Word: processing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...equal terms, mathematics at the end of the 19th century was finally being shaped up. So-called formal systems were devised (the prime example being Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica) in which theorems, following strict rules of inference, sprout from axioms like limbs from a tree. This process of theorem sprouting had to start somewhere, and that is where the axioms came in: they were the primordial seeds, the Ur-theorems from which all others sprang...
...grossly overestimated our power. Shockley survived our insurrection, and when it failed, we felt we had to look elsewhere for jobs. In the process of searching, we became convinced that our best course was to set up our own company to complete Shockley's original goal--which he had abandoned by this time in favor of another semiconductor device he had also invented--to make a commercial silicon transistor...
...typewriter-like contraption capable somehow of scanning, or reading, instructions encoded on a tape of theoretically infinite length. As the scanner moved from one square of the tape to the next--responding to the sequential commands and modifying its mechanical response if so ordered--the output of such a process, Turing demonstrated, could replicate logical human thought...
...challenge of instant photography just after World War II. Until then, photographers had to develop their film and then print it on paper--or send it off to a professional lab--before they actually had a picture in hand. Land was convinced he could shortcut this laborious process by creating a camera that did all the work itself, and by 1947 he had done it. Instead of conventional film, the Polaroid Land Camera was loaded with photographic paper coated with a paste of light-sensitive chemicals. A mere 60 sec. after the photographer tripped the shutter, out popped a snapshot...
...University of Utah, which held the patent on the process, allowed it to lapse, and cold fusion fell from view. Pons and Fleischmann repaired to Europe to continue their work-- separately and quietly...