Word: beams
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...blind may soon have an electrical gadget to help them get around without bumping into obstacles. The basic idea, now being worked on by the Army Signal Corps, is a small box shooting out a narrow beam of light. By turning the beam from side to side, the blind man can feel his way. When the beam hits a lamppost, a fence or any such obstacle, its light reflects back to a lens and is focused on a photoelectric cell. A gentle buzz in an earphone warns him that the obstacle is near. The blind man can tell its direction...
...shines through thick steel castings as if they were made of ice. But it will do other, even more interesting things. A silver half-dollar, for instance, held briefly in its beam, becomes dangerously radioactive. The rays knock neutrons out of silver atoms, turning them into an unstable silver isotope, which breaks down into cadmium, giving off powerful streams of electrons. Some silver, too, is turned into palladium, while some of the copper in the coin's alloy is turned into atoms of nickel.* The betatron is controlled from a neighboring room...
From the Iowa, anchored in Sagami Bay, TIME Correspondent John Walker radioed: "Off our port beam we saw the vast bulk of the holy mountain, Fuji, almost concealed in a wreath of clouds which could have been a mourning robe of traditional Japanese white - the color of death." The advance guard of airborne invaders landed at Atsugi; their transports disgorged aviation engineers, jeeps, gasoline, rations, radios, to prepare for the grand entry of the 11th Airborne Division and of MacArthur himself. Between Atsugi and the fleet was the Emperor's seaside palace at Hayama, destined to be MacArthur...
...problems-and one of the most fascinating sidelights on the great supergadget-was how to tell whether detected planes or ships were friendly or hostile. It was solved by an ingenious instrument called I.F.F. ("Identification, Friend or Foe"). When an I.F.F.-equipped plane is hit by a friendly radar beam, the instrument automatically flashes back a coded identifying signal...
...ground level, a radar beam is scattered by ground irregularities. For this reason, contrary to Sunday-supplement predictions, it is not practical as an anticollision device on autos or railroads...