Word: gadgets
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...that will be only the beginning. If Max Sherover has his way, no U.S. household will be complete without his latest invention: the "Readie" (pronounced reedy). This is a gadget to let people read without turning a page. Books will be printed on long tapes, run through a machine. The strips will be adjustable to the reader's normal eye-speed. Maybe even Readies will be too much trouble for lazy readers. If so, Sherover would have a voice ("Why not Lowell Thomas?") fill the room, reading aloud...
...Comes Out Clear. The air newspapers of Miami and Philadelphia were no immediate threat to opposition papers, because nobody had found how to make them pay. The gadget was not yet a threat to the peace & quiet of the home, because a receiver still cost $600 to $900. But time and mass production might take care of all that; the big news about "fax" was that, technically, the bugs were pretty well worked out of it. Editors still had a lot to learn about type and makeup for an 8½ in. by 11 in. page. But the sheets turned...
...gadget that gave him most delight was a radio transmitter no bigger than a pocket tobacco can. Commerce Secretary Harriman sent it over to the White House, along with the information that its electronic components were offshoots of top-secret experimentation during World War II. It was christened the "walkie-no-back-talkie." With his transmitter, Harry Truman, under the duly registered call name "Independence," could broadcast to anyone within a range of 200 feet. His message could be received by any standard receiver tuned to 6575 kilocycles...
...cyclotron's up-to-date design will probably make it more powerful than its bigger (4,000-ton) rival at Berkeley, Calif. Columbia's physicists believe that their new gadget will smash not only atoms, but also the basic particles (protons, neutrons, etc.) of which atoms are made...
...Then gadget-minded Bob invented a weapon to help him in his never ending battle to keep the mesquite trees from crowding out the grass on the range. This was a "tree dozer," an oversize tractor with a steel hand to snatch out mesquite. He supplemented this with a "rooter plow" that lifted up a strip of land, killed the mesquite roots and dropped it back with the grass undisturbed. He then turned his hand to grass. Bob's father had brought in South African Rhodes grass. Bob took seed from the best plants, and perfected the strain. Later...