Word: instrument
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...elevators, sweep its streets and constitute a sizable portion of its population. Pedro Caetano happens to be a shoe-store clerk. Swarthy Pedro, with slant eyes and a cavernous mouth, cannot read music. He claims that he cannot even play the Brazilian song writer's traditional instrument: an empty matchbox with which the rhythms are tapped on cafe tables. But he has been inventing carnival songs ever since he came to Rio from the farm ten years...
...Britain in the North Atlantic and the plucky 21,517-ton Empress of Canada in the shark-infested waters off West Africa, must be rebuilt to restore prewar transatlantic and Pacific services. The airline, providing Ottawa does not choke it off entirely in favor of Canada's "chosen instrument" T.C.A., will need new planes and bases for routes extending from the U.S. border to the Arctic Circle. These improvements will cost millions, and will go far toward keeping Canadian industry busy when war orders are canceled...
...talk (a robot voice tells callers the time and weather). It acts as if it could think (when dialed on local calls). And last week in Philadelphia it was acting even more so. In operation was a new Bell Telephone Laboratories mechanical brain which enables the instrument to put through long distance calls without human assistance...
...Philadelphia tests, this amazing instrument (known as the "crossbar toll switching system") has greatly speeded up long distance telephoning and relieved wartime overcrowding of toll lines. Telephone officials expect to install the system throughout the nation as soon as equipment is available after the war. Eventually, they believe, it will be possible for a customer to dial an out-of-town call on his home or office phone. Already, in Culver City, Calif., engineers are testing an instrument which not only permits direct dialing of toll calls (within a limited area) but automatically records on a printed ticket the length...
...filled in the hollow. The results were gratifying, but not for long. After playing his instrument again, my patient was once again a picture of gloom. 'Doctor, my legato has improved . . . but now I lose my wind too quickly.' I partially closed up the arch in the bicuspid region. 'Fine,' said my patient after another experiment with his flute. [Then] the patient suddenly stopped and his face registered horror. 'Doctor, I'm losing my staccato...