Word: foams
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...object of all this enthusiasm is a 40-lb. slab of foam-filled polyethylene, 12 ft. long and shaped like a surfboard, but with a sail attached. Such a wind-surfing board will support up to 400 Ibs. The craft was invented twelve years ago when two young Californians, Hoyle Schweitzer, a surfer, and Jim Drake, a sailor, one day began arguing the merits and problems of their respective passions. Surfing, Schweitzer complained, was too dependent on wave conditions; sailing, Drake sighed, was tied to wind conditions and required a time-consuming ritual of rigging the boat. So they retired...
...craft's appeal is obvious. Windsurf boards cost considerably less and are more portable and easier to maintain than most sailboats. They are as safe as surfboards: since the foam-filled board stops dead and floats when a sailor drops his mast in the water, the Coast Guard has exempted the craft from its usual life-vest requirement. Many lifeguards, in fact, are using the boards as lifesaving and rescue crafts...
...enthusiasts opt for style over speed, combining tail dips and pirouettes in a kind of elegant water ballet. In Hawaii, super wind-surfers specialize in "wave jumps": they sail directly into a wave, up the crest and over, becoming airborne for a few seconds as they shoot through the foam into calm water beyond. Indeed, wind-surfers can do anything surfers or sailors can on their vessels, almost. Says Craig Roberton of Clearwater: "This sport has only one flaw. There's no way to hold onto a beer on a sailboat like that...
...before Columbia or any of the three other orbiters that Rockwell International is building for NASA can undertake such projects, major problems must be overcome. One difficulty: finishing the laborious job of affixing 40,000 or so silica foam tiles to the orbiter's outer skin. These shield it from the blazing temperatures (nearly 3,000° F) that the ship will encounter when it re-enters the atmosphere and glides to a landing at either the Kennedy Space Center or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A more serious difficulty: ironing the bugs out of the shuttle...
...President William Donnelly: "Thirty percent is the magic number that made regular TV a mass medium and that later made color matter to advertisers." After reaching that point, cable would have a potential for further fast expansion. By industry count, TV cables (made of copper wire wrapped in plastic foam and an outer layer of aluminum) have been strung past just about half of all the TV homes in the U.S. Cable operators could multiply their audience overnight at minimum expense if someone in each of those homes would pick up the phone and order a hookup. Though most viewers...