NEITHER the Iron Curtain nor Czechoslovakia exist today, but back in 1966 91av was reporting from one behind the other. Deep in the cold war we covered a story from the former eastern bloc state. It seemed students learned languages more rapidly when “taught” by recordings in their sleep. The phenomenon even had a name – hypnopaedia. We reported on 24 February the case of two Soviet students who had acquired passable English in only 14 nights. Not surprisingly, there were sceptics, especially when it emerged the lessons conducted during sleep simply repeated what the students had heard while awake. V. Fried, a Czechoslovak lecturer in English, thought that “the amount of tuition the students received while they were awake plus their homework” easily accounted for their fluency. Still, it might have made teachers feel happier about sending their students to sleep.

More prospective pseudoscience appeared in our . Two hundred scientists had felt it necessary to rubbish astrology in the journal Humanist, prompting us to examine the work of Michel Gauquelin at his Paris-based Laboratory for the Study of Relationships between Cosmic and Psycho-Physiological Rhythms. Gauquelin had “amassed mountains of statistical evidence to prove that correlations do exist between planet positions and human activities”. We spluttered a bit, but concluded that his work had more scientific credibility than horoscopes or Uri Geller-style spoon-bending. We even suggested that such lab work would continue long after Geller and his like had been forgotten. Erm…

Fourteen years on, we showed we weren’t above dubious causal inferences of our own. In the 3 February 1990 issue our Feedback columnist apologised for any deficiencies in the magazine. Apparently “a window blew in on one of the top floors of the tower block in which 91av was based” and everyone had to be evacuated – an excuse as flimsy as that window frame.

LONDON was swinging and even 91av occasionally delved into affairs as far out as an early Pink Floyd concert. In our 6 January 1966 issue, we reported on “an abstract motion picture projector called Box 3”. It was created by artist John Healey and was being used in hospitals for its “psychological effects”. Apparently the box could “stimulate or soothe, beguile or inspire” using a non-repetitive, symmetrical, curving coloured pattern. It was proving particularly popular in the maternity ward of University College Hospital, London, where it induced “a state of quiet contentment” in expectant mothers. Well, it was 1966, but presumably even Timothy Leary, enthusiastic promoter of LSD, hadn’t expected maternity wards to be listening when he uttered his “Turn on, tune in, drop out” exhortation later that year.

There was another issue when we reviewed a book called Hallucinations. Although it mainly considered hallucinations prompted by psychiatric problems or neurophysiological issues, it also gave due regard to the perceptions of the drug-addled mind. Enthusiasts of psychedelia would particularly enjoy the illustration of “associative changes claimed for complex images induced by tetrahydrocannabinol”.

In our 6 January 1990 issue, we bust open still more doors of perception. Some people who experienced “lucid dreams” were helping researchers discover more about sleeping brains. Lucid dreaming, we explained, is the state of being asleep but aware you are dreaming. Some dreamers were so adept that they could count to 10 within their dream while signalling to the (awake) researchers the start and end of the count. We also suggested that such dreams might link to the Box 3-style fruitloopery of the 1960s in the form of an out-of-this-world prog rock staple. Alleged UFO abductions, we speculated, might be the result of lucid dreaming.

To delve more into the 91av archives, go to

This article appeared in print under the headline “What was 91av talking about in Januaries past?”

Looking back through the decades, it’s clear that beer flows freely whenever we put out our festive special issues – there are barrels of the stuff everywhere. Last year (19/26 December 2015) we even brewed our own – the scientific way, of course.

It was all about esters and diacetyl “rests” and cold fermentation. But did our Pilsner taste better than that of a Czech master brewer? Here were some of the descriptions: “vinegary, bready and unpleasant” and “bitter fizz”. Actually, that’s a little unfair, that was the uncontrolled fermentation. A second batch, brewed when we kept the pesky chemicals under control, proved very popular. And what did we call it? Why, “Brew Scientist” of course.

In the early 1990s we weren’t interested so much in how our beer tasted as whether we could see through it. US brewers were starting to produce beers that were as clear as sparkling mineral water, and we explained how they were doing it. But it’s fair to say that a lot of people weren’t particularly impressed with their efforts. In our 25 December 1993/1 January 1994 issue we quoted Steve Cox of UK real ale defenders CAMRA as saying, “It’s a bit like brewing beer that’s pink, or pork flavoured – you could do it, but is it any good? It seems an entirely pointless thing to do.”

In 2000 we spared a thought for thirsty and beer-deprived astronauts. Our 23/30 December issue noted that the European Space Agency had beaten NASA to the vital technology for dispensing beer in space. There was no need for a beer mat, or even a glass: the dispenser poured out globules of just the right size to be caught in the mouth or attacked with a straw and sucked up. As far as we know, though, no one has yet got falling-over drunk in free fall.

