Word: gadgets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...gadget, which the Russians have demonstrated in both the U.S. and Europe, is an intricate but efficient machine, 5 in. long. Provided that the blood vessel to be rejoined has free ends about ¾ in. long, the machine grasps the ends, turns back a piece to make a cuff on each, then joins the cuffs with tantalum wire staples. The inside bore of the vessel is not reduced, permitting full blood flow. The surgeon can do the stapling in one minute...
...nonowners of a washer, TV set, refrigerator, etc., my family and I are free souls and glad of it. I suspect other struggling young college couples may join us in feeling decidedly smug towards the poor gadget-ridden middle class. I am beginning to firmly believe that poverty is bliss...
What this country needs is a pushbutton to end all pushbuttons−to send the whole mess into one junk heap. The gadget-drunk public is the dupe of a gigantic industrial swindle geared to the plan of speeding the necessity of replacement. No more mechanical junk shall cross my threshold. I'm off for the hills, behind old Dobbin...
Atmosphere of Delusion. In addition to this departmentalization "was a growing attitude of worship of the gadget." The new computing machines worked at such dazzling speeds that they tended to assume more importance than the ideas fed into them. As projects grew and machines multiplied, "the ideal of the great original scientist [gave] way largely to that of the scientific administrator who is more concerned to parcel out his effort and to keep his machines, staff and ideas busy than to develop his concepts...
Ideal Toy Corp. thundered into round-the-clock production with a sleek new $4.98 "Satellite Launcher/' complete with rotating radar tracking station, which can fire four plastic disks 75 ft. into space. Another gadget: a $7.98 "Sky Sweeper Truck." which beams searchlight silhouettes of jet planes against a wall, shoots them down with two "Nike" rockets. In seven days Ideal shipped out 100,000 Satellite Launchers, another 50,000 Sky Sweeper trucks. "This may be a propaganda blow to the U.S.," cried an Ideal executive...