Word: gadget
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...clever instrument that can tell the difference was the hit of an erudite conference that met at Venice to discuss new methods of archaeology. Called a proton magnetometer, the gadget is based on a principle of nuclear physics discovered only a few years ago. The nuclei of hydrogen atoms (protons) are, in effect, tiny magnets, and they line up like compass needles parallel to the earth's magnetic field. When nudged out of alignment, they oscillate for a few seconds, the speed of their oscillation changing with the local strength of the earth's magnetism. Buried objects that...
...Assembly building houses 450 Deputies in Byzantine comfort. Each man sits in a well-padded blue leather chair; on his desk is a row of white, green and red buttons linked to an enormous electronic vote-counting machine behind the speaker's platform. The only trouble with the gadget is that it does not work. Since opening day last fall, neither has Parliament...
...heart of the gadget is a TV picture tube shrunk to the size of a small flashlight. But for the person who straps it on his head, the Hughes Aircraft Company's "Electrocular" does a giant-sized job: it is as efficient as a pair of eyes in the back of the skull. A small, semi-transparent mirror projects in front of the wearer's right eye, reflecting whatever picture the TV tube presents. So close to the eye is the image that it looms large and clear, but Hughes engineers insist that a user quickly learns...
...mistake. Slightly bigger than three packs of cards, the missile whistle contains five electronic filters that make it deaf to everything except a combination of five different radio waves transmitted simultaneously on narrow frequency bands. The most complex electronic babble sounds like silence to a missile equipped with this gadget, but when the five-part signal comes, it picks it out of the racket and obeys its command. The five frequencies can be varied, giving millions of combinations, so each missile of a group can have, if necessary, its own drop-dead signal...
...precious data come from a 440-lb. satellite observatory launched last week from Cape Canaveral into an orbit averaging 355 miles high. The satellite, called OSO (for Orbiting Solar Observatory), is a gadget-lovers' dream, the most complex object launched into space so far. Yet at last report it was working perfectly...