Word: blips
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Radar Beacons. The Civil Aeronautics Authority has tested and approved radar beacons for use on civilian airports. Most big airports already have surveillance radar beacons that display all airplanes in the vicinity as moving "blips" on their scopes, but when traffic is heavy, it is often hard to tell which blip stands for which airplane. The beacon system leaves no doubt. As each airplane comes into a control area, it is called by voice radio and assigned a "code pulse." Then the "transponder" carried by the plane answers when the beacon at the airport sends that particular code. Since...
Goose & Carrot. Life on America's radar line-the loo-odd Aircraft Control and Warning stations-is an unsettling mixture of utter monotony and utmost intensity. Although every operator knows that the next blip on his radarscope could be the herald of death, staring steadily into the electronic eye can be endlessly boring. Radar sites are usually remote and lonely. Permanent stations, costing $5,000,000 each to build and $500,000 yearly to run, are surprisingly elaborate. Example: "Mother Goose," a warning site about 65 miles east of Albuquerque, N. Mex., is set up to protect...
...Blip & Buzzer. Every day 25,000 aircraft, on the average, are flying over the U.S., and all are suspect until proved friendly. Every plane flying near target areas or over 4,000 ft. must file a flight plan; any deviation of ten miles or five minutes attracts jet interceptors...
...Heron's purpose is to find out by experiment how the brain behaves when deprived of fresh and varying stimulation from the senses. The problem is a practical one. Men watching radar screens on which nothing changes for hours often fail to see a strange blip when one appears. Many auto drivers are "hypnotized" into crackups by long hours behind the wheel on monotonous highways...
...William S. Richardson of the Oceanographic Institution will fly the new instrument over the iceberg infested Grand Banks in a Navy amphibian. When the radar looks down through the fog and picks up a blip that might be either ice or a boat, he will take its temperature. If it is too cold for a boat, he will report it to the Coast Guard...