Word: chute
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...Chutes. As every student of World War II knows, sailplaning as a sport grew up in Germany. The Treaty of Versailles forbade Germans to build a powered air force, so future Luftwaffe pilots had to learn to fly in engineless craft. At first, they hedgehopped for short distances along the hillsides, depending on air currents deflected upward by the slopes to keep them aloft. But in 1921, gliding down a slope in the Rhon Mountains, a German airman noticed a flock of storks suddenly shooting upward more than 1,200 ft. without so much as flapping a wing. He turned...
...m.p.h. collision. To counteract such fraud, 32 leading firms have joined the American Seat Belt Council, which certifies that their belts will take a minimum 4,000 Ibs.' sudden pressure. Detroit has so far played it safe by ordering from such well-established firms as Irving Air Chute Co., Auto-Crat Manufacturing Co., General Tube Co. and American Safety Equipment Corp. Auto-Crat is so touchy about its public image that all its employees get free belts and must use them. "It would be embarrassing," says President Jim Robbins, "for a seat belt company employee to get hurt because...
...been killed. For the 1964 Olympics, an Austrian engineer named Paul Aste, 46, a onetime bobber himself, designed a narrower, 13-curve run in the Alpine resort of Igls, just above the Tyrolean capital of Innsbruck. Aste thought it might be a trifle slower than the slick Lake Placid chute, but far safer. He miscalculated on both counts...
...vacant "delivery alcove" and wait for the results. The computer will carry out the business of identifying itself, making the proper accounting entries in its own memory, and authorizing the charge against its mistress' universal checking account. In less than a minute the order slides down a chute, and the housewife brings home the electronic bacon. Dr. Mauchly, who invented some of the original big computers and has already built one the size of a suitcase, is working on the pocket monster...
...exciting cinema. Some of the comic relief from combat-a paratrooper who falls from the skies beside a little old lady on her way to the outhouse, another paratrooper who plummets kerplop into a well-is witty and welcome. Some scenes, such as those of paratroopers still in their chute harnesses swinging lifeless from the battle-scarred trees, have a note of almost Goyaesque poignancy. Most of the German side of the story is presented with style by Director Wicki (The Bridge...