Word: gadget
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...missiles on an instantaneous search-and-destroy mission. To be sure, the LANTIRN program's price tag was $1 billion, but if it did what its designer, the Martin Marietta Corp. in Bethesda, Md., said it could do, it might have been worth the big bucks. Such a gadget would, for instance, have brought a speedy end to World War II's Battle of the Bulge, when three days of bad flying weather prevented Allied planes from rescuing outnumbered U.S. troops from the clutches of Hitler's panzer tanks...
...biological safety office is their monitoring of a special "P-3" lab constructed in 1977-78. The lab, which features specialized airflow and ventilation, access, and safety procedures is designed for work that is considered potentially hazardous and highly experimental. Safety measures also include a "negative air-pressure" gadget which, in the event of any mishap occurring during an experiment, sucks in the air in the labs to prevent it from leaking outside...
Principal Dale Johnson adapted the computerized tattletale from a similar device used by Sears, Roebuck to call customers. Some 50 school districts across the country have expressed interest in the gadget; the New York City and Chicago school systems recently purchased at least eight machines each. The $8,600 Telsols quickly earn their keep in schools that receive state funds on the basis of pupil attendance. Says Chicago Truant Officer Walter Bryant: "If we raise a district's attendance by nine students a day, we can pay for the machine in less than a year." Bryant believes that...
Lisa, of course, did not spring full blown from the mind of Jobs. Primitive hand controllers have been used with computers for nearly two decades, ever since Stanford Research Institute Scientist Douglas Engelbart built a scurrying table-top gadget in the mid-'60s nicknamed "the mouse." In the early 1970s, researchers at Xerox began improving on Engelbart's design, and soon after, computer experts at the company's Palo Alto research center began using a mouse in a computer language they called Smalltalk. By pointing and pressing buttons, they could send messages to and from objects...
...Meanwhile, Sony expects the Watchman to alter, or at least extend, any number of viewing habits. People can gaze at the gadget on the beach, carry it into stadium stands to catch instant replays, use it for soap-opera breaks while at school or work, or take it along on car trips. Predicts Warren Zorek, the manager of the consumer electronics department at Bloomingdale's in Manhattan: A color version should be on the way before too long, and it isn't farfetched to foresee hand-held video-game attachments and personal computer compatibility...