Word: thumbtacks
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...shelf. So for seven minutes the audience delights in watching whirling tops of different colors and nationalities. A snow-flake top from India splits and becomes five tops spinning at once. There is no narration; a musical score anticipates the spinning function found even in a jack or thumbtack...
...effect of separating yourself from the earth mechanically and then letting go of the machine that was holding you away is almost exactly like the effect on a small thumbtack of the largest, most powerful magnet you've ever seen, at a fair or anywhere. You come screaming down to the ground at speeds that are constantly increasing themselves until they have you going much faster than you've ever known anything to move. And remember, when you started out, you, unlike the thumbtack, were not even so far away from what's pulling you in that you could...
Hayhanen, in his richly accented voice, detailed the life and times of a modern spy. He made his first contact with "Mark" (Abel's code name) merely by sticking a thumbtack into a sign in a Manhattan park, met Abel later at a prearranged rendezvous in a theater smoking room. From then on, Hayhanen, Abel and a few underlings passed information and money to one another by using a variety of Hitch-cocky gimmicks. The agents slipped their material into hollowed-out coins, flashlight batteries, pencils and bolts, left them in such courier drops as a lamppost, phone-booth...
...battery of this sort, no bigger than the head of a thumbtack, produces 20 microwatts of electricity, which is more than enough to run an electronic watch that Elgin is working on. It will also operate small transistor radios, and Elgin researchers believe that it will eventually be used in hearing aids. When worn in close contact with the human body, the battery must be enclosed in a metal shield that makes it as big as a cough drop (0.2 in. thick, 0.6 in. in diameter). For use in military guided missiles, the atomic battery has the important advantage...
Should he dislike a teacher-and he frequently does-he may put a thumbtack on her chair. "However, when he is resisting some task such as learning the complications of English grammar and strenuously feels that he 'won't need to know these in life,' he is only further upset by a teacher who agrees with him. At that very moment he is almost begging for authority, an authority that says . . . that there are certain things you have to do in life whether you like it or not." Thirteen is a man of conscience, and though there...