Word: beep
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Most of the racket comes from automobiles, and most automobiles are small Volkswagens, assembled in Sāo Paulo. The whine of their four-cylinder engines and the beep of their horns are, at least to Brazilian ears, disappointingly meek. As a result, manufacturers of install-it-yourself kits do a booming business in noisemakers. The beetles' mewling toot is replaced by full-throated klaxons that belt out bars of hard-rock music or soar into the oscillating wail of European ambulances. The VW's short-stroke engine remains untouched, but its exhaust is channeled through complicated "extractors...
...Beep. Tucked into a smoker's pocket or handbag, the small "Bellboy" paging device sounds. The smoker immediately stops whatever he is doing and lights up, interrupting his meal or stepping from his shower. A Pavlovian response? Posthypnotic suggestion? No. The smoker is so anxious to give up cigarettes that he is strictly following one of the newest and most unusual of the proliferating antismoking regimens...
Secure in the knowledge that he can always look forward to hearing another beep, the smoker can control himself between signals. But soon the friendly beeper - triggered by radio signals sent out by the telephone company - lets him down, slowly decreasing his consumption by four cigarettes each week. The decrease is so gradual that withdrawal symptoms are minimal...
...researchers plan to keep tabs on the participants to answer such questions as whether their beep technique can improve on the rather extravagant 75% to 80% "cure" rates claimed by promoters of other experimental methods. In any case, Tursky and Shapiro are confident that their technique has value, and hope to set up a program soon for dispensing the treatment more widely. Even if smokers have to use their beeper permanently, it should cost them substantially less than cigarettes...
...m.p.h. and up. American Motors executives announced production of 500 tricolor SC/ Ramblers -steamed-up versions of the family economy car-and then watched delightedly as a flood of orders obliged them to triple the total. Sales of Plymouth's 1969 Road Runner-available with the "beep, beep" horn of its cartoon namesake and a 425 h.p. "King Kong" engine-have so far totaled 40,000, up 94% over the equivalent period last year...