Word: alloy
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...been to Gutenberg. Equipped with a sufficient supply of metal letters, a printer could use and reuse them in any order required, running off not just handbills and brief documents but a theoretically infinite number of individual pages. There were technical obstacles to overcome, including the discovery of an alloy that would melt at low temperatures, so that it could be poured into letter molds, and of an ink that would crisply transfer impressions from metal to paper. And what force would be employed to make these impressions? Gutenberg hit upon the idea of adapting a wine press...
...start actually inserting the genes they want--perhaps even genes that have been crafted in a lab. Before the new millennium is many years old, parents may be going to fertility clinics and picking from a list of options the way car buyers order air conditioning and chrome-alloy wheels. "It's the ultimate shopping experience: designing your baby," says biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin, who is appalled by the prospect. "In a society used to cosmetic surgery and psychopharmacology, this is not a big step...
...Order in Europe and made a superpower of democratic, industrial America. It seemed obvious to many Americans that they were poised, collectively, to lead the world. And the future American, wrote a Jewish dramatist named Israel Zangwill in a play famously titled The Melting Pot, would be the supreme alloy of obstructive difference: "the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman...
...metal alloy in my knee is called kryptonite," Parker laughs. "So in hand-to-hand combat, I think I could take Superman...
Some 3.2 million school-age children--and growing numbers of adults--have their crooked teeth wired to grow straight. Orthodontists now use a nickel-titanium alloy, developed for the space program, to hold braces together. The new wire is more flexible and longer lasting than earlier materials, which means fewer office visits for adjustment and tightening...