Historical Planet

Thursday, 30 January 2020

Life before AutoCAD - Urban Designers in the 1950's

Tuesday, 28 January 2020

Bohdan Stefan Winiarski

Bohdan Winiarski was elected president of the International Court of Justice by his fourteen fellow judges on April 5, 1961. Bohdan Winiarski of Poland will continue to preside over the judicial arm of the United Nations until 1964. Winiarski has been a judge of the court since it became operative in 1946, succeeding the Permanent Court of International Justice of the League of Nations.

He was president of the Bank of Poland with the Polish government-in-exile during World War II. Before the war, he had done legal work with the League of Nations and had taught law at Poznan University. Bohdan Stefan Winiarski was born on April 27, 1884, at Bohdanowo. The palatinate of Bialystok, Poland, into a family of landed gentry and officials.

His parents were Stanislaw K. A. Winiarski, a forestry official, and Jadwiga (Mystkowska) Winiarski. After completing his secondary schooling in Lomza, he studied at the universities of Warsaw, Krakow, Paris, and Heidelberg. He received his doctorate in law in 1910. After lecturing for three years (1911-1914) at the Polish School of Political Science in Krakow.

He was called up by the Russian army, in which he served for two years (1915- 17). Secretary of the legal section of the Polish National Committee in Paris from 1917, he was a legal adviser to the Polish delegation at the Paris Peace Conference (1919-20). A member of the Polish delegations to many international conferences after World War I.

Winiarski became particularly involved in the work of the League of Nations, which emerged from the Paris Peace Conference. He was in the delegations to the first three assemblies of the League (1920, 1921, 1922). Winiarski was a member of the League's permanent commission un communications and transit from 1921 to 1927.

After that, he was vice-president of the commission from 1924 to 1926. He was also an assessor of the Permanent Court of International Justice, set up under the League, for communications and transit questions. A member of the international Oder River commission, he was a Polish agent at the court when the Oder dispute came before the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1929.

He was a professor at the Academy of International Law in The Hague in 1933 and became a member of the permanent Conference of Higher Studies there in 1936. Beginning in 1925, he was president of the League's committee on inland navigation law. Meanwhile Winiarski was active in both political and academic life in Poland.

Therefore, from 1924 to 1927 he was a member of the government commissary for the liquidation of German property. As a deputy in the Polish Diet (1928-1935), he opposed the Pilsudski regime. Beginning in 1921, he taught at Poznan University. He was a professor of public international law in the university's faculty of law beginning in 1922 and dean of the faculty of law from 1936 to 1939.

He was arrested by the Germans in September 1939, Winiarski was held as a hostage until November. Shortly thereafter he was interned with his family and his property was confiscated. Early in 1940 he escaped from Poland and offered his services to General Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile.

Winiarski was president of the London-based Bank of Poland from 1941 to 1946. So, he taught international law in the Polish faculty of law at Oxford University from 1944 to 1946. In 1944 and 1945 Winiarski was a member of the interallied committee that, under the chairmanship of Sir William Malkin. Where he was considered the future of the Permanent Court of International Justice.

The charter of the United Nations, signed at the United Nations Conference on International The organization, held in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, stated that "the International Court of Justice shall be the principal judicial organ of the United Nations."

Integral with the charter was a statute, based upon the statute of the old court, specifying the functions of the new one. Bohdan Winiarski was one of the fifteen judges elected to the International Court in February 1946. Election, as always, was by the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations, voting separately.

The Security Council and the General Assembly were then during their first meetings, held in London. Since his original term was only three years. Winiarski was re-elected to a the nine-year term on October 22, 1948. In the 1948 election, when there were forty-one candidates, Winiarski was elected in the General Assembly (where the the required absolute majority was thirty votes) on the fourth ballot and in the Security Council (where six votes were required) on the first ballot.

Bohdan Stefan Winiarski was again elected to a nine-year term in 1957. His fellow judges elected Winiarski president of the court on April 5, 1961, succeeding Green H. Hackworth of the United States. At the same time, Ricardo J. Alfaro of Panama was elected vice-president. Their terms are for three years.

As president, Winiarski takes precedence over the other court members but has no more power than they in voting on cases and expressing opinions. The International Court of Justice hears only cases in which the parties are states. It may also hand down advisory opinions.

Even though the effectiveness of the court has been seriously limited by the optional nature of its jurisdiction. So, by 1958 thirty-eight states had agreed to submit to the the judgment of the court all disputes about the interpretation of treaties, the application of international law, breaches of obligation, and damages payable for such breaches.

