Word: keyboard
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Before the performer, in the spot that would be occupied by a piano keyboard, is a cloth-covered fingerboard about three feet long and three inches wide. This is a rheostat. By pressing the finger on it at any given point, the player controls the amount of electricity that goes into the instrument's generator tube. Depending on the amount of current that goes into one of the grids of the tube, the vibration frequency which controls the pitch is changed up & down...
...changed from a vague resemblance to a child's coffin to a strong resemblance to an overcomplicated vacuum cleaner. Its 20-odd feet of wooden tubing are capable of emitting the lowest-sounds known to orchestral music-lower than any at the left end of a piano keyboard. To everybody but a contrabassoonist, its Stygian burps sound like abysmal Bronx cheers...
...theory known as "equal temperament" permits the tuning of a keyboard instrument so that it can be played in any key with equal facility. It was the inspiration for Johann Sebastian Bach's famous collection of 48 preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys: The Well-Tempered Clavichord...
...recent faculty dinner for Midshipmen, Don Higgins, the Iowan, had his friends impressed until he emerged from the keyboard and the player piano kept merrily on ... Chase Hall's Cast of Characters No. 2: James Devers. Devers halls from the city of brotherly love and has endeared himself to the men in his company one command by such tricks as bringing them to a smart attention, and shouting "April Fool" when the Professor didn't show ... Does anyone know why Gordon Johnson keeps a pigeon on his bureau? ... And if the swing rendition of taps on the ocarina...
...loops and trunk lines, usually involves several skilled operators and a number of complex connections. In the new system, an operator in the town where the call originates calls the number by dialing or punching keys on a new kind of switchboard. Instead of plugs, this has a numbered keyboard like an adding machine. The message goes to the mechanical brain, called a "marker," which hunts out an available trunk line, tests a path to the destination and electrically sets up all connections-all within one second. If all lines are busy, overflow calls are stacked up in a special...