A Letter From The Publisher, Aug. 29, 1960

IN the wake of a series of spectacular developments in the exploration of space (see SCIENCE and NATIONAL AFFAIRS), some 35,000 Western Electronic Manufacturers Association convention goers this week will file into the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and be greeted by a timely display of satellite replicas, ranging from the first Explorer to last week’s Discoverer capsule and the C-119 that snared it. They are not exact replicas, but models based on the fanciful drawings that graced TIME’S June 6 space cover.

Products of the orbiting imagination of Cover Artist Boris Artzybasheff, the drawings were spotted by the people arranging the 1960 Western Electronic Show and Convention, right at the time they were looking for a theme for the annual meeting. Donald C. Duncan, president of Duncan Electronics, Inc. of Santa Ana, Calif, and director of the 1960 Wescon, borrowed Artzybasheff’s original painting from TIME, commissioned Design Masters, a display-making firm in nearby San Gabriel, to see what they could do.

They did just fine. A staff of six devoted a full two months to the project, consulted occasionally with Artist Artzybasheff, and produced seven lively models—made of Styrofoam with a papier-maché; and plastic covering. The wide-eyed, camera-wielding Tiros caricature became a wonderfully evocative, 8-ft.-wide monster; and the nose on the 8-ft.-long Vanguard III would arouse the envy of even Los Angeles Neighbor Jimmy Durante.

When the electronic exhibitors arrived last week to set up the convention’s 987 booths, the reproduction that stole the show was the Discoverer capsule, about to plop into the waiting butterfly net of a C-119; it was the very morning of the Air Force’s first successful catch.

When Artist Artzybasheff was apprised of the stir his “clairvoyance” had created, he mused regretfully: “Oh, I forgot to put in those two Russian dogs, didn’t I?”