The prestige of the the court has been somewhat reduced by the fact that it does not exercise jurisdiction over any case that the United States chooses to consider a "domestic" matter. Since Winiarski took his seat on it in 1946, the the court has ruled in thirty-eight cases and issued eleven advisory opinions.

During 1950 it handed down several decisions to settle a dispute between the United States and France over the rights of United States citizens in Morocco. In the dispute between Great Britain (on behalf of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) and Iran in 1952, the court ruled that Iran was not violating any rights coming under the court's jurisdiction. Then the parties eventually came to an agreement between themselves.

In April 1960 the court handed down three decisions on a right-of-passage dispute between India and Portugal. Because Portugal had the right to transport civil officials, private persons, and ordinary goods across Indian territory to two Portuguese villages within India. It did not have the right to so transporting military forces and supplies. However, an Indian blockade had not violated the rights of passage legitimately belonging to Portugal.

Moreover, in 1960 the the court also settled an old border dispute between Honduras and Nicaragua with a decision favorable to Honduras and accepted by Nicaragua. In 1957, after seizing the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government pledged itself to keep the the international character of the canal according to the Convention of 1888.

They formally accepted as compulsory the jurisdiction of the court in all conflicting legal interpretations of the Convention and other treaties involving the canal. Besides settling disputes between nations, the court advises the General Assembly, the Security Council, or agencies of the United Nations on matters of international law or treaty interpretations.

A prolific writer on constitutional law, particularly in its historical aspects in Poland and France, Bohdan Winiarski has written even more extensively on international law, particularly as related to aviation, legitimate defense, com- N. V. Ziegler.

The communications, arbitration, disarmament, and inland navigation. Among his numerous books are Principes generaux du droit fluvial international, lectures on international river law given by Winiarski at the Academy of International Law in The Hague in 1933 and published in Paris in 1934.

That was part three of volume forty-five of the academy's “Recueil des cours” and Wybor irodel do nauki prawa miedzynarodoivego, published in Warsaw in 1938. Bohdan Winiarski married Wanda Markowska on April 5, 1913. They have one son, Maciej, and two daughters, Krystyna and Magdalena. Bohdan Stefan Winiarski died on 4 December 1969 in Poznan.

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Sunday, 26 January 2020

World's First Ever Airmail

The success of the aeroplane led quickly to the introduction of airmail. United States in the vanguard and on 17 February 1911, Fred Wiseman made the first official airmail flight.

He was carrying three letters between Petaluma and Santa Rosa California. However on the next day, the French pilot Henri Pequet carried 6,500 letters a distance of 13km from Allahbad to Naini in India. That same year, on September 9, the first scheduled airmail postal service was inaugurated between Hendon, North London and Windsor.

British Troops stationed in Germany after the First World War received mail by air. In the 1920’s the RAF was responsible for developing routes for airmail to the Middle East. The French airmail service Aerpostale was inaugurated in 1918 at the instigation of Pierre Latecoere, a military aircraft manufacture who had ambitions to expand into commercial aviation.

In September 1919, he launched a regular service, called simply ”La Ligne”, (The Line), between Toulouse and Morocco, which he gradually extended to Dakar in Senegal (then known as French West Africa). Among its early pilots was Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who later became famous for books such as Night Flight and Southern Mail, recounting his flying exploits, and his children’s Novella the Little Prince?

Conditions for long distance mail pilots were grueling they had to contend with engine failures, appalling weather and even attacks by hostile tribesmen. Some downed airmen were captured and held to ransom. The heroes of “The Line” endured such hardships guided by the service motto: the mail must get through!

One of famous pilot Antoine de Saint Exupery and Henri Guillaumet posed with an Aeropostale Latecoere-28 monoplane, mainstay of the French airmail service.

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One of famous pilot Antoine de Saint Exupery and Henri Guillaumet posed with an Aeropostale Latecoere-28 monoplane, mainstay of the French airmail service.

The World Takes Wing – The Adventure of Flight

The first intrepid aviators who lifted off in heavier than air machines were all too aware of the huge gulf between the urge to fly and the strenuous, dangerous business of keeping a plane aloft. But thanks to the risks they took in testing out new technology, aircraft quickly improved until they were safe and reliable enough to carry fare-paying passengers.

