Word: fluidic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Despite these shortcomings, many U.S. companies have established fluidics divisions. They are spending millions of dollars annually on fluidics research and development and will sell an estimated $30 million worth of fluidic products this year. One pioneering firm, Maryland's Bowles Engineering Corp., works entirely on the development of fluidic technology and systems. Appliance makers are developing washing machines and dishwashers with fluidic controls. Detroit auto manufacturers are considering a number of fluidic devices such as fluid amplifiers for gas turbine engines. Mattel Inc. is developing fluidic-controlled toys that will respond to sound, and General Time Corp...
Computers & Rockets. Scientists have devised countless ways to make use of the controlled output of fluidic circuits. A fluidic guidance system can control the course of a torpedo by shooting out jets of gas or sucking in water. This distorts the surrounding boundary layer of water, changes its frictional effects and causes the torpedo to turn. In a rocket flying through the atmosphere, the control jets of a fluidic stabilization system are attached to vents in the rocket's nose cone. As the attitude of the rocket be gins to change, the nose vents gulp in air at different...
...assembly-line conveyor belt, moving parts momentarily interrupt strategically placed jets of air shooting across the belt. The interrupted air jets, connected to the control jets of a fluidic circuit, cause power streams to flow and stop, opening and closing valves. The valves in turn activate automated pneumatic machines that process the passing parts...
Toys & Toothbrushes. Though the first promising fluidic circuits were developed only seven years ago, at what is now the Army's Harry Diamond Laboratories in Washington, scientists are fast catching up with electronic technology. They have already produced fluidic oscillators, memory and logic circuits, and have devised fluid versions of resistors and capacitors. They have also learned to etch fluid channels into small blocks of metal and plastic, producing fluidic versions of electronic integrated circuits [TIME, Sept. 2]. Though they are still no match in size for the microscopically small electronic I.C.s, several compact fluidic circuits...
...work "that has already been done, many fluidics problems remain. Scientists still do not fully understand some fluid-flow phenomena; fluidic circuits are still relatively cumbersome and are generally more expensive than their electronic counterparts. In addition, the speed of fluidic devices is limited by the maximum velocity of a pressure wave through the fluid-which is the relatively slow speed of sound. This places them at a distinct disadvantage in competition with electronic computers, which are limited in speed only by their size and the velocity of an electrical impulse-the speed of light...