Word: gimmick
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...even though its play was less than brilliant. Now the chess ability of the reprogrammed chip is high enough to make any parlor wood-pusher loosen his collar and roll up his sleeves, and it is the machine's distinctly machine-like speech that is the dazzling gimmick. Turn the doodad on, and it says, dropping each word like a cinder block, "I- am- Fidelity's - Chess - Challenger - your -computer - opponent." The speech is by no means as friendly and natural sounding as Speak & Spell's, but it is meant to intimidate adults, not encourage children...
...English Village (Atheneurm; $7.95) is totally mute. Still, John S. Goodall's watercolors are eloquent enough to carry the progress of a British town from medieval beginnings to its present state. In other hands, the use of half pages overlaid on full ones might be a gimmick. But Goodall's visual narrative is so controlled, and his costumes and customs so accurate, that history assumes a personality. Moving by lively steps, it arranges hemlines and coats, advances from midwives to doctors, from town criers to village schools, to the ambiguous benefits of buses and telephones. No other Christmas...
Granted, show business folk have every right to politick. And politicians are entitled to use every self-serving gimmick that the law allows. Still, given the American tendency to worship stars, one may wonder whether eventually show business might be too casually accepted as an appropriate training ground for political leadership. The question is pertinent even if California's election of Actor George Murphy as a U.S. Senator is shrugged off as a typical West Coast aberration...
Zzzzzzzzzra is actually Bill Holland, a 59-year-old painting contractor who uses his telephone name as an advertising gimmick, telling potential customers to look him up in the back of the book in stead of handing out business cards. The listing yields jobs, but it also brings a few zingers: Holland has received crank calls in the middle of the night from as far away as Australia. And his phone bill often totals over $400. "People making illegal calls from phone booths look up the last name in the book and charge them to me," he explains...
Westinghouse and the Equitable Life Assurance Society have introduced an intriguing salary gimmick: they are giving their workers the choice of taking their annual raises in a single lump sum as soon as the increases are granted, rather than having them parceled out in paychecks through the year. Employees like this option because it allows them to use their raises to buy big-ticket items like cars, color TVs and refrigerators sooner rather than later, when they may cost more. But some employers fear that the practice of giving lump-sum raises, if it were to spread, might fan inflation...