By the end of 1976, both RCA’s SelectaVision and a N.V. Philips Co./MCA’s Disco-Vision, plan to market their video disc systems in the U.S.

Can current television sets be equipped to play recorded programs that could be purchased and stored like so many hi-fi discs? Manufacturers have been competing for a decade to be first to provide a practical answer. Trouble is, both videotapes and films are too expensive to produce for the mass…

In the fossil collection of the Dutch Teyler Museum, Yale Paleontologist John H. Ostrom spotted one musty specimen that turned out to be a far rarer prehistoric aviator: an Archaeopteryx.

Poking through the fossil collection of The Netherlands’ Teyler Museum in September, Yale Paleontologist John H. Ostrom spotted one musty specimen that looked odd to his trained eye. It was labeled pterosaur, a flying reptile that inhabited the earth from 65 to 200 million years ago. But when Ostrom held…

Kabouters, or Pixies, led by ex-provo leader Roel van Duijn, won several seats in city council elections throughout The Netherlands last week.

TIME was when food experts round the world regularly issued gloomy forecasts of impending famine and starvation for the earth’s exploding population. That rarely happens these days, thanks largely to the Green Revolution brought about by new, high-yield strains of wheat and rice. Thus, when 1,200 authorities wound up…

Rotterdam has completed the first phase of the world’s most sophisticated, fully automated, air-pollution-warning system, which will soon be nationwide. It consists of 31 electric “sniffers”.

Bombed to rubble in World War II, Rotterdam later became a marvel of economic growth. Holland’s second biggest city now boasts the world’s busiest port and a vast complex of petrochemical plants with blue-chip owners like Shell and British Petroleum. Unfortunately, the marvel also gushes appalling fumes — acrylates, hydrocarbons, paint…

Last week Dr. Jan Tinbergen, a longtime leader in econometrics, was finally given the ultimate honor, the first Nobel Prize in Economics.

Economists in recent years have become the most influential of all scholars, taking their place as fixtures in the chancelleries, banks and board rooms of the world. Last week two longtime leaders in this increasingly glamorous science were finally given the ultimate honor, the first Nobel Prize in Economics, the…

The casette, developed by Philips electrical manufacturer, has advantages over cartridges. New about cassettes is their use as a vehicle for commercially recorded music.

When the technique of tape recording was developed a quarter-century ago, it unreeled a whole new way of marketing recorded music. The best tapes had all the high fidelity of phonograph disks but none of their low resistance to wear and tear. The trouble was that they were cumbersome: wound…

Trans Europe Express was born of a desire to make travel truly pleasant, a brainchild of Frans Den Hollander, he succeeded in eliminating visa-checking delays at borders.

Sleek, high-speed aircraft may be the hallmark of 20th century transportation.

But in Western Europe these days, planes are getting increasing competition from the oldfashioned, earthbound railroad train. Across the Continent, a spreading network known as the Trans Europe Express is holding its own in the jet age — and teaching…

Dr. Maarten Schmidt, of Mt. Wilson and Palomar observatories and educated at Leiden University won the astronomy’s prestigious Helen B. Warner prize.

What is a quasar? Answers were almost as numerous as the astronomers who turned up at the Montreal meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. New theories about the nature of “quasi-stellar sources” have only generated new arguments; new observations have only enlarged the uncertainty. About all…

Dr. Fritz Zernike, 65, of Groningen, The Netherlands, won the Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of the phase contrast microscope.

This year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry went to Hermann Staudinger, 72, of Freiburg, West Germany, who is considered the father of the study of macro-molecules. When he started his work, many organic compounds were known to contain large groups of atoms, but these were considered mere mechanical clumpings of smaller…

Dutchborn Peter Debye, 68, Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist, author of the Debye theory of the specific heat of solids and succeeding Einstein as professor at Cornell, retired.

Each year, U.S. colleges and universities must say goodbye to many a famed and favorite teacher. Among 1952’s retirements:

Baylor’s A. Joseph (“Dr. A.”) Armstrong, 79, who at seven used to scribble on his school slate “A. Joseph Armstrong, prof, of Greek,” eventually became a professor of English and the…

Professor Cornelius Jan Bakker, a leading Dutch nuclear physicist, arrived at Huemul Island in Argentina, to audit on Ronald Richter, who had been arrested by Juan Perón.

The Argentine government made a cagily indirect answer last week to reports that Juan Perón had arrested Ronald Richter, his “atomic scientist” (TIME, May 28). Newspapers announced that Professor Richter and his laboratory associates would observe a national holiday by working 24 hours straight.

But Richter made no public…

A manager of Time returned from W. Europe: “The Netherlands is certainly on its way back, a token of Dutch enterprise is the really remarkable television set I saw at Philips of Eindhoven.”

William S. Honneus, advertising manager of TIME International, returned recently from an extensive business trip to Western Europe with a dossier full of firsthand observations of the European scene. The following excerpts from his personal account may serve to add another viewpoint to the excellent reports of the trained correspondents…

The old Stirling “air” engine (power from expanding hot air) was redesigned by the big and smart Philips electrical company at Eindhoven, in The Netherlands.

The old Stirling “air” engine (originally patented by Robert and James Stirling of Scotland in 1816) was born in the wrong century. Its principle (power from expanding hot air) was good, but the crude materials and engineering methods of the time made it too clumsy and inefficient to be widely…

A Java geologist, Dr. R. von Koenigswald of The Netherlands Indies Geological Survey, had dug up bones of prehistoric men bigger than the largest known apes.

There were giants in the earth in those days.—Genesis, VI, 4.

Genesis and many a folk tale notwithstanding, most anthropologists have pictured primitive man as a little fellow somewhere between an ape and a monkey in size. But last week evidence was offered to prove Genesis correct. A Java…

There were giants in the earth in those days.—Genesis, VI, 4.

Genesis and many a folk tale notwithstanding, most anthropologists have pictured primitive man as a little fellow somewhere between an ape and a monkey in size. But last week evidence was offered to prove Genesis correct. A Java…

An overview of countries with the largest broadcasting power. The Netherlands has two 60kw transmitters.

Top U.S. short-wave broadcasting power is the 40 kw. of General Electric Co.’s station W2XAF at South Schenectady and Westinghouse’s station W8XK at Saxonburg, Pa. But General Electric is building a 100 kw. transmitter to improve the service it sends on directional beam to South America. Germany lists its short-wave…