Word: gadget
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...blind may soon have an electrical gadget to help them get around without bumping into obstacles. The basic idea, now being worked on by the Army Signal Corps, is a small box shooting out a narrow beam of light. By turning the beam from side to side, the blind man can feel his way. When the beam hits a lamppost, a fence or any such obstacle, its light reflects back to a lens and is focused on a photoelectric cell. A gentle buzz in an earphone warns him that the obstacle is near. The blind man can tell its direction...
...dangerous that the entire apparatus must be enclosed in three-foot concrete walls-was completed a couple of years ago. Wartime security kept it hidden until last week. Even then, General Electric Co. did not tell quite all. But G.E. did give a fair description of how the great gadget works, and some broad hints about a few of the things that it will...
After giving such fascinating hints about the talents of its betatron, G.E. retreated again into silence. Obviously, a gadget which transmutes elements so handily has more than a nodding acquaintance with nuclear fission, science's most secluded subject...
...Brodie system" was designed for light liaison planes. The masts and cables would be hard for an enemy to spot from the air and could be set up quickly in tough terrain. In peacetime, the gadget may well prove useful in mountainous jungles or swampy country where clearing a landing strip is too difficult or too expensive...
Adapting radar to peacetime jobs was a tough reconversion problem. Chief obstacle: cost. A good ground-based set costs $75,000. Even a portable, airborne set ($4,000) has little future as a household gadget. Radar's first peacetime jobs will probably be in ship navigation* and on the airways...