Word: gadget
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Harry S. Truman's office in the White House, gadget-poor by Roosevelt standards, grew richer by one plane model (of the presidential C-54), one gilded horseshoe (over the main door...
...which jettisons a sandbag whenever they begin to drop. Blown along by the prevailing easterly wind at some 125 m.p.h., the balloons reach the U.S. in an estimated 80 to 120 hours. When the last sandbag has dropped, Japs calculate, the balloon should have reached its goal. Another automatic gadget then starts it dropping, one by one; its load of incendiary bombs. When the last egg has been laid, a third automatic device (providing it works) permits the Jap balloon, in true Nipponese style, to blow itself...
...aircraft engineers, whose job nowadays consists mainly of finding ways to prevent the flying machine from over powering its human users, announced last week that they had found a solution to this little problem : a gadget which enables a pilot to control a heavy plane as easily as a child steers its bicycle. The device, called a "formation stick," has an arm rest and a pistol-gripped lever, which can be flicked in any direction by a finger touch. Electronics does the rest : the stick's motion is converted into an amplified electrical signal which operates the motors which...
...mighty gadget for aircraft, good in peace as well as war, was taken out of military wraps last week. It is an automatic navigation instrument that helps a flyer to know where he is at any instant, even in bad weather. The machine, officially known as the Air Position Indicator, but called "The Brain" by its makers, greatly reduces the amount of calculation a navigator needs to make...
...indicator efficiently, a navigator needs occasional glimpses of the ground or, over the sea, a celestial sight, for checking wind drift. But the gadget is sometimes surprisingly accurate by itself. In one test, a Bendix pilot took off at Boca Raton in weather that had grounded all air traffic and, flying solely by the indicator, without the use of radio and with only one brief glimpse of the ground, hit within six miles of his goal at Salina, Kans...