That was the year...
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CM was Launched in 1905; for our centenary year we're bringing you stories from years gone by. This week we're back in 1911 and 1961.
1911
1918 While the nation was gripped by strikes, Captain Robert
1919
Falcon Scott was trying to become the first person to the South Pole with disastrous consequences. The lost city of Machu Picchu was discovered in the Andes and the Wuchang Uprising led to the founding of the state of China.
1925 Perfidious Albion
1926
CM praised the publication of a booklet from truck manufacturer Albion which gave examples of how useful trucks were becoming to the nation:"We always regard with favour sound propaganda, which... show how commercial motors can do better work than horses, and at less cost... many of the principal arguments we have put forward for more than 10 years."
RDC queues In the section entitled Contributions from Drivers and Mechanics was a letter from one Puffing Billie of Kennington bemoaning "the waste of very much time" while loading in railway yards."' have spent two or three hours in these yards trying to get rid of two tons of goods and this has been entirely due to the bad traffic arrangements." Good to see we've made progress then...
Lovely rubbery cm's report of the Royal Show at Norwich included a conversation with Mr Edwin Foden and his colleague Mr Davies about the "remarkable results"that the company had using rubber tyres on three-ton steam wagons.-Its three-mner bids fair to improve on [the live] and no-one with any love of mechanics can be fail to be interested in this type of machine." Poetic isn't it?
1961
Counter-culture flourished with the publication of Joseph Heller's Catch-22.1BM completed the 7030 computer for scientists from the US Atomic Energy Commission, Soviet Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth, during a 1.8-hour mission in Vostok 1.
One for the future Ushering in the swinging '60s CM reported on the RHA's plan to shake up the road haulage industry to its very foundations. Its then chairman JB Mitchell outlined his plan: keep the cost to the public down; attract more skilful people into the industry; and save time (and space) through the quick turnaround of vehicles. He also moaned about 30mph speed limits.
Tunnel fun
Anticipating 40 years of internecine war about a big hole in the ground CMwas the forum for an increasingly bitter debate about the proposed Channel Tunnel. Leo D'Erlanger, the chairman of the Channel Tunnel Co,sought to put the case for the Chunnel, claiming it was the "most practical and economic method of Linking the United Kingdom with the Continent".
No smoking Even then the industry was becoming weighed down by regulations governing pollution from trucks. CM warned that new regulations designed to cut fumes from diesel engines were on the way from the government. Speaking in the Commons, MP Francis Noel-Baker asked: "Is it not about time the Minster took steps to do something about the problem of air pollution from motor vehicles?"