Word: fractionating
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that feed back into themselves reports of how they are doing, and correct themselves if necessary. But most businessmen lump under automation all automatic machines and processes, including the giant tools that follow directions punched on a tape, huge computers that make thousands of intricate mathematical calculations in a fraction of a second, gauges that check fractions of a hairbreadth with a tiny beam of light...
...violation of the rules. In the "Flying Mile"* for passenger cars, for instance, officials had to disqualify four of Mauri Rose's fastest Chevvies because their fan belts just happened to break loose, a quadruple coincidence that allowed the cars to make their runs without wasting the fraction of power used to turn radiator fans and generators...
...Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Pardoe pointed out that for years the Lancashire textile trade has been calling itself "depressed," and screaming for government protection from foreign competition. The fact was, Pardoe said, that the average dividend of 62 leading spinning concerns last year was a whacking 23.4%-only a fraction less than 1954, when dividends were at a 3O-year peak. "Some slump," said Harry Pardoe sardonically...
...machines get more complicated, quick-acting and violent, they are more prone to self-destruction if something goes wrong. Some nuclear reactors, for instance, can turn into radioactive junk in a fraction of a second. To avoid such misadventures, most modern mechanical and electronic systems are equipped with built-in monitors that watch their operation and shut them down promptly at the first sign of trouble. But if a vacuum tube or relay in the monitor fails, the main machine is like a building whose night watchman has dropped dead. Trouble can start and get out of hand with...
...shows he is proudest of: an evocation of the love poems of Emily Dickinson, a ripsnorting Moby Dick, a song-and-dance recreation of The Ballad of John Brown. Camera Three is so far above the class of most commercial evening shows that with only a fraction of the money squandered on some of them it could probably outclass itself...