Word: clocks
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Line. On the opening day of Congress last week, Humphrey told Assistant Simms: "Be sure to brief me on protocol. I'm liable to start sliding down the bannisters." In the Senate chamber, he spotted his family sitting in the gallery, just to the right of the clock. When it came time for Senator Arthur Vandenberg to swear in Humphrey, 14th in line, Humphrey's father leaned forward, dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. "He's going to be a great Senator," the father said afterward. "Maybe he's going to be something else...
Miss de la Roche lives on a quiet Toronto street in a red brick house shaded by poplar trees. There at 9 o'clock every working morning, with a writing pad on her knees, she scribbles out her story. By noon, as much as 1,000 words are written and ready to be transcribed by a secretary. Then Mazo, accompanied by her poodle, Chrysanthemum, goes for a long-striding walk before lunch...
...they are vibrating at the right speed. If they vibrate too fast or too slow, an electronic device retunes the transmitter and makes the waves vibrate at the exact frequency that is absorbed most strongly. Thus the waves, regulated by the ammonia molecules as the escapement of a clock is regulated by its pendulum, keep to a steady beat. Hitched to a "frequency divider," they measure time accurately in ordinary minutes and seconds...
...this principle the Bureau of Standards has constructed an "atomic clock" that has nothing to do with the erratic earth. The present model is accurate to one part in 10 million. An improved model, the Bureau thinks, should be accurate to one part in 100 million; it would vary one second in about three years. This is better than the earth, whose revolutions vary, from one day to another, by one part in 20 to 30 million...
Some sentimentalists may be sorry to see the earth discarded as a timekeeper. But there are consolations. If the world's official time is kept by the atom clock, the length of the day, in atomic hours, will increase as the motion of the earth slows down. Eventually man will enjoy a 25-hour day. This will happen, according to some calculations, in about 1,800,000 centuries...