Chapter 32
Universal Language
2By ‘‘IDEAL’’ is meant the latest sensation of refinement towards perfection along any one time line, and by ‘‘standard’’ the group ideal, the ‘‘standard’’ being graphed by the most encompassing sphere of our awareness terminating the conscious exterior limits of all our radionic time lines of interests and experiences.
3 The history of straight line measure and of graphing constitutes an example of the inevitable progression in scientific satisfactions of standards, by design evolution predicated upon the specific WEIGHTSTRENGTH-ECONOMY-FACTORS instrumented sequentially by solutions respectively in compression<tension<abstraction.
4 The first linear measurements were made by man in feet, compressively walking. Then man made a yardstick or pacestick of three feet with which he could draw approximately straight lines. Beyond this measure, in his ever insistent physical decentralization requirement, it was relatively impractical to draw straight lines with compression sticks, although ‘‘rods’’ were tried. Wherefore, string tension lines were introduced as seen in building foundation layouts, or for brick and shingle fines, et cetera.
5 Sea soundings greater than compressive oar-handle depth (as ships were increased in size and depth and traveled further) called for tension lead-lines forwardly ‘‘heaved,’’ while the boat was in motion. Soundings were measured in fathom units, a fathom being the average span of the extended arms of man, approximately six feet, or twice the length of the compressively foot-paced yard. However, catinary sag and wind deflection curvature rendered the tension means of line-drawing impractical over large earth-surface distances. In the latter field, the surveyors telescope, an abstract sight line, was evolved. In navigation a vibration echo system was instituted for soundings, an abstract vertical line of measurement.
6 The error present in the use of tension line drawing was illustrated in the building of a mile long wind tunnel at Langley Field, Virginia, in 1932--33. In the construction of this, the longest wind tunnel in the world, through old craft habits of the contractors, spirit levels and tension lines were used to determine foundation lines. When finished a marked curvature, corresponding to the curvature of the earths surface, was found to characterize the base, constituting so great an error even in a mile as to have invalidated the wind tunnel’s scientific effectiveness if it had been superimposed upon this deformed base. So the whole job had to be done over again with surveyors instruments.
7 The surveying instrument, also, has its limitations. For instance, it cannot be used to measure and describe straight lines beyond the horizon in a single operation. So the radio direction finder was developed to provide a means of measurement and line determination, through cross bearings of lines of intersecting directions to or from two or more broadcasting stations, limitless and one thousand times more accurate than the surveying instrument employed over long distances.
8 Each of these successive steps in measuring and line determination ability represents a progressive amplification of space-time saving and precision ability of geometric proportion. It is to be noted, moreover, that the ratio of specific weight of the measuring means to measuring ability has constantly decreased.
9 This history of measurement exemplifies the trend progression factor which I have entitled EPHEMERALIZATION. This progression, evoluting from compression<tension<visual<abstract-electncal, is typical of all evolutionary trends: from might makes right to right makes might, to technology; to science, and to pure mathematics, the latter being contactable only through mind-functioning.
10 Another demonstration of the trend toward ephemeralization is apparent in the fact that the sewing machine of this year weighs one half the sewing machines weight of yesterday and yet has greater rate, precision and versatility ability. This is true, also, of calculating machines. But, more exciting, dramatically, to popular conception, is the history of the key which has constantly diminished from the great implement of the early turnkey (a special job in itself) down through the more able and ever smaller units until finally we have the photo-electric cell or ephemeralization of the key itself, a transition into a pure scientific abstraction of energy control. The key to trend comprehension is progressive ephemeralization. This is a practical key which may be applied to market speculation if coordinated with pertinent contiguous factors.
11 The implication of recognition of real values in an ever more ephemeral order is a happy one for all who deal in thought and many of whom have been branded, through all past history, with titles of inconsequentiality such as ‘‘professor.’’
12 The highest values must inferentially be apportioned to the abstractions, and it is paradoxical that the legal property mechanism has only effectually protected the utterly physical. The true realist can point out, in view of the ephemeralization trend, the abstract quality of realities of the great revolution of today which are inherent in the dominance of mind over matter values and activities.
13 Even on a much lower level of rationalization, an intuitive awareness of the ephemeralization trend reveals itself in the ‘‘flapper’s’’ flippant evaluation of the purely physical, which older and former generations valued so highly. Some call this the ‘‘raspberry’’ revolution. The court’s jester was often its greatest sage.
14 In the matter of units of measure, science in due course evolved the metric system, which is a decimal system of potential (though sometimes devious) correlated integration with scientific measurement in all fields. It was designed to clear up the misunderstandings universally developed through oddities in humpty-dumpty measuring units—hands, stones, feet, rods, grains, et cetera, thus through abstraction to make possible world-widely understandable decimal and electrical calculation in the development of all scientific problems. (Some scientists think a decimal system of twelve instead of ten would be more efficient.)
15 The metric system evolved by the French was adopted by the radio world at the latter’s birth. So universally practicable was this abstract measurement language that radios world-girdling, nationalboundary-eliminating integration was undoubtedly sped by many years by the metric system employment. The metric system, despite certain limitations only recently evident, has penetrated into all behind-the-scenes mechanical and electrical worlds.
16 Why has the metric system not been universally adopted in all of man’s important activities? Mainly because, prior to 1929, building (our largest single industrial activity from a sheer weight and volume of end-product viewpoint) was an arts and crafts tailorin trade developed out of a ‘‘traditional’’ evolution of apprenticeship and guilds, the early centrals of labor union strength. Its basic trades, masonry, carpentry and metal working were developed by apprenticeship from father to son. Stubbornly unscientific, each generation continued to talk FEET and humpty-dumpty minimum TOLERANCES of error in terms of inches. These ‘‘tolerances’’ in building error are still adjusted haphazardly by the mason or the carpenter’s ‘‘joining’’ skill and are called ‘‘fudging’’ in trade patois.
17 This very gross tolerance, in all senses of the word, is less true of the steel ‘‘skeleton’’ building, which has surreptitiously spirochaeted old architecture. But engineering calculators in the steel plants still have to interpolate from the architect’s humpty-dumpty ATHLETE’S FOOT measurements into metric system in order to perform industrial establishment calculations in ‘‘metric’’ only subsequently to reconvert them into ‘‘feet’’ of finished product so that they may be handled by the field assembly craft.
18 Throughout the building trades we find compromise adjustments to science-abandoned feet, and to the ‘‘a pint’s a pound the world around’’ jargon of ‘‘rule of thumb’’ standards.
19 Only when scientifically evolved and industrially reproduced shelter gets into full swing will the metric system be practically and popularly adopted for all measuring purposes by the new life growing up in the new compromise-eliminating shelters. So long as the shelters harboring new life continue to be romantic compromises (we do not war against harmonic growth), just so long will that new life be subject to a prejudice of confusion and the inability to talk or comprehend universal languages.