This article appeared in print under the headline “What was 91av talking about in Decembers past?”

START as you mean to go on. That’s a pretty fair assessment of our first 60 years. On , this magazine’s very first edition hit the news stands, and today 91av is still living up to its promise, made in that first issue, to inform and entertain “all those men and women who are interested in scientific discovery and its industrial, commercial and social consequences”. In the spirit of the post-war age, we also pledged to hunt for revelations that could “have a direct and vital application to the happiness of us all”. 91av has diversified hugely since then, especially since the advent of the digital age, but we’d like to think we still hold true to the values we expressed at our birth.

We were certainly trying our best in 1983, when issue discussed one of the earliest projects to generate what is now called renewable energy. A barrage across the Severn estuary on the UK’s west coast could provide as much energy as a second nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk in eastern England, we explained. The barrage “would last 120 years, or four times as long as a pressurised water reactor”. Passions were running high in the 1980s over the dangers of nuclear power (as pictured above), but our ethical enthusiasm was fruitless. Sizewell B was built; the barrage was not. But the issues thrown up are still arousing passions today, as witnessed by further arguments in favour of using tidal power in the Severn and debate over the UK government’s recent go-ahead for the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant in Somerset.

There was better news in 2002. Our 16 November issue reported that coffee may ward off diabetes – happiness on two scores. We suggested that as long as you washed down your diabetes-causing doughnuts with “at least seven cups of coffee a day”, you were only “half as likely to succumb” to the disease. Presumably the trade-off was insomnia and high blood pressure. Perhaps that’s one of the social consequences we were envisaging back in 1956?

This article appeared in print under the headline “What was 91av talking about in Novembers past?”

, exhibition, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC

“THERE are hull breaches on decks 4, 5 and 11, Captain, the starboard nacelle is ruptured along its length, and the bridge has taken a devil of a pounding!” Those lines could come from any episode in any Star Trek series, as a stricken USS Enterprise fights destruction. Except the nacelle is venting wood chips, not plasma. And it’s not phaser damage – it’s paint peeling from the saucer section.

That’s because this Enterprise is a 3.5-metre long, 90-kilogram model built 50 years ago for the original series of Star Trek. In an age when computer-generated imagery is synonymous with science fiction, this spaceship is rather quaintly made of wood.

“That was pretty much it,” says Margaret Weitekamp, lead space curator and cultural historian at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s new Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall in Washington DC. “That and plexiglass, vacuformed plastic and a good paint job. If you wanted a spaceship on TV, you had to build it and film it.”

The Enterprise, designed by second world war pilot Matt Jefferies, broke SF rules, with “no flying saucers, no pointy rockets,” says Weitekamp.”He used ‘aircraft logic’: what do the parts do? These are engines, this is the bridge… it has to seem like you’ve thought through what it would require.”

The model’s bridge was on top of the saucer with its curved corridors, engineering was beneath, between the engines. Jefferies left another legacy: Jefferies tubes. These connecting tunnels in the engineering system allowed crew to crawl through the ship’s innards and make vital repairs or hide from invading Romulans.

Over the years, the museum has shown the spaceship periodically, mostly hanging up. This took its toll on a model built for a studio: it started to sag. The engine pods spread apart, the nacelles tipped backward under their own weight, and paint cracked as wood expanded and contracted with heat and moisture.

Up close and worried

Restoring the original (built by modeller Richard Dayton) worried Weitekamp: “When you got up close, you saw all the flaws where they hammered in plexiglass. Some bits were burned, some unfinished and unpolished.”

The model was repaired within two years, in time for the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek on 8 September. Weitekamp stopped worrying: “We’ve done so much,” she says. The new version also updates the lights with LEDs. And painters who worked on the Star Trek franchise, John Goodson, Bill George and Kim Smith, add their own value. “Goodson is fascinated by burn marks, by char, by rust. He transfers that appearance of wear and tear to models.”

Tellingly, the Enterprise is the only fictional artefact in the hall, something Weitekamp is very conscious about. She wanted “a nod” to SF, especially to Star Trek and the Trekkie phenomenon, which drove fan conventions, Klingon language and culture, film reinventions – and more. This plays to two of the museum’s big themes: imagination and inspiration. “Star Trek inspired today’s astronauts as Flash Gordon inspired Apollo astronauts,” says Weitekamp.

Art imitates life imitates space travel. Engage…

This article appeared in print under the headline “The Enterprise reloaded”