Word: gadget
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Another new gadget that does dead reckoning for aircraft is made by Ford Instrument Co. Simpler than the Ryan job, it estimates the effect of the wind in advance. Then it records the air speed and the course the airplane follows. It puts the whole thing together and figures out the airplane's position on a map. Average accuracy on a 1,000-mile flight: within about six miles...
Although Hiltner has yet to put his gadget on a telescope, he and his Yerkes colleagues are sure that it means a revolution in stargazing. At present, astronomers using the world's biggest (200 in., $6.5 million) telescope at Mt. Palomar, Calif, can record, i.e., photograph, galaxies 1 to 2 billion light-years away. With Hiltner's gadget boosting the light intake many times, astronomers may find aging galaxies even farther out and in richer detail than ever before, at a fraction ($180) of the huge costs involved in building bigger telescopes...
Behind the Trappings. For a Prussian prince, Wilhelm began life in 1859 with a crushing handicap. He was born with a crippled left arm and rapidly picked up the inferiority complex that went with it. He was afraid to ride, used a special knife-fork gadget at meals, and exercised his right arm relentlessly to make up for the weakness of the other. As if one physical handicap were not enough, he suffered from a "scrofulous" ear sickness that made a court physician advise an insurance company not to write a policy on his life. Later, many highly placed Germans...
...Robert Harrington gently strapped Jimmy into the harness of a gadget called the pneumograph. When he switched it on, Jimmy's breathing pattern showed up as two wildly irregular lines on the moving chart. Then Dr. Harrington fitted Jimmy into a chest respirator (which he is experimenting with as a substitute for the iron lung) and a positive-pressure breathing apparatus, both of which, working together, made Jimmy's breathing deeper and more regular...
...shooting the beam at one slot alongside the screen, he can turn the set on (and off): by aiming at a second slot, he can switch stations; by aiming at a third slot, he can turn off the sound. Cost about $75 more than conventional TV sets. But the gadget is more than a sales gimmick; because it makes a sport of knocking off the sound when the commercial comes on, Zenith has a new weapon in its fight...