Word: beams
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...Detroit's main post office, a prototype of the scanner has already processed more than 500,000 pieces of mail. As many as 36,000 letters an hour can be fed into a conveyor system that carries them past a cathode-ray tube. The tube's scanning beam locates the last line of each address, converts it to electrical impulses that are recorded on an electronic version of a scratch pad. They are then read by a computer that recognizes city, state and ZIP code characters by comparing them with 6,000 combinations of standard characters...
...computer. In an experiment for the Defense Department, they tracked the payload of a Minuteman missile, took infra-red measurements of the plasma sheath of ionized air that was created when it plunged back into the atmosphere below them. Another experiment, communication with earth through a laser beam, was only partially successful. After several fruitless attempts, the astronauts spotted the blue-green beam from a laser-transmitting station in Hawaii, aimed their own beam toward it, but were unable to keep it in sight long enough for voice communications...
Only a few minor troubles marred the otherwise perfect flight. A fuel-cell warning light flashed on, but the cell itself appeared to be operating perfectly. The astronauts were unable to spot another light-a laser beam projected from a station in Hawaii-and thus could not conduct a planned laser voice-communications experiment. Astronaut Borman also sheepishly reported that a urine-sample bag had come apart in his hand...
...volunteers, all male FAA employees aged 30 to 55, all scientists. For a week they tested the subjects in Oklahoma City to determine base lines for pulse, blood pressure, breathing rate, urinalysis, flicker-fusion time (how fast a light can flicker before it appears to merge into a steady beam), perspiration from the palms (an index of emotional tension), and rectal temperature every two hours round the clock...
...itself marks the birth of Christ. But it is sometimes hard to remember in the weeks before. Instead, the chief big man seems to be that fellow Santa Claus, the patron saint of giving. Pillowed and pastyfaced, he chortles from a myriad of department-store thrones, and pasteboard likenesses beam from drugstore windows. Under his spell, the battle cry in thousands of U.S. homes becomes...