Word: gadget
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Commercial Control. A gadget to protect radio listeners from commercials was put on sale by Los Angeles' Gray Development Corp. The gadget plugs in at the radio's electric outlet and has a ten-foot cord leading to two pushbuttons. When the armchair listener hears a singing commercial which he would rather avoid, he presses button No. 1; the radio is cut off for 15 seconds. For a straight spiel, he pushes button No. 2, silencing the radio for 60 seconds. (The time interval can be adjusted.) Sales the first week: 1,000. Price...
...airline radar" developed by Electronician Dave Evans of the Hughes Aircraft Co. aims to accomplish only one thing: "terrain avoidance" (keeping the plane from hitting a hill). Many an airplane passenger, fidgeting in the overcast and wondering where the nearest "terrain" is lurking, will feel that this new gadget is worth the 15 Ibs. of dead weight and $400 installed cost...
...show what his gadget can do, President Howard Hughes of Hughes Aircraft loaded a Lockheed Constellation last week with newsmen and headed out over the Pacific near Los Angeles. He flew west until he was opposite the steep mountains beyond Santa Monica, which have reached for many an airplane through California fog. Turning inland, Hughes flew the plane directly toward the highest peak. The bell rang and the light flashed as soon as the radar "cat's whiskers" brushed the rising ground...
...sometimes acts as his Seeing Eye at sports events, Bob mulls over the week's sport pages. Then he talks to local athletes over the telephone. Paul copies out the studio script on a typewriter while Allman punches out his own script on a Braille slate, a gadget that resembles a cribbage board...
...been for years, with opportunity ads (Get into Radio, Learn Massage at Home, etc.) and bulging with the biceps of the bodybuilders. But editorially PSM had been vastly slicked up by hefty Editor (since 1945) Perry Githens. Githens had sharpened the magazine's words-&-pictures technique, shoved the gadget and how-to-do-it sections toward the back of the book. Says Githens: "Science is now everybody's business. We're not as lofty as the long-hair journals, but we're a lot more readable...