Instrument panels on the earliest aeroplanes were rudimentary in the extreme. To get their bearings and judge conditions as they flew, pilots simply kept their eyes peeled and looked around them. On clear, days using observation with the naked eye, it was relatively easy to tell if the plane was flying straight and level, and to judge manoeuvres involving climbing, descent and banking with reasonable accuracy. If pilots lost their way, all they needed to do was drop down low enough to pick up a railway line.

Then follow it to a station and read and large signs on the platforms. But the moment a plane flew into cloud, visibility disappeared and the risk of an accident increased dramatically.

Breakthrough in Aerial Navigation

When making his cross-channel flight in 1909, the only instrument and board Bleriot’s Type XI monoplane was a fuel gauge. But before long, cockpits began to fill with instruments that made flying a less haphazard affair. From 1941 onwards, most aircraft were equipped with an airspeed indicator, an altimeter, a rev counter a thermometer, a clock and a roller map. Radios were introduced very early on, but their usefulness was limited as aerials that would allow anything but very short range communication were too heavy.

The answer was a radio receiver and directional antenna linked to a dial to tell the pilot or navigator where incoming radio compasses were fitted with a small electric motor that kept the antenna turning constantly.

As night flying became more commonplace, well-used air routes were marked with beacons along their entire course. But again, this system only really worked in fair weather conditions.

The first airport serving London was at Croydon, which opened to commercial traffic in 1920. However, in 1933 to cater for the growth in air travel, the Air Ministry approved commercial flights from Gatwick. Heathrow was opened in 1946.

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Saturday, 18 January 2020

Oblique aerial view looking north-northwestwards of the island of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland, in August 1966,

Oblique aerial view looking north-northwestwards of the island of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland, in August 1966, showing the fishing town of Vestmannaeyjar, the east-west-trending harbor in the background, and the extinct volcano Helgafell rising to 741 ft in the right center of the island. On January 23, 1973, lava began to pour from a 0.9-mi north-northwest-trending fissure to the east (right) of Helgafell. Eldfell eventually grew to be similar in height to Helgafell, 0.6 mi to the northeast.

View on July 23, 1973, north across homes partially buried by tephra in the eastern part of Vestmannaeyjar. The lava flows loom in the background. Gases that are moving through the tephra rise from the house on the right. The houses were eventually exhumed and restored.

View on July 23, 1973, southeast from dock area in the northern part of Vestmannaeyjar toward edge of lava flow where it stopped against and between two fish-factory buildings. Two boys can be seen in the right background sweeping up the tephra. By July 1974 the lava had been completely removed and restoration of the factories had begun.

View on July 7, 1974, southeast from dock area in the northern part of Vestmannaeyjar after removal of lava flow which had stopped against and between two fish-factory buildings.

View to the south from Vestmannaeyjar's outer harbor on May 4, 1975. Seawater is being sprayed directly onto the lava flow front to arrest infilling of the harbor entrance.

A panoramic view east-southeast across the fishing port of Vestmannaeyjar on May 5, 1973. Dark, tephra-covered ground is apparent, with lava flows into the town and harbor in the left background.A panoramic view east-southeast across the fishing port of Vestmannaeyjar on May 5, 1973. Dark, tephra-covered ground is apparent, with lava flows into the town and harbor in the left background.

A panoramic view east-southeast across the fishing port of Vestmannaeyjar on May 5, 1973. Dark, tephra-covered ground is apparent, with lava flows into the town and harbor in the left background.

On May 4, 1973, workmen laid additional pipes to carry seawater up onto the lava flow front and tephra bulwark to cool and harden the still-flowing lava behind the chilled lava margin.

Oblique aerial view in early March 1973 of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. Steam rises from lava-cooling operations on land and from lava entering the sea (photo by Gudmundur Sigfússon. Courtesy of Sólarfilma).Oblique aerial view in early March 1973 of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. Steam rises from lava-cooling operations on land and from lava entering the sea (photo by Gudmundur Sigfússon. Courtesy of Sólarfilma).

Oblique aerial view in early March 1973 of Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. Steam rises from lava-cooling operations on land and from lava entering the sea (photo by Gudmundur Sigfússon. Courtesy of Sólarfilma).

View of Heimaey before the eruption: Town of Vestmannaeyjar with Helgafell in the right background (photo courtesy of Sólarfilma).View of Heimaey before the eruption: Town of Vestmannaeyjar with Helgafell in the right background (photo courtesy of Sólarfilma).

View of Heimaey before the eruption: Town of Vestmannaeyjar with Helgafell in the right background (photo courtesy of Sólarfilma).

