Word: beeper
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...portable paging device about the size of a cigarette pack, the beeper is a mini-radio receiver that puts the person carrying it on instant call from of-ficerhome or anywhere else. Short-range protobeepers were used in hospitals in the early 1960s to summon doctors. Since then beepers have spread like electronic calculators-from some 33,500 in 1965 to an estimated 800,000 today, with production still growing at about 18% a year. About 500 U.S. companies now either manufacture beepers or operate beeper networks. In most systems, the caller dials a seven-digit number that feeds into...
...beepers' appeal must be partly credited to the status they bestow on the wearer. Salesmen visiting clients sometimes set theirs off manually, then announce they must leave to close a $10,000 deal. Says Chicago-based Airline Stewardess Sonja Lied: "When it goes off in a restaurant, people think I must be somebody very important." Still, the little boxes do have a knack for going off at the wrong moments: in church, at the symphony, in bed. Husbands, wives and lovers have been known to banish the gadgets from the bedroom. Could those little blurps and beeps...
...independent foundry company, President John Torley faces a frustrating dilemma. Says he: "The law says that in order to correct the noise problem, we are to supply earplugs or earmuffs, which we do. On the other hand, we have a lot of lift trucks that are required to have beeper alarms on them when they back up. And when you put earmuffs or earplugs on guys, they can't hear the beep, so you have an irreconcilable difference. The law doesn't tell you how to rationalize these things -they just tell you what you must...
...responses. Within seconds, all lights in the house are turned on. Forty seconds later, alarm bells start ringing in the house. Then the computer signals the main gatehouse with a high-frequency beeper, simultaneously printing out on a teletype machine the address and phone number of the endangered home, plus the exact time of the message...
...straight as an arrow with him," says Bryce Harlow, an ex-adviser to Richard Nixon who serves on Ford's kitchen cabinet. Adds another presidential aide: "Bob's the President's eyes and ears. It would be impossible to overemphasize his importance." Summoned by a beeper when needed by Ford, Hartmann finds that his duties have no clear boundaries. "My role is best described by that door over there," he says, nodding toward the portal that leads from his sparsely furnished office, once occupied by Rose Mary Woods, to the Oval Office a few paces away...