Word: digit
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...idea of a Baltimore adman, Lucky Number is based on a five-to-nine-digit master number which listeners must match up with the numbers on their Social Security cards, drivers' licenses or auto permits. By last week so many were scrambling for the $100 prizes that one Washington station was pumping out lucky numbers twelve times a day, and professional listeners were already popping up offering to keep tabs for anyone who was too busy to listen himself. The only check in sight seemed to be the Supreme Court, which is expected to hand down its decision...
...example, multiply a 16-digit number by another number just as long, subtract something from the product, square the result and add something to the square. From time to time it refers to tables of figures imbedded in its memory, selects the proper figure and includes it in its calculations. It remembers intermediate figures for a fraction of a second, uses them when needed, and then rubs them out like chalk marks on a blackboard. It does all these things and more, without mistakes, faster than a human being can jot down a single figure. When the machine is through...
Inner Memory. What can the Mark III do? For one thing, it can multiply two 16-digit numbers in a little more than twelve one-thousandths of a second. But this prodigious speed gives little idea of the machine's talents. Its strong point is its "inner memory." This "memory" consists of nine big aluminum cylinders revolving up to 7,200 r.p.m. Their surfaces are coated with black magnetic material. Huddled around them are staggered rows of little brass blocks enclosing electromagnets. When a brief electric impulse flashes through an electromagnet, it prints a dot of magnetism...
...illustrate the machine's speed, scientists at the Computation Laboratory say that Mark III can multiply two 16 digit numbers together over 1000 times faster than a man can even write down the 32 figures to be multiplied...
More than 4000 16-digit numbers, plus 4000 "commands" for carrying out the various operations of the machine, can be put on these nine drums. The drums revolve at speeds up to 120 revolutions per second and the magnetic spots move by the recording and play-back heads at speeds greater than 150 miles par hour...