Word: transistors
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...Transistor Breakthrough...
...well. There is no electricity along most of the northern coast, even in major towns like Cap Haitien. At night women sell their wares by the light of kerosene lanterns and candles. Because most Haitians are now so poor that they cannot even afford the batteries for their transistor radios, few actually heard the brief Creole-language spots aired last week by the American embassy on local radio, which warned listeners that "the U.S. is not a land with streets paved with gold...
...Basically this meant that the money was funneled through review boards manned by scientists, who gave it to researchers proposing projects considered worthy. The system led to quite a bit of waste and overlap, but it also produced a series of unparalleled triumphs, from conquering polio to creating the transistor...
...know for sure why the billion-dollar Mars Observer spacecraft permanently lost contact with NASA last August, just before it was to begin its surface-mapping mission. But an investigative panel has concluded that the problem was most likely a fuel leak and not, as first suspected, a faulty transistor. According to the theory, as the probe's fuel tanks were being pressurized for a final maneuver, the fuel ignited prematurely, blowing a hole in Observer and throwing it into an uncontrollable spin...
...incorporate the most advanced technology possible. Traditionally NASA has shied away from anything but thoroughly proven electronics and other devices, figuring that a single failure could endanger an entire satellite full of instruments. That is precisely what engineers think happened to the Mars Observer last summer, when a defective transistor evidently killed a $1 billion space probe. With only a few high-tech instruments per satellite, any failures would affect only a small piece of the program...