Word: instