Word: microprocessor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Shrime's company, Micro Star, next month will begin offering the paperback-size instrument in both a plastic case ($400) and a brass one ($700). To use the device, travelers press a button to enter the name of the city they are visiting. A built-in microprocessor then does virtually all the rest. Shrime, a Lebanese Christian, spent two years designing the guide after consulting with Middle East Islamic leaders. The device has legions of potential customers: Islam counts more than 500 million followers...
Last April the large computer was replaced with a microprocessor, the size of a Sony Walkman, that he wears on his belt. Columpus, 52, who now works as a counselor to the deaf in San Diego, has regained 70% of his understanding of the spoken word, although in groups he can decipher only one voice at a time. He can hear music played on a single instrument; orchestral sounds are garbled. This wedding of the computer to the hearing aid is the work of Kolff Medical, Inc., the makers of the artificial heart that was implanted in the late Barney...
Ineraid duplicates this function. A tiny microphone, worn around the ear, is connected to a microprocessor, which turns sound waves into electrical impulses and feeds them through the implanted wires into the auditory nerve. Six of the wires are implanted in those areas of the cochlea that would normally transmit different frequencies, from high to low. The remaining two wires are grounded to muscle tissue to complete the electrical circuit. Says Parkin: "It's like taking the cochlea outside the head and putting it on your belt...
Even well-established computer makers are being forced to copy IBM. In September, Hewlett-Packard (1982 sales: $4.2 billion) introduced an office computer built around the same microprocessor that the PC uses and employing the same operating system. "It's the first time we've conformed to an industry standard," says Cyril Yansouni, general manager of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company...
...comes a new book that promises to help owners integrate computers into their lives intellectually, emotionally and practically: Electronic Life (Knopf; 211 pages; $12.95). Author Michael Crichton is no self-anointed microprocessor guru but the Harvard Medical School graduate turned bestselling author (The Andromeda Strain) and movie director (Coma, The Great Train Robbery). It turns out that Crichton is also a computer expert of sorts. He wrote his senior thesis at Harvard in 1963 on a mainframe and has since created a computer adventure game and designed software programs for cost analysis and shooting-schedule planning in the movie business...