Word: gnat
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...When the waves hit the ground, a small part of their energy is reflected back to the transmitter. If the transmitter is moving, as in an airplane, the frequency of the waves is changed slightly by the Doppler effect.*The amount of the change, which can be measured with gnat-hair accuracy, gives the speed of the airplane...
Gently as a gnat touching meringue, a blue-and-silver three-seat helicopter last week eased down onto a yellow marker on the White House lawn. Correspondents duly noted the executive mansion's, first helicopter landing.* But the practice descent marked something else as well. Air Pioneer Dwight Eisenhower was the first President to use a light plane (the twin-engined Aero-Commander 560) in short hops, e.g., to and from his Gettysburg farm. Now Ike is ready to employ the air age's newest child in civil-defense evacuation and in flights of convenience over Washington...
...called him, belonged to an age of posturing geniuses and aesthetes (Burne-Jones, the Rossettis, Swinburne, Whistler, Oscar Wilde), was one of them but not one with them. With a few deft strokes of his caricaturist's drawing pen, he could put the lucubrations of a giant into gnat's perspective and keep the world itself in polite proportion. Wilde once remarked that he possessed the rare "gift of eternal old age." Despite his renown, Beerbohm remained a refugee not only from his talents ("My gifts are small, but I've used them discreetly and the result...
After Britain's New Statesman and Nation waggishly caricatured her in drawing and word ("Queen Edith [whose] mask is elaborate . . . eye-sockets . . . thumbed by a master") and accused her of "riding the elephant of publicity in Hollywood," cadaverous Poetess Edith (Faqade) Sitwell, like a glacier overriding a grounded gnat, coolly crushed the New Statesman's slurs. Her letter to the editor: "I cannot see that . . . my appearance and personality are the affair of any but my personal acquaintances . . . They are not, as [your correspondent] suggests, an 'achievement' but are . . . inherited. I am not descended from...
...will spend $10 million in Europe by 1957 to help NATO planemakers develop a lightweight jet fighter-bomber, small enough to operate from short airstrips close to the lines, yet big enough to carry a tactical Abomb. The three most likely candidates: Britain's Folland "Gnat" (TIME, Aug. 3), a new delta-wing jet designed by A. V. Roe & Co., and a light French plane, the "Baroudeur," that can reportedly nudge the speed of sound...