[Orcnet] Off topic - "No Highway in the Sky" movie

[Steve Wetterling]

More information from Steve Wetterling:

When this movie came out in the early 50's, it was astonishingly precient
for the fate of the de Haviland Comet, the first successful commercial
airline plane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet).  This was
the British built air transport that predated the Boeing 707.  The early
production versions were built with an aluminum alloy that was highly prone
to stress fractures and started falling out of the sky after 1 to 2 years of
takes & landings - exactly like this movie.  The book and the movie thereof
were just creepy in how well they presented both the technical details and
how extremely defensive the manufacturer and the airline company were in
denying the possiblities for catastrophic failures.

Great movie.  Jimmy Stewart did usual good job.  The sets with the full size
"Raindeer" airplane mockups were awsome.

(Comet is one of Santa Claus' raindeer).

s.w.

-----Original Message-----
From: orcnet-bounces at eeconsult.org [mailto:orcnet-bounces at eeconsult.org] On
Behalf Of Keith Lofstrom
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 11:31 PM
To: orcnet
Subject: [Orcnet] Off topic - "No Highway in the Sky" movie


Off topic:

This isn't relevant to consulting, but it has to do with being a
good engineer.  I recently discovered that a movie had been made
in 1951 from Nevil Shute's novel, "No Highway".  For those of you
who have never read any Nevil Shute, or only read "On the Beach"
or "A Town Like Alice", you should make an effort to track down
his other novels and non-fiction.  Shute was an aeronautical
engineer and entrepreneur, and many of his protagonists are
engineers.  Shute's books read a little oddly sometimes, but
as an engineer I find them charming and engaging.

The movie is called "No Highway in the Sky" and stars Jimmy Stewart
and Marlene Dietrich.  Stewart plays an exaggerated lab nerd with
few people skills, who discovers a weird kind of metal fatigue in
a new alloy that is likely to cause airplanes to fail without warning. 
While the portrayal of the engineer is quite exaggerated, I do know
real individuals that are that nerdly, and Stewart does so in an
endearing and sympathetic way.  Some might be offended, but I chose
to be amused to see years worth of my occasional foibles compacted
into a few minutes of film.  (Some of you might say question
"occasional" in the last sentence).  

I rented the videotape from Movie Madness at 4320 SE Belmont (which
has an enormous collection of old movies), and then ordered a rare
used copy through Amazon.  Perhaps we can show it at an "Orcnet
Movie Night" sometime.  

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
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