Word: contour
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...every airplane passenger could see how much had already been done. The graceful contour strips and terraces of well-run U.S. farms were a lasting monument to Bennett. And the Bennett gospel was spreading fast to distant parts of the world...
...Bennett's experts would help the districts as "land doctors." In their kits they had a dazzling array of medicines. For gullies, they described cheap, home-made dams and new plants, such as kudzu vine, to hold the sliding soil. For hilly fields they prescribed novel methods of contour plowing, strip planting, terracing. For run-down soils, they recommended cover crops and suitable fertilizers. They would survey and test a whole district, then tell farmers how to make soil more productive...
...farmers had learned a few new tricks during the bumper years: they had planted shelter belts of trees, cultivated on the contour, tilled scientifically to stop wind erosion, and left soil-holding trash on their land. Drawing on ingenuity and junk piles, local blacksmiths had turned out terracing machines during the war. A reasonable rain or snow would nail down the soil for the year, and save the wheat...
Dubbed the "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" by their creator Mrs. Frances G. Lee of Littleton, New Hampshire, they correspond in their purpose to the Pitman forest models which show a New England hillside undergoing contour and seasonal changes. Each setting depicts the scene of the tragedy as it would appear just before the medical examiner or policeman might arrive. Accompanying the model is such information as a detective might have obtained by interrogation up to the time he walked in the door...
Actually, even with all the modern improvements and extensions of the pickaxe, oil drilling was a rather precarious venture until this discovery. Contour mapping and geological surveys of suspected petroleum areas have led to reasonably good results, but the tremendous investment required to drill an oil well made a miss really a mile. Leet predicted that his discovery would take a great deal of the gamble out of the oil business...