Word: 1940s
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
U.C.L.A. Professor of Computer Science Gerald Estrin, who helped to develop the computer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in the 1940s, says: "The computers provide an intensely visual, multisensory learning experience that can take a youngster in a matter of a few months to a level he might never reach without it, and certainly would not reach in less than many, many years of study by conventional methods." Notes from the classroom...
...loom, alas, never wove anything. By the time the eccentric genius died in 1871, he had managed to put together just a few small parts; only his elaborate drawings provide a clue to his visionary machine. Indeed, when Harvard and IBM scientists rediscovered Babbage's work in the 1940s while they were building a pioneering electromechanical digital computer called Mark I, they were astonished by his foresight. Said the team leader, Howard Aiken: "If Babbage had lived 75 years later, I would have been...
...some associates even thought he was a potential Secretary of State. One of the New Deal's bright young men, he worked briefly for the Agriculture Department and the Nye committee, which was investigating the arms manufacturers of World War I, and then joined the State Department. In the 1940s he rose almost effortlessly as a protege of Secretary Edward Stettinius and his deputy, Dean Acheson, serving as an adviser to Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta conference and as Secretary-General of the founding convention of the United Nations. In 1947, at age 42, he became president of the prestigious...
...politics has been the most bothersome bottleneck in the development of China's oil. Before the Communists came to power in the late 1940s, little oil exploration had been conducted in China. In the '50s, Russian experts helped in tapping several big finds, but in 1960 they pulled out, leaving the barely experienced Chinese on their own. Their departure coincided with the conclusion of Mao's Great Leap Forward, which was intended to initiate the masses into the discipline and skills required in an industrial society. The consequence: a huge stumble backward that hurt China...
...booze isn't bootleg any more, but the Cotton Club is as jazzy as ever. Harlem's celebrated nightspot, which closed in the 1940s, reopened its doors last week. Cavorting together in the new digs were Duke Ellington's granddaughter, Mercedes Ellington and Cab Calloway, 70, who used to Hi-dee-ho at the club in the '30s. "Just another gig," shrugged Calloway, who does about 150 a year and has just recorded a disco version of his 1931 hit Minnie the Moocher. "I live good. I don't indulge in anything other than...