Word: sounded
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Toward the end of the 19th century scientists believed they were close to a complete description of the universe. They imagined that space was filled everywhere by a continuous medium called the ether. Light rays and radio signals were waves in this ether just as sound is pressure waves in air. All that was needed to complete the theory was careful measurements of the elastic properties of the ether; once they had those nailed down, everything else would fall into place...
...each such advance--by easing the transmission of data, whether by sound, print or image--only raised the chances of further advances. Via endless positive feedback, the technological infrastructure for a mature global brain was, in a sense, building itself. And so it had been, ever since the Middle Paleolithic: the story of humankind is faster and vaster data processing...
Other candidates for this honor soon abounded. Edison was working on a problem in telegraphy in 1877 when he noticed that a stylus drawn rapidly across the embossed symbols of the Morse code produced what he later described as "a light, musical, rhythmical sound, resembling human talk heard indistinctly." If it was possible, he reasoned, to "hear" dots and dashes, might not the human voice be reproduced in a similar manner? After much trial and error, Edison gathered a small group of witnesses and recited "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into a strange-looking contraption. The spectators were amazed...
...supervisor of his research teams, Edison amassed more than 1,000 patents, including one for the movie camera. That invention alone would have ensured his lasting renown, but it was only one of the many contributions Edison made to the now ubiquitous technological environment. He created the look and sound of contemporary life. He cared not at all about the fame and wealth he earned as long as he was allowed to get on with his work. He never lost the relentless desire to learn and to make things that had animated him as a boy. He remained the most...
...time as it proceeds, in its leisurely way, to solve the murder mystery that serves as its none-too-robust pacemaker. Readers in the millions took the book seriously because Guterson was so serious about it, though it did not hurt that his setting--an island in Puget Sound, before, during and immediately after World War II--was fresh and exotic...