Word: coining
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...early as the 6th century, in the sub-Sahara, Moorish merchants routinely traded salt ounce for ounce for gold. In Abyssinia, slabs of rock salt, called 'amôlés, became coin of the realm. Each one was about ten inches long and two inches thick. Cakes of salt were also used as money in other areas of central Africa...
Nolan Bushnell, 39 last week, is the inventor of Pong, a kind of electronic Ping Pong that was the first successful coin-operated video game. The son of a Clearfield, Utah, cement contractor, Bushnell had a passion for amateur radio as a boy (call letters: W7DUK). That led to his first business: repairing radios, television sets and washing machines. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah in 1968. While there, he toyed with computers. He came up with Pong in 1971 and started selling the coin-operated game...
...that year, Bushnell went into the business of making coin-operated games by founding Atari. (The name is a Japanese expression of warning.) Pong revolutionized the arcade business, then dominated by pinball machines. Bushnell, though, ran into a problem frequently suffered in start-up businesses: growth got out of control. The company lost heavily for several months on one popular product, Trak Ten. Explains Bushnell: "We thought we were making money hand over fist, but the machine was selling for $995 and costing $1,100 to build. We were shipping a $100 bill out the door with every unit...
...released without bail, to stay overnight in his home with him and his girlfriend. Now Friess has touched off another minor furor. Faced with a repeat offender in a pickpocket case, Friess proposed a novel way to set the sentence. He offered the defendant the chance to toss a coin: heads for 30 days, tails for 20. The coin came up tails. Friess's flip approach piqued the district attorney. But the judge would not budge...
DIED. Malcolm Moos, 65, versatile scholar and political scientist who, as President Dwight Eisenhower's chief speechwriter, helped to coin the expression "militaryindustrial complex" in Ike's farewell address; of an apparent heart attack; at Ten Mile Lake, Minn. A prolific author (Politics, Presidents and Coattails and The Republicans: A History of the Party), Moos served as president of the University of Minnesota during the 1960s...