NEWSCRIPTS
Newscripts Marks 50th Anniversary Kenneth M. Reese, Newscripts editor
T
his month marks the 50th anniversary of the Newscripts column in Chemical & Engineering News. The column first appeared in C&EN, as NEWS-Scripts, on July 10, 1943; it was on the back page and has stuck there like glue ever since. The magazine had acquired its name only 18 months earlier. During 1923-41 it had been the News Edition of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry. C&EN, like its predecessor, originally was published twice monthly, on the 10th and 20th; it became a weekly with the issue of Jan. 6,1947. Material of the Newscripts genre appeared in the News Edition from the beginning, but under different headings. The issue for March 20,1929, carried the first such heading: "Our Poets' Corner." Under it in fine print was an "Editor's Note: Other contributions solicited. High standard maintained. Consulting editor wanted." Under that was a poem by Howard W. Elkinton, who seems to have been inspired by a monograph. The first verse:
Reese: editor since mid-1967
sleeping or shopping, either of which activities was construed as a direct hit by the Husbands' Association." The odd expression Husbands' Association suggests an inside joke, but in any event the comment appeared more than 60 years ago. Attitudes change. "Emanations" soon absorbed "Our Poets' Corner" and ran intermittently through 1948. For more than five years Some books we read as on the wings ofit ran in parallel with Newscripts, evithought dently because the latter column was Soaring from plain to higher altitude. carrying mainly news items that the At other times we creep as student snaileditors thought worth publishing, but From thorn to thorn. So sluggishly I couldn't squeeze in anywhere else. Offsought beat material appeared, but the lan'The Soluble Silicates' as they are guage was suitably restrained, more or wrought less. Examples from the first NewsIn pages written by the pen of Vail, cripts column: With skill and subtly carved gratitude • "The National Association of That catches in new phrase what others Foremen will stage their national concaught. vention over a nationwide [radio] netPretty good, actually—meter and ev- work. It will be limited to one hour!" erything. • "The Government is expected to The issue for Sept. 20,1930, carried a take an eight-million-dollar loss under the second new column, "Emanations." new ruling [during World War II] on The first effort was a jocular, all-prose ethyl alcohol whereby producers will sell commentary on a national meeting of their entire output to the Government on the American Chemical Society in Cin- a cost-plus-fixed profit basis." cinnati. Sample remark: In the first weekly issue of C&EN, a "The Cincinnati Section thoughtfully story in Newscripts, still reasonably staid, left the ladies' mornings free for late pointed out that "a much tighter produc30
JULY 12,1993 C&EN
tion schedule will be followed" than on the semimonthly schedule and touched on the extra work thus imposed on the staff. Still, the author wrote, "The satisfaction of serving you, the reader, more promptly and efficiently, will more than repay us for our additional labor." By 1949, Newscripts was beginning to loosen up from time to time. In the column for March 7 of that year, for example, the reader could learn "that you can't draw air through a tube if your head is more than three feet below the surface of a body of water." This revelation appeared in the Department of Obscure Information, which was originated by the late Will Shearon when he was C&EN's reporter in Houston. Many ACS editors have worked on Newscripts, but the passage of time and the absence of bylines for the first 26 years permit only a few of them to be indicted by name. F. J. Van Antwerpen of Doylestown, Pa., was on the ACS editorial staff when Newscripts began, but says he recalls little about the column in those days because "I was running all over the place looking for material for the publications." In 1946, Van Antwerpen moved to the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, where he later became executive director. The first to admit responsibility for Newscripts is Robert F. Gould of Guilford, Conn., managing editor of C&EN from 1946 to 1959. For nearly a decade, he recalls, he cobbled the column together himself, using mainly material from readers and other editors. Gould currently is working on a biography of Charles L. Parsons (1867-1954), principal architect of ACS. David M. Kiefer of Bethesda, Md., edited Newscripts from 1954 until 1959, when he left for a tour of duty in the New York editorial office. He, too, recalls relying on contributions from wherever he could get them and writing a good deal himself as well. Kiefer, a longtime financial and business editor for C&EN, is now a consulting editor for ACS publications. On Kiefer's departure, Newscripts
bounced around under the nominal ju- it had appeared earlier in the Journal of risdictions of Gordon H. Bixler of the Electrochemical Society. This gaffe led McLean, Va., managing editor and edi- to an apology in a subsequent Newstor of C&EN from 1960 to 1968, and, lat- cripts, accompanied by the tale of "Der er, K. M. Reese, managing editor from Franklin und sein Keit." 1962 to 1967, and Newscripts editor The many sources of Newscripts masince mid-1967. ACS editors, other staff, terial include ACS local section publicaand members remain major contributors tions. Notable among these has been the "Three teeny-boppers!" I cried. "Precisely," of material and ideas for the column. Chicago Section's Chemical Bulletin and said Holmes, "and of a frivolous nature." Newscripts traditionally has covered a its reportage of events at Loco Chemical broad range of topics. The editorial poli- Co. The company, founded by Helmuth Newscripts has generally tried to stay cy, if any, favors the chemical over the Wegner, Roy Bible Jr., and Derland abreast of social trends. In 1988, for examnonchemical, the scientific over the non- Johnston, was headed by Sir J. Conrad ple, the column reported a study by Anh scientific, the grotesque over the normal. Bleet. Among its many developments Tran of Cornell University documenting Some stories transcend the rules. The was Curlium, a toothpaste that caused the design flaws that result in longer lines column's topical flexibility is well illus- the tube to wind up unaided as its con- at public ladies' rooms than at men's. In trated by the 1969 report of the fellow tents were ejected. One of Bleefs many 1985, the column reported that the who had recently acquired a pair of par- personal honors came in 1963, when the amount of time women spent on houseakeets. One of them was pecking at the Calcutta chapter of the Secret Order of work had expanded during the period other a bit more than seemed normal, so Fakirs made him an honorary Djrck. 