Word: gadgeteers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...foreignness (he immigrated to the U.S. with his Greek parents when he was four); his lack of social status at Williams College, which he worked his way through as a fraternity-house waiter; and his lack of visible talent at the Yale Drama School. He acquired his nickname, Gadget (latterly Gadg), because the Group Theater people found him such a handy little guy to have around, "doing whatever I had to do to gain the tolerance, the friendship, and the protection of the authority figures in my life." He admits that it was this adaptability that led him to join...
...size of a cigarette pack that could easily be held near the lights. And the price was right: just $8.70 to buy a phototransistor, light-emitting diode, switch, casing and nine-volt battery. Ledoux sent the plans to Army officials, who asked to sample the actual device. The gadget proved popular with other test crews, and the Army estimates that its use will save an average of $6.3 million a year. Ledoux stands to gain $35,000 in incentive money...
Visitors to the lab, a sleek four-story maze of gadget-filled work areas, are assaulted by strange sights. In a 64-ft.-high atrium, 7-ft.-long computer- controlled blimps may be flying overhead -- part of a project to develop stimulating science activities for elementary and high schools. In another area visitors encounter computers that can read lips. After spending three months at M.I.T. last year, Stewart Brand, the counterculture guru who originated the Whole Earth Catalog, was impressed enough to write a flattering book titled The Media Lab, which will be published next month by Viking Press...
...principle, many private investors like to put their money into ventures they understand or industries in which they have unusual chances to spot a breakthrough product. Says Hugo Quackenbush, senior vice president of the Charles Schwab discount-brokerage firm: "Airline pilots, for example, may know some kind of gadget that is being made by a company that may escape the attention of the big guys on Wall Street...
Later, in April, scientists at Stanford and IBM announced that they had made thin films of the new substances, important for computer applications. The spotlight then shifted to IBM Researchers Robert Laibowitz and Roger Koch, who reported that they had made their own thin film into a working gadget called a SQUID (for superconducting quantum interference device). Such tools are already used in low-temperature versions to measure extremely faint magnetic fields. They are also employed by physicists in the search for elusive gravity waves and magnetic monopoles, predicted by some theories but not yet observed. Medical researchers use SQUIDs...