Sinking of the atomic home
QUESTION Is the Underground World Home from the 1964 New York World’s Fair still under Flushing Meadows?
The NY World’s Fair’s Underground home was an exhibit built by Jay Swayze. Records show that it was demolished shortly after the Fair.
Underground housing became briefly popular in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when Cold War fears were at their height.
Jay Swayze was a lumber dealer and contractor who had become interested in subterranean living, having been contracted to build a demonstration family bomb shelter conforming to Department of Civil Defence specifications in his home town of Plainview, Texas.
Intrigued by the possibilities, Swayze built his own ‘Atomitat,’ a 2,800 sq ft, fourbedroom, three-bath underground home, and moved his family in, gaining national press coverage.
Jerry henderson, an executive of Avon Cosmetics, was impressed by Swayze’s homes and commissioned Jay and his brother Kenneth to build two underground homes, one in Colorado and the other in Las Vegas, Nevada.
henderson’s ‘ Mountain house’ in Nevada was pure luxury, fitted with swimming pools, a sauna, a garden with fountains and waterfalls, and a barbecue hidden inside an artificial rock.
henderson bought a 51 per cent share of Swayze’s company, Underground World homes. Like many other entrepreneurs, they looked to the World’s Fair as an opportunity to advertise underground living to the millions of expected visitors who would soon be passing through Flushing Meadows. henderson financed the building of a three-bedroom home.
Before descending into the home itself, there was a display about the construction techniques used and the benefits of living underground. Tour guides then took visitors around the house, which also featured a patio and garden, complete with artificial plants, in an effort to help make the place less claustrophobic.
When visitors climbed back upstairs, they could buy a booklet with more information on how to arrange for their own subterranean chalet.
The Underground World home was a flop. There was an admission charge to tour the home, and it wasn’t designed to take large crowds. As a result, most Fair visitors gave it a miss.
Records in the NY public library show that demolition of the Underground home exhibit began at the end of 1965 and carried on into 1966.
Jerry henderson’s luxurious Mountain house is still there. It was bought by a mysterious group calling itself the Society for the Preservation of Near extinct Species for around £1 million in 2014.
Kenneth Record, Salisbury, Wilts.
QUESTION Why was TV chef Julia Child’s husband Paul ‘sacked’ from the diplomatic service?
JULIA CHILD ( 1912- 2004) was the charismatic author of Mastering The Art Of French Cooking (1961) and presenter of the groundbreaking U.S. TV show The French Chef (1963). her husband Paul Child was a U.S. diplomat, artist and epicure. They were the subject of a brilliant hBO series starring Sarah Lancashire and David hyde Pierce.
The only jarring part of the show is when Child ‘admits’ he was sacked. This was not true. Disillusioned with the service, Child resigned in 1961. The couple then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Julia’s career took off.
During World War II, Paul Child was sent to China, India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) by the Office of Strategic Services. he met Julia McWilliams, who also worked for the OSS, in Kandy, Ceylon, and they were married in 1946. When Child’s OSS department was incorporated into the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the couple moved to Washington.
Next they were sent to the American embassy in Paris, a posting that made culinary history after Julia graduated from the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school in the city.
In 1956, Child was called to Washington to what he expected to be a promotion. But he hadn’t reckoned on the ‘red scare’ that was being fomented by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Child was interrogated for hours by government officials. They accused him of being a communist sympathiser and grilled him about his friends, sexual orientation and reading preferences. Child was exonerated and awarded an assignment in Brussels.
But he wrote: ‘[T]his shameful episode left the taste of ashes in our mouths, and we would never forget it.’ he resigned from the USIA in 1961 and spent the remainder of his life supporting his wife’s burgeoning career in a fastidious and dedicated manner.
Katherine Smith, Norwich, Norfolk.
QUESTION How is a mobile phone transmission converted to a landline phone?
MODERN mobile phones digitise their signals into discrete packages of zeros and ones. These are broadcast as an electromagnetic wave, then transmitted to the antennae of the nearest cell tower.
The signal is transferred to the tower’s base station, then via fibre-optic cable to your network’s switching station.
There the message enters the Public Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN, a network that consists of various telephone lines, fibre optic cables, mobile phone networks, satellite communication networks, etc.
When diverted to a landline, the signal is converted back to analogue and broadcast along copper wires to the landline receiver. This is also known as the plain old telephone service (POTS), as it operates very much the same as it has since the late 19th century.
G.P. Rolfe, Nuneaton, Warks.
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