View on July 23, 1973, looking north toward a house engulfed by the March lava flow on the eastern part of Vestmannaeyjar.

Friday, 17 January 2020

The Biography of Giovanni Buitoni

The head of the culinary empire comprising Buitoni pasta products and Perugina chocolates and confections is Giovanni Buitoni. The great-grandson of Giulia Buitoni, who started a small macaroni business in San Sepolcro, Italy in 1827. Although the company expanded steadily over the years under the direction of each generation of Buitonis.

It is Giovanni Buitoni is credited with building it into an international complex with pasta plants in Rome, San Sepolcro, Paris, and South Hackensack, New Jersey. A candy installation and a lithography plant in Perugia, Italy. Several American subsidiary corporations; and many retail stores.

Connected with the business for fifty-three years, he is chairman of the board of directors of the International Buitoni Perugina Organization in Rome. For years he has devoted much attention to his avocational interest in opera. He has studied operatic roles and sung as an amateur basso prolundo in Carnegie Hall.

He was born on November 6, 1891, in Perugia, Italy to Francesco and Maria Egiziaca (Marchettoni) Buitoni. Giovanni Buitoni represents the fourth generation of his line to have a hand in developing the family business. His great-grandmother, Giulia Buitoni, had established it in 1827 in San Sepolcro to provide a livelihood for herself and her sons in the face of her husband's illness.

She pawned her wedding jewels and started to produce macaroni with a few simple implements. Her son, Giovanni (1822-1901), expanded the business and concocted Pastina Glutinata, which eventually became a very popular food. His sons, Antonio and Francesco, opened new macaroni plants in Citta di Castello and Perugia, and Francesco formed S.p.a.

Perugina Cioccolato & Confetture, chocolate, and confection manufacturing company, in Perugia. The Giovanni Buitoni's brothers, Marco, Bruno, Luigi, and Giuseppe, head the San Sepolcro, Perugina, Rome, and Paris operations, respectively. Giovanni received excellent marks at the secondary school he attended in Perugia.

His extracurricular activities included fencing, swimming, horseback riding, and presiding over the Dante Alighieri Society. After his graduation in 1909, his father made him a trip to Germany, where Giovanni studied the German language and observed industrial operations. While in Germany he received news of the impending failure of the Perugina chocolate company.

Giovanni Buitoni 18 years old at that time, he asked his father for permission to become its general manager and try to build it up again. The permission was granted, and with the help of the candy-manufacturing Spagnoli family, Giovanni Buitoni enlarged staff of fifteen workers in a basement to hundreds of workers in a large factory.

Meanwhile, he attended the University of Perugia, which granted him a Doctor of Laws degree. He continued as general manager of Perugina until 1938 and was its president from 1938 to 1959. From 1927 to 1959 he also was president of the pasta concern in San Sepolcro.

Under his guidance, additional Buitoni pasta factories were established in Rome and Paris, as well as Stabilimento Polografico Buitoni, a lithography plant, in Perugia. Perugina chocolate retail stores, the first in Italy, were set up in major Italian cities. Buitoni was president of the Rome and Paris pasta factories and of the lithography plant from 1938 to 1959.

Giovanni Buitoni became intrigued with advertising before other Italian businessmen had given it much thought. In the early 1930's he hatched an advertising stunt, the first of its kind in Italy, which caught the public imagination and continues to be popular to this day.

The contest of the figurines, as it was called, required consumers to collect colorful numbered picture cards, one of which was found in each package of Buitoni and Perugina products. Those who held the most cards and those who amassed a complete set of figurines in numerical order won autos, motorcycles, phonographs, refrigerators, stoves, sewing machines, and other prizes that were desirable, particularly during the Depression.

Some figurines were rarer than others and wide bartering ensued; eventually, figurines were quoted like stocks and bonds on the business pages of newspapers. In 1939 Buitoni and his wife attended the thirtieth-anniversary celebration of the Hershey Chocolate Company in Pennsylvania as representatives of the Italian candy industry.

While in the United States they opened a Buitoni restaurant in the Italian building at the New York World's Fair and a Perugina store on Fifth Avenue. They had already given some thought to stay in America when the entry of Italy into World War II cut them off from their native country without funds or merchandise to start afresh.

Mrs. Buitoni pawned her jewels as Giulia Buitoni had once done, and she and her husband established a modest branch of the Buitoni business in Jersey City, New Jersey, followed by two popular Buitoni restaurants on Broadway. Customers, entering the restaurant through a turnstile, got all the spaghetti they could eat for twenty-five cents from a conveyor belt counter that rolled out straight from the kitchen.

