Stephen,
Furthermore, in a paper Jed posted a few days back, there was a reference to a "thermonuclear fusion experiment" in Japan in 1933... Jed said he had no idea what this was in reference to... What, exactly, happened with fusion research, cold or hot, in the 1930's?
This was the heyday of lighter-than-air trans-Atlantic transport. i.e. the Zeps (non-Led). Helium was a USA monopoly then, a thousand times greater in the supply/demand equation than OPEC has the oil market gripped today (by the short hair comparison).
Even before the Hindenburg's fiery death, Helium was seen as the safest solution for LTA. Everybody else in the world was trying to "manufacture" it from deuterium (to give you an idea about how 'precious' it was in the 30s). The energy was incidental to the use as an LTA replacement. The USA essentially had all the helium - for whatever strange geological reason.
This curious historical situation is yet another aspect of time-based "relativity" ?
Jones