1900-50, despite the advent of domestic the chap consulted a friend who was Newscripts has used various kinds of appliances, but had declined during the also a parakeet expert who said, "Don't illustrations over the years. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The source of these findworry about it. ... It wouldn't do any the Chicago Sun-Times agreed to provide ings was Erik Arnold of the University of harm, though, to file down his bill." advance proofs of cartoons by Lichty, Sussex, England, who used data from the When next they met, the friend who occasionally spoofed scientists. The U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands. "Husdeal was to pay only for the cartoons that bands in all social classes," Arnold wrote, asked, "How are the parakeets?" "Not so good," the owner replied. were used, and quite a few of them ap- "do little housework." In the U.S. in the peared in Newscripts. A housecleaning of mid-1970s, he said, husbands averaged "The one whose bill I filed is dead." "Dead!" the friend exclaimed. 'Just fil- the photographic morgue in the mid- 1.6 hours of housework daily, whether 1960s turned up half a dozen unusual their wives were working or not. (Working his bill shouldn't have hurt him." "I know, I know," the owner said. "I shots that became the necessarily short- ing wives were averaging 26 hours of think he was dead when I took him out lived Newscripts Gallery of Science & housework a week during the 1960s.) Technology. Illustration also was needed Most of husbands' housework involved of the vise." Be that as it may, Gould's regime of in 1967 to support "The Adventure of the fixing things. more than a decade earlier was perhaps Dancing Teeny-Bopper," a Sherlock Findings in physical as well as domesthe heyday of mangled German in Holmesian tale assembled from the inputs tic science regularly are reported in NewsNewscripts. An example from 1952 is of half a dozen readers. The case turned cripts. In 1984 the column noted that, noton lupulone, an active principle in lupu- withstanding the Coriolis force, the direc"Der Volta und seine Peils": "Die studenten in der Universitat zu line, which had been recommended for tion of rotation of water draining from a Pavia waren Holitaerrers—die Striet- veterinary treatment of nymphomania. bathtub can be assumed to be an accidental consequence of the residual motion relemps haben sie am Halloween gebostet Holmes came through as usual. sulting from the method of und die Garbetschkenns gedommpt—und sieben The News Scripts Gallery of Science and Technology filling the tub. Only when the residual velocities are Mai in einer Nacht haben less than the absolute velocisie dem Prof. Alessandro ties will the bathtub vortex Volta den Dorrnacker gerotate consistently counterklappert. Da hat der gute clockwise in the Northern Doktor doch endlich ein Hemisphere and clockwise Fiuss gebloht. 'Nun ist doch in the Southern Hemisphere. mein Limit gerietscht,' Merwin Sibulkin of Brown fuhmt er, 'elende Lohfers, University cited experiments euch will ich fixen'!" And that supported this view. so on. Several troublemakers This sort of thing had wrote at once to ask what them rolling in the aisles in happens when the bathtub is those days, more readers at the equator. Sibulkin's rehaving studied German sponse: "At the equator, rethan appears to be the case sidual motions will normally today. As sometimes happrevail. Were a careful expens, the ACS member periment [in which residual who gave Gould this story motions were barred] conneglected to mention that "It looks like dirt to me/ JULY 12,1993 C&EN 31
NEWSCRIPTS
ducted at the equator, our expectation is that no rotational motion would develop. Thus the flow would be purely radially inward in direction/' This account is an excellent example of the service Newscripts can provide by reporting phenomena where the critical experiment has not been done. Other examples include the question of how flies manage to fly onto or off ceilings (1970) and why hot-water pipes in houses freeze before cold-water pipes (1985), if they do. Scientific education also has been a regular topic, and one such story, in 1988, demonstrated the hazard of tongue-in-cheek composition. The topic was a finding, published by the National Science Teachers Association, that almost half of fourth-grade children think Earth is flat. The authors said this deep-seated belief is based on children's commonsense experience, and the Newscripts editor added parenthetically that "many children are too short to see over the horizon/' It seemed the right thing to say at the time, but the upshot was a tidal wave
of letters carefully explaining the horizon and why nobody can see over it. None of these correspondents seemed especially irritated, except perhaps by the need to take time out to correct another bumbling editor. Not that readers don't get irritated—some, like Volta in the story cited earlier, "ein Fiuss gebloht." One source of low-level discontent—extent unknown—is publication of media mistakes in chemistry, which to some comes through as a form of snobbery. A more specific incident occurred in 1992 when Mattel brought out a Barbie doll that said among other things, "Math class is hard." Math teachers, women scientists, and others were up in arms. Newscripts proposed that parents tell their daughters that Barbie is full of baloney or that maybe math class in fact is hard. These suggestions were poorly received by a number of readers, both male and female. On the whole, however, reader relations with Newscripts seem to have been reasonably good for half a century. Eruptions, when they occur, may stem fundamentally from trends de-
scribed in 'The Trouble with Science," which appeared in 1972 in the Chemical Bulletin. The tenor of author Hurley Cook's analysis, according to Newscripts, was evident in his poetical introduction: In Dayes of Olde When Knights were Bolde Ere Science was Invented The Earth was Flatte And Thatte was Thatte With No Man Discontented Kenneth M. Reese has been C&EN's Newscripts editor since mid-1967. He started at C&EN's Chicago office in 1954 and became the head in 1957, after heading the San Francisco office for one year. He moved to the Washington, D.C., office in 1962 when he was named assistant managing editor and, also in 1962, managing editor. He held' that post until 1967, when he resigned to become a contributing editor and Newscripts editor. Reese received a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1947.
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