Word: gadget
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...Wozniak, the new machine was simply a gadget to show his fellow computer buffs. Jobs, in contrast, saw the commercial potential of the machine that could help families do their personal finance or small businesses control inventories, and he urged that they form a company to market the computer. The two raised $1,300 to open a makeshift production line by selling Jobs' Volkswagen Micro Bus and Wozniak's Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator. Jobs, recalling a pleasant summer that he spent working in the orchards of Oregon, christened the new computer Apple...
Microwave ovens, made for home use since the mid-1950s but only truly popular in their newer, "safer" versions since the early 1970s, are seen by some experts as the coming gadget for the 1980s and beyond. Says Harvard's Masnick: "You can come home from work, take the chicken out of the freezer and have it on the dinner table in an hour." Also useful, says he, for houses where both spouses work, are security systems "to protect homes that stand empty...
...cream is American by right of conquest, however. George Washington owned a gadget for making ice cream. Thomas Jefferson loved it. An American woman named Nancy Johnson invented the hand-cranked, rock salt-and-ice freezer in 1846, although she neglected to patent the machine. Robert M. Green, a Philadelphia visionary, gave the world the ice-cream soda in 1874. The ice-cream cone was the hit of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 in St. Louis. Christian Nelson, an Iowa candy-store proprietor, thought up chocolate-covered ice cream in 1919 but got nowhere until Russell Stover...
Plugged-in writing is not a new phenomenon. In 1973 Hersey tried out electronic fiction writing in order to aid a Yale University computer project-and became an instant convert. But it took a while to get the gadget out of the institution and into the study. Once Carter was pictured composing his memoirs on the Lanier "No Problem," authors and others could easily imagine themselves at the console. Spurred by the new availability of word-processing programs for personal computers like Radio Shack, Apple and Atari, demand for home units has risen dramatically. Among the aficionados: Bestseller Luminaries Michael...
...parents are upset by the Craig Claiborne atmosphere in the home ec program. Under "equipment replacement," next year's budget lists $2,650 for such things as self-cleaning ovens and a microwave unit. "Microwave cooking is a new kitchen technology," argues one defender of the space-age gadget. Adds another: "With microwave ovens, the kids can cook up a meal and eat it, all in the same period.'1 "Phooey," sneers a middle-aged widow and mother of three. "The parents in this town just want high-priced baby-sitting systems for their children...