The Price of Information Not Acted Upon has recommended major work on many airplanes to reduce the danger from old wires. However, the problem of air in fuel Sir:
tanks had been solved in the time-frame of 1948 to 1950 in a letter-to-the-editor in either Mechanix Illustrated or Popular Information is here to be used. In an earlier Letter to the Mechanix, I remember. That writer's suggestion was to intro-Editor (JASIS, 35:1, 1984, p. 56), I commented that scientific duce an inert gas into the tank to displace the oxygen. The information was being lost because computer searches were not mechanism the writer postulated for introducing the gas was being made back far enough in the literature to pick up signifiinfeasible, but the solution was eminently feasible if the gas cant references. Now, I would like to broaden the scope of this were introduced as the fuel was expended. With modern sensors concept of lost information, or at least information which is not and actuators circa 1970 and later, the gas could be introduced acted upon, to include instances of more general import above properly. The information by then had fallen off the end of the and beyond just scientific literature. I am doing this to motivate databases or had never been considered seriously because of its the study of this information phenomenon by those concerned source. ''Crackpot'' ideas in popularized media are not given with the information sciences and with the art of using informathe credence they deserve as real information. tion. The information is either lost or in limbo, not acted upon.
One could look for technical, psychological, and financial My thesis is that much resource is wasted by failure to use motivations for the delays in using information. It would be information when it becomes available. I shall limit my discususeful if the Society could work on using information from sion to one timely piece of information.
sources less than archival, as well as on amassing it and analyz-The explosion of TWA Flight 800 has been officially asing information in an archival sense. cribed to ignition of fuel vapors in the almost-empty center fuel tank of the Boeing 747. In this scenario, the fuel vapors mixed with air in the tank to achieve a combustible mixture. The