Word: backwards
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...MAGNIFICENTLY PRESENTED AND MAGNIFICENTLY WRITTEN. IT MAKES ME ASHAMED OF BELONGING TO THE AGGREGATION OF HUMAN BEINGS NOW ALIVE. I WISH IT WERE POSSIBLE TO CRAM IT DOWN THE THROATS OF EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD DRAWING BREATH TODAY, AND MAKE THEM MEMORIZE IT UNTIL THEY COULD REPEAT IT BACKWARD...
...Alfred Mahan had preached that the U. S. should annex Hawaii and then defend it with a Big Navy. He declared that the Navy should not only follow but carry the U. S. dollar into world markets, that the U. S. like imperial Britain should take and govern backward peoples for their own good. A Big Navy he called "the handmaid of expansion...
Elektro is seven feet tall, weighs 260 Ibs., is clad in gleaming aluminum. He is operated by 48 electrical relays (circuits actuated by current variations in other circuits) which control his eleven motors by remote control. He can walk forward or backward, with a peculiar limp (only one leg bends at the knee and both huge feet are equipped with rollers). He can salute with either hand. He can count up to ten on his fingers, bending each finger individually. By means of photoelectric cells equipped with color filters, he can tell red from green. He can talk and sing...
...wording of a command are not delivered just right, Elektro may apparently disobey. In Pittsburgh last week the robot made nice publicity for himself by disobeying his master. His designer, Engineer J. M. Barnett, practicing signals for reporters, ordered him to raise one arm. Instead he started walking backward, kept on walking backward even when commanded to stop by the engineer, who grew a little excited-and still less careful of his phrasing. Elektro might have backed through a wall had not Robotmaster Barnett shut off his supply of electric power...
...Words that originally produce results have a lasting effect. Children specifically instructed to wind a toy "backward," for example, were more likely to do it correctly without instructions a week later. To this rule there was, however, a significant exception. Although a simple command had a more potent immediate effect than a verbose explanation, the effect of the explanation was more lasting. Thus the children who were confused by a teacher's discourse on the glass animals the first time, a week later were more likely to play with the animals and put them away voluntarily...