Word: byword
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...only a folk festival. The actors beneath their specially grown beards and long hair, are simple Bavarian villagers. The script is amateurishly florid. Yet the once-a-decade production of the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Germany, has long been a byword for Roman Catholic piety−and a major international tourist attraction. Ticket demands for this season's 98 performances exceed the supply by about 1,000,000. The 500,-000 or so visitors who will throng the area are expected to spend more than $10 million−enough to keep Oberammergau going through the next nine lean years...
...vending machines. But surely the telephones and, until the 1965 Northeastern blackout, the lights. Here mass production was born, the assembly line for good or ill became the modern cornucopia, and Henry Ford once reigned as the leading culture hero. Around the world American efficiency became a byword; at home it came close to being a religion, and wasted time was considered a sin. Only in America could it have occurred to that most idealistic of Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, to praise "clear, disinterested thinking and fearless action" by describing them as "spiritual efficiency...