TIME CLOCK

FACING a slash in its budget, the Air Force is already pulling in its belt on noncombat planes. It canceled orders for 420 T36 trainers placed with Beech and Canadair, recalled 37 C-54 transports that it had leased to airlines. The Navy also canceled Temco Aircraft's "secondary source" contract for some 100 F3H-1 Demon jet fighters. McDonnell Aircraft, the primary supplier, was unaffected. Current backlog of all aircraft orders: $18 billion, enough to keep the industry busy for more than two years.

DESPITE higher VA and FHA interest rates, mortgage money remains short in many areas, particularly small cities. Only one in four cities under 25,000 has mortgage funds readily available. Construction figures are beginning to reflect the money shortage. In May, housing starts totaled 107,000 v. 110,000 in April, the first April-May decline since 1942.

RCA, which will soon apply for FCC approval of a compatible color television system, expects to get its first sets on the market within a year after an O.K., go into mass production within two years. Estimated price: 30% to 50% more than black & white sets. Other setmakers, however, are less sanguine. Said Philco's President William Balderston: "Mass production cannot be accomplished before 1956, if then. The lowest price at which [a] color set with a 14-inch picture can be put on the market will be approximately $800 to $1,000."

JOHN L. Lewis would be happy if he were invited to join the A.F.L.-C.I.O. unity talks. The two unions are putting no stumbling blocks in his way. In their noraid pact (TIME, June 8), almost every clause was framed with the idea that John L. could go along with it.

ELIMINATION of shipbuilding subsidies from the 1954 budget (TIME, June 15) has already thrown some shipyard work overseas. American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. is converting three freighters to combination tanker-ore carriers in Japan instead of in the U.S. Japanese bids for the job came to about half the lowest U.S. bid ($3,000,000 a ship).

DESPITE British pressure on oil purchasing nations, the National Iranian Oil Co. has signed 25 sales contracts with Italian, Dutch, Japanese, German, Indian and Pakistani companies. Iran expects to export 1,000,000 tons of oil this year. By next year, Iran hopes to boost its sales to 8,000,000 tons of crude and refined, to fetch $70 million.

BRITAIN'S A. V. Roe & Co., Ltd. is ready to build the Avro "Atlantic," world's first delta-wing airliner. A commercial version of the Vulcan four-jet bomber now in production, the 600-m.p.h. Atlantic would carry 90 to 115 passengers (sitting backward for greater safety in case of a crash). Estimated elapsed time from London to New York: 6 1/2 hours nonstop. With production contracts, Avro promises delivery in 1958.

TO snatch the ball-point-pen leadership from Frawley Chemical & Engineering's Paper-Mate, Atlanta's Scripto, Inc. is bringing out a new, lighter and better-balanced model for $1. Though competition is still fierce, ball-point penmakers have recovered from their recent slump. Last year's ball-point sales: 45 million, v. a mere 28 million conventional fountain pens.

WESTINGHOUSE signed an agreement with Rolls-Royce to exchange technical information over a period of ten years. First application: cooperative development of jet engines. Rolls had a similar agreement with Pratt & Whitney for output of the Nene, now out of production.

BOOK publishers are surprised at a new bestseller: How to Buy Stocks (Little, Brown; $2.95), a layman's guide written by Merrill Lynch Ad Manager Louis Engel, which has sold 25,000 copies. One timely reminder: "Over any long period of time--ten years, 20 years, 50 years--this book assumes that the market is bound to go up. Why? Because it always has."

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