Word: abacuses
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Laboratories paved the way for most of the sophisticated electronic marvels of the 1960s-most notably the miniaturized, high-speed computer. Now they may have done it again. A versatile new device conjured up by the wizards at Bell may eventually make current computers as old-fashioned as the abacus...
...historic intellectual creativity-it is basically apolitical. Its 391-page introduction includes sections on the history of Chinese art, literature, architecture, religion and philosophy, as well as an analysis of Maoism as a cultural phenomenon, a study of the organization of Chinese Communism, pieces on how to work an abacus and play Chinese chess, and an informed article on "The Principles of Chinese Gastronomy." Two other sections describe some 200 Chinese cities and towns and tell how to get around in them, give a series of practical hints to the traveler...
This month three school districts co operated in trying out the first pilot tests on 700 fourth-graders. The students were asked to read a clock, show the meaning of numbers by using colored rods or an abacus, pick similar pictures from a group of four. Later this year, up to 50,000 children and adults will be sampled. High school seniors may be asked to fill out a driver's license application, while adults may be quizzed about their reading habits and asked to demonstrate skills with simple tools...
...Britons take pen in hand to calculate which games, of some several dozen each Saturday, are most likely to end in ties. The sacred ritual can keep a devotee busy all week with form sheets and result charts, and some are known to resort to the sliderule, the abacus or even tea leaves. For a bet in the football pools is matched only by the Irish Sweepstakes as the gambling world's biggest play, bringing a lucky winner tax-free riches well worth a lifetime of concentrated, calculating devotion. A 43-man syndicate won $967,640 a year...
Reliable & Cool. From the simple abacus of ancient times down through the mechanical adding machine, man has for centuries moved toward the computer. As early as 1671 Gottfried Leibnitz sought unsuccessfully to invent a mechanical calculating machine. "It is unworthy of excellent men," he wrote, "to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation." In 1834 an eccentric Englishman named Charles Babbage conceived the idea of a steam-driven "Analytical Engine" that in many details anticipated the basic principles of modern computers. But not until 1944 did man invent the first true computer: the Mark I, developed by Harvard...