Word: gadget
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Ruth Lawrence of Birmingham, Ala., was pretty quick with a sewing machine. But like other housewives, she found it slow going when she had to rip what she had sewn. With Merritt L. Walls, a gadget-minded ex-G.I, Mrs. Lawrence worked out the first needle that will quickly rip a seam by "unlocking" the bobbin stitch. When the Lawrence-Walls "ripper" was first demonstrated a month ago, Birmingham housewives bought 5,000 (at $1 each) in four hours. Last week the inventors granted exclusive manufacturing rights to the Oilman Corp. of Janesville, Wis., a subsidiary of Parker...
Professor Henry S. Dyer '28, Director of the Office of Tcats, has a wondrous machine. Exame go into a little slot, the machine grumbles, sputters, coughs, and hiccups out the tests completely corrected. During the current examination period Dyer's IBM gadget is grading Economics 1, Psychology 1, Social Relations 1a, Biology 1, and sections of nearly all language finals...
...comfortable, the machine must use 27 electrical circuits whose permutations & combinations offer 390,625 possible ways out of discomfort. The gadget is said by Psychiatrist Ashby to "think" because it quickly chooses the proper way, and soon becomes comfortable again, with all its magnets centered...
...hour window shopper can verbally order any item on display, have his name, address and phone number recorded on a tape inside. Next morning, store clerks transcribe the tape, recheck with customers by phone, and send out the orders. Kilgore, who plans to manufacture and lease the gadget, already has more than 300 orders for it from other stores...
...time is coming when an airliner can fly through the air (stormy) with the greatest of ease and land on an airport (fogbound) as if the day were clear. Last week the Civil Aeronautics Authority was busily installing "omniranges": the key gadget of the new navigation system. Two hundred and seventy of them are already in place. By early next summer there will be over 400, blanketing nearly...