Word: buttons
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Extremists of the air and push-button-war persuasion (like Major Alexander de Seversky) believed that all armies and navies had been made obsolete by air power. Chicago's Chancellor Robert Hutchins (see INTERNATIONAL) went Seversky one better: "The conventional reliances of the past-a large army, navy and air force-are obsolete. They find favor only in the nostalgic dreams of obsolescent generals and admirals...
...major collared me and yowled: "Button your jacket, soldier! Don't you know enough to salute?" Here was what I had been waiting for. What did I do? I buttoned my jacket. I saluted. I said "yessir," and told him I was a civilian. He said, "Humph...
These "intelligent bombs" are limited in scope and usefulness because they have no built-in source of power, are propelled only by the speed of the plane which launches them and by gravity. The rocket-propelled bomb for the push-button war was not yet ready for unveiling. There was nothing at Dayton as futuristic, even, as last year's German...
...other end of the scale of danger, General Electric's famed Dr. Irving Langmuir told a Senate committee that the Russians, in ten or 20 years, might be able to push a button and thereby destroy "not only our cities, but every man, woman and child in the United States...
...jerks some leather thongs strung across the body like a conductor's signal cord. The thongs are hard to wash, and the boys say that they soon begin to smell. The arm can be fitted with a pair of hooks with which, after much practice, a man can button himself up, tie shoelaces and lift up to 20 pounds...