed my mind about the importance of arms control and vowed to fight his ideas however possible.

Robert R. Henry
Seattle, Wash.

Goodbye, Mr. Charlie

SHORTLY AFTER READING THE EXCEL lent article on oil rigs last fall (“Oil and Water,” by Tom Zoellner), I had an opportunity to visit Morgan City, Louisiana, and stopped by to see the Mr. Charlie oil-rig-platform museum. I was very disappointed to find that it was temporarily closed. Mr. Charlie is a unique piece of a very important part of the history of the petroleum industry.

K. Aubrey Hottell
Baltimore, Md.

Looking For A Sign

THE ARTICLE “ROAD SIGNS FOR AIR planes” (by Kevin L. Cook, Winter 2001) reminds me of an incident in May 1943, when I was a student in a Navy training program flying out of Athens, Georgia. I was out solo, practicing a series of wingovers at 3,000 feet in an open-cockpit Waco UPF-7, and when I finished, I leveled off, looked around, and saw nothing but the green scrub and red-clay dirt roads of Georgia. Without a map, I was in a fix. I flew straight and level for a few minutes and shortly came to a small town that I circled, looking for a clue. Happily, on the west side of the place there was a large building that looked like a storage shed and that had on top, painted in yellow letters inside a hollow arrow, the words ATHENS 13 MILES .

I lined up with the arrow, checked my watch to time 10 minutes, and at the end of that interval I came in sight of the Athens airfield and landed. My instructor was jumping up and down and screaming at me as I taxied up to the ramp. Nevertheless, I went on to become a Navy flight instructor and was discharged three years later as a lieutenant.

Ernst Gottfried Sehlmeyer
Casper, Wyo.

Looking For A Sign

IN 1943, HAVING TRANSFERRED FROM the Royal Canadian Air Force to the U.S. Navy, I was assigned to ferry duties using a Grumman F4F Wildcat. The Wildcat was an unpopular machine among most pilots. I probably got assigned to it for two reasons: I liked it, and ex-Commonwealth pilots were viewed with some suspicion. In those days, the radio aids could be downright unreliable. On one flight from New York to Pittsburgh, I realized that I must have passed my destination in the haze, and I had no idea where I was until the moment a roof sign reading TAYLORCRAFT appeared. That had to be the maker of small airplanes in Alliance, Ohio, so I was able to get back to Pittsburgh with the red light blinking, indicating that fuel exhaustion was near. Thank you, Taylorcraft!

Lt. Comdr. George E. Sutton,
USNR (Ret.)
Poland, Ohio

Looking For A Sign

I REMEMBER HEARING ABOUT SOME GUY who painted his warehouse roof near the airport with WELCOME TO CLEVELAND . His warehouse was in Buffalo, New York. The city fathers had to ask him to remove the sign; it set off too much alarm among arriving airline passengers.

Darwin Pickell
via e-mail