Time Clock, Aug. 15, 1960

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TURNTABLE WAR revives as Columbia Records began issuing three-minute pop "singles" (in recent years available only on 45 r.p.m.'s) in 33⅓speed. Capitol, ABC Paramount, Argo and London record firms will soon follow because of declining pop-singles sales. Lone holdout in drive to make 33s standard for industry: RCA Victor, which pioneered 45s.

WORLD'S TALLEST HOTEL, 50 stories high, will be built in midtown Manhattan by Loew's Theaters, Inc. To be named the Americana West, new hotel will open in 1962 with 2,000 luxury rooms, a 30,000-sq.-ft. exhibition hall. It will cost $45 million, join Loew's Americana East, for which ground has been broken across town.

SCOTCH DRINKERS will down 10 million cases a year in the U.S. by 1965, if present trend continues. Consumption last year hit more than 7,000,000 cases, up from 3,000,000 in 1949.

VOLUNTARY PAY CUT will be taken by workers at financially ailing Pittsburgh Steel Co., 14th largest U.S. steel company. Union agreed to reduction that will eventually save company 15¢ per man-hour in incentive-pay costs.

FOREIGN PENCILS are cutting U.S. wooden pencil industry down to "peril point," argued Lead Pencil Manufacturers Assn. before U.S. Tariff Commission. They claim that export market has almost vanished and imports are grinding away at domestic profits.

THIRD STOCK MARKET in Manhattan, formed by 400 members of New York Mercantile Exchange (commodity futures), will be set up if SEC approves. Listed companies on the new National Stock Exchange must have net worth of $1,000,000, at least 500 stockholders, 150,000 outstanding shares.