Word: eyeful
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bella is still invisible, but now he is living in enforced leisure under the careful eye of Boumedienne's guards. The man Boumedienne regarded as an impossibly fuzzy-minded romantic who was leading Algeria to economic chaos is now 61 and, by all accounts, the very model of a prosperous bourgeois. Housed in comfortable, well-staffed villas, he is provided with every comfort. The amenities include French newspapers and the latest Georges Simenon detective stories, as well as at least one movie a week (his favorite, which he has seen eight times: a Jean Gabin-Sophia Loren film called...
...question to the computer will elicit repair instructions ?in future generations, repairs will be made automatically. Energy costs will be cut by a computerized device that will direct heat to living areas where it is needed, and turn it down where it is not; the device's ubiquitous eye, sensing where people are at all times, will similarly turn the lights on and off as needed...
...computer-equipped check-out line, all the clerk has to do is pass each item over a Cyclopean eye linked to a cash register and a scale. In a twinkling, the eye "reads" the striped UPC (Universal Product Code) symbol, by which the computer system identifies the product, brand name and other pertinent information about the item. (The store manager can program into the computer price changes for specials or daily fluctuations.) Then the computer prints out both the name of the item (say, one 4-oz. can of sliced French beans) and the price on the receipt list...
...miracle-chip brain of the check-out computer is amazingly versatile. If, for example, a customer buys two cans of tomato soup priced at two for 49?, the computer will charge 25? for the first can that crosses the eye. Then, no matter how many different items have been handled in between, when the second can passes across the eye, the computer-remembering the first-will charge only...
...item is not code-marked, or if the clerk mistakenly positions it so that the marking is on the upper surface (and thus invisible to the scanning eye), the computer signals that it has not charged for that merchandise; it will then be added manually to the bill by the check-out clerk. In handling produce that must be weighed, the computer reads the code on the plastic bag containing, say, a half-dozen Delicious apples, but delays ringing up the charge until the bag has been placed on the computer-connected check-out scale. Then, programmed with the price...