Business prospered over the years and in 1952 a modern $2,000,000 plant was built in South Hackensack, New Jersey. A plaque in its entrance hall reads: "In fond memory of my beloved and unforgettable parents who taught me the religion of God and the religion of work, I dedicate this Buitoni enterprise in the New World. Giovanni Buitoni."

The South Hackensack installation manufactures the exclusive Buitoni line of enriched 20% protein spaghetti and macaroni whose starch content has been reduced; sauces, ravioli, spaghetti and meatballs, and other Italian specialties; and frozen macaroni products and grated cheeses. In 1956 Buitoni introduced frozen Italian foods to the Italian market.

It may seem like taking coals to Newcastle," he said, "but the modern housewife in Italy is as ready to find short cuts to food preparation as her American counterpart." Another innovation was the establishment of a dish-a-minute restaurant on Broadway near Times Square in 1962.

Cooked frozen Italian delicacies like ravioli, eggplant parmigiana, and bavette with lobster and shrimp are sent directly from the South Hackensack plant to the restaurant. Special ray ovens then defrost them in about one minute. The San Sepolcro factory produces macaroni, dietetic foods, biscuits, and baby foods.

While the Rome plant makes macaroni products in bulk and the Paris plant supplies the French market. Perugina chocolates and confections are sold in many countries, including Italy, where there are some sixty Perugina retail stores. The lithography plant in Perugia prints all literature and packaging material for the Perugina-Buitoni complex.

In 1953 Buitoni founded the International Buitoni Perugina Organization to co-ordinate all operations. He was the chairman of its board of directors, and the board chairman of the Rome, San Sepolcro, and Paris plants, the printing and Perugina factories, and Buitoni Foods New England, Inc., (Boston).

As president and chairman of the board of directors he heads Buitoni Foods Corporation in South Hackensack, Buitoni Delaware Valley, Inc., (Gloucester, New Jersey), Buitoni Foods West Coast, Inc., (Los Angeles), Buitoni Foods Northwest, Inc., (Oakland, California), Buitoni Foods of Florida, Inc., (Miami), Perugina Chocolates and Confections, Inc., (Mahwah, New Jersey), and Buitoni Perugina, Inc., (New York).

A man with a flair for administration, Buitoni served as mayor of Perugia from 1930 to 1935 There he is remembered for his insistence on using cement pipes in aqueducts where iron pipes, subject to rapid disintegration, had been used before. This reform is now required as standard practice by Italian law. Endowed with a fine basso voice, he has for years been interested in music, and in 1948 he began to study singing.

In November 1961 he realized a dream of long standing when he hired Carnegie Hall and the services of Anselmo Colzani and Licia Albanese for an evening. With them, he sang arias from Rigoletto, Ernani, and Don Giovanni. "As Don Juan," a New York Times (November 28, 1961) critic commented, "Mr. Buitoni made up for the lack of power in his singing with the ardor necessary in the role."

A Life magazine (December 8, 1961) the reporter wrote, "As a tribute to Verdi, pasta, and Walter Mittyism, it couldn't have been better." Buitoni speaks English, French, and German fluently and has a sound knowledge of classical Greek and of Latin. He has often contributed to charitable organizations and has been awarded the Italian Star of Solidarity for his efforts in promoting understanding between the United States and Italy.

He also holds the Unico national award and the Columbia University Casa Italiana award. He belongs to the New York Athletic Club and Tiro a Segno and is a cavaliere of Sts. Maurizio and Lazzaro and a Cavaliere del Lavoro. Giovanni Buitoni married Letizia Cairone, an opera singer, on October 22, 1936. A distinguished looking man with white hair and blue eyes, he stands six feet one inch tall and weighs 180 pounds.

Besides singing, his hobbies are playing the organ, swimming, and horseback riding. In I960 he bought twenty-nine acres of land in Paramus, New Jersey that, together with previously acquired land, gave him a forty-acre area in which to indulge in horseback riding. In 1966 he retired from the operational management of the Buitoni group.

As they were not blessed with children’s hence, his nephew, Marco Buitoni, succeeded him as president and chief operating officer. In Jan 1979, Giovanni Buitoni died in Rome. The business was couldn’t be handled by him, eventually sold to Nestle in 1985.

References N Y Times III p3 N 4 '51 Who's Who in Commerce and Industry (1961) Who's Who in Italy (1958)