Word: gadget
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Innocenti began mastering the intricacies of such quick-opening plays in 1935, when, still a plumber, he invented and patented a gadget for bolting vertical and horizontal sections of pipe together to form scaffolding. He made his first joints himself, soon had enough cash and orders to persuade bankers to back a factory. His factory turned out miles of pipe and thousands of joints for scaffolds, pontoon bridges, temporary grandstands. In World War II he switched from pipe to artillery shell production. At war's end he decided to turn his pipe into the framework of a motor scooter...
...gadget, which the Russians have demonstrated in both the U.S. and Europe, is an intricate but efficient machine, 5 in. long. Provided that the blood vessel to be rejoined has free ends about ¾ in. long, the machine grasps the ends, turns back a piece to make a cuff on each, then joins the cuffs with tantalum wire staples. The inside bore of the vessel is not reduced, permitting full blood flow. The surgeon can do the stapling in one minute...
...nonowners of a washer, TV set, refrigerator, etc., my family and I are free souls and glad of it. I suspect other struggling young college couples may join us in feeling decidedly smug towards the poor gadget-ridden middle class. I am beginning to firmly believe that poverty is bliss...
What this country needs is a pushbutton to end all pushbuttons−to send the whole mess into one junk heap. The gadget-drunk public is the dupe of a gigantic industrial swindle geared to the plan of speeding the necessity of replacement. No more mechanical junk shall cross my threshold. I'm off for the hills, behind old Dobbin...
Ideal Toy Corp. thundered into round-the-clock production with a sleek new $4.98 "Satellite Launcher/' complete with rotating radar tracking station, which can fire four plastic disks 75 ft. into space. Another gadget: a $7.98 "Sky Sweeper Truck." which beams searchlight silhouettes of jet planes against a wall, shoots them down with two "Nike" rockets. In seven days Ideal shipped out 100,000 Satellite Launchers, another 50,000 Sky Sweeper trucks. "This may be a propaganda blow to the U.S.," cried an Ideal executive...