British Engineering and the New Zealand Market, 1945-60
Britain's lack-lustre industrial performance after the Second World War is seen through the mirror of an important external market, New Zealand. The spotlight is on the failure of British exporters of diesel electric locomotives and heavy electrical plant to make the most of apparently excellent opportunities in New Zealand between 1945 and 1960. British firms occupied dominant positions in the relevant segments of the New Zealand market in the early post-war period, but frittered their advantage away. Development and production expertise was in limited supply, and was spread too thinly. Cartel pricing alienated public sector customers in New Zealand and encouraged them to give orders to other countries. While these are not novel charges to lay against British manufacturers, there is considerable value in having them confirmed by evidence from a peripheral market that has been relatively neglected by business historians.
Britain and the Sterling Area: From Devaluation to Convertibility in the 1950s. By Catherine R. Schenk. London:Routledge, pp.165. $65.00
Britain's ambivalence toward Europe is of long standing. Those who wish to be reminded need look no further than the Channel Tunnel, whose main impact on the British consciousness seems to have been alarm that the country would become infested with rats from the Continent. In the 1950s this ambivalence took the form of uncertainty about whether Britain should commit to European integration or, as it did, strengthen its ties with the Commonwealth and sterling area. The three decades of disappointing economic performance that followed inevitably encouraged doubts that the country, by spurning membership in the European Economic Community (EEC), had made the right choice. As Catherine Schenk points out, there has been too little critical analysis of Britain's foreign economic policies in the critical years leading up to the formation of the EEC. The literature on Britain's external economic relations essentially jumps from the devaluation of 1949 to that of 1967. Among the intervening events that have not received their fair share of attention are the attempts to cope with the sterling balances, the debate over whether to float the exchange rate in 1952, and the restoration of convertibility in 1958. A fresh evaluation of their impact on the British economy is overdue. Schenk's monograph is based on a dissertation completed at the London School of Economics. It reassesses three arguments about the detrimental effects of the sterling area on the British economy. One is that the problem of sterling balances inherited from World War II severely limited the authorities' monetary and exchange-rate options. There was nothing new about the use of sterling balances by governments and banks overseas, of course; sterling had been the predominant reserve currency prior to 1913, and London balances were widely held by the sterling bloc in the 1930s. The difference after World War II was that the Commonwealth and Empire had acquired additional sterling balances in return for transferring raw materials and otherwise contributing to the war effort. There was good reason to worry that they would liquidate these involuntary accumulations given the opportunity. Consequently, restoring convertibility on current account would have required a massive and politically unacceptable devaluation of the parity established in 1949 or, as contemplated in 1952, a decision to float the currency; this had been graphically illustrated by the disastrous attempt to restore convertibility in 1947 as mandated by the terms of the American Loan Agreement. Given the desire to maintain the prevailing parity, Britain had no choice but to retreat into inconvertibility.
Geomagnetic micropulsations due to the motion of ocean waves
When sea waves move in the magnetic field of the earth, electric currents are generated in the water volume. These currents give rise to a small magnetic field which perturbs the earth's field. For plane trochoidal waves, this perturbing field decays exponentially with altitude and lies in a vertical plane which is oriented in the direction of wave propagation. The magnitude of the perturbing field also depends upon the magnitude and dip angle of the earth's field, and upon the height, wavelength, and propagation direction of the sea waves. For north-south waves, sea state 5, and an altitude of 100 feet, the perturbation is of the order of 0.1 gamma.