EVER so often a news story has such extensive ramifications that it spills over into several TIME departments. Project Argus, in which man for the first time spun a web of electrons around the whole world, was such a story and demonstrated that TIME'S editorial technique can as easily dissect an unwieldy mass of detail into manageable pieces as it can assemble scattered facts into a terse whole.

P: For the untold account of how Project Argus was hastily organized last summer to beat President Eisenhower's deadline for suspending nuclear tests, and the perilous and secret voyage of the Norton Sound around Cape Horn under forced draft to fire the rockets 300 miles into the sky over the South Atlantic, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, on the Voyage of the Norton Sound.

P: For the history of how one of the nation's most responsible journalists learned of Project Argus, kept the story under wraps for six months out of a sense of personal responsibility, and why and how he finally decided to break it. see PRESS, The Times & the Secret.

P: For the explanation, in diagrams and prose, of the scientific reasoning that led to the gigantic experiment. Science Editor Jonathan Norton Leonard describes the intricate mechanics of what happened as a shell of electrons enveloped the earth, explores what is known and not yet told of the scientific implications, and provides an intimate look at the remarkable self-taught physicist who conceived Project Argus. See SCIENCE, Veil Around the World and Up from the Elevator.

WHY, you dirty lyin' skunk," the man in the black hat snarled. "Reach for them plowhandles an' I'll blow ya in half--pocket-high!" Such scenes of life in the wild but carefully censored West are familiar to every watcher of Zworykin's magic lamp these days. But how many western fans or foes are aware of what goes on behind the scenes? Of horses that make more money than people, of the Hollywood horse operators who write a script a day. and of the Method cowboys? Who knows what agonies the hairy-chested prima donnas of horse opera suffer as they give birth to their roles? The riding, shooting, even walking lessons they must take; the continual risk of shooting off a sideburn? But the western story is not merely a tale that is told by television, full of sound and fury, signifying little. It traces back to a fantastically colorful period of U.S. history, the era when there was "no law west of Kansas City, and west of Fort Scott no God." For an account of the past and the present of a great folk legend, see the SHOW BUSINESS cover story, The Six-Gun Galahad.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.