Word: fissioned
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...announcement that he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb was a decision that most U.S. citizens obviously approved, but about which none could be happy; driven by inexorable forces, the U.S. was setting out to make a weapon that would pale the deadliness of the atomic-fission bomb (see SCIENCE). As events had turned, it was essentially a defensive measure. The Russians could build and doubtless were building their own hydrogen bomb. If undeterred by threat of retaliation in kind, the Russians could deliver it by aircraft almost anywhere in the U.S.; by submarine, or in a sneak attack...
...many complicated jobs that the machines can do are beyond human capabilities. The International Business Machines Corp.'s big calculator, for instance, has completed in 103 hours a job (see cut) relating to uranium fission for Princeton University. The same job would have taken a flesh & blood operator more than 100 years. The time could not have been shortened by putting 100 operators to work, because each part of the problem had to be done in sequence...
...only two commands: yes or no-i.e., an electrical signal or no signal. So all information fed into the machines has to be predigested into yes-or-no binary arithmetic. Any number, however large, can be expressed in this form. So can elaborate equations like those from the fission problem done for Princeton by the I.B.M. machine. Even languages can be translated in binary numbers. (One way: making different numbers stand for each character, syllable or word.) Any sort of information, once the mathematicians go to work on it, can be broken down into...
...principle had been studied for years before the scientists bumped into the method of uranium fission. After the war the President had vetoed allout effort on an H-bomb because it was not worth the regimentation of the economy and enormous expense. But the Russian atomic explosion had drastically clipped the atomic lead upon which a great deal of U.S. security and strategy was based. A group of top scientists went to work on a new analysis. Their report: granted a huge concentration of effort, a guarantee of ironclad priorities and some two to four billion dollars, they could...
...Fission: "If 'twere done, 'tis well 'twere done quickly, ere some other power cheat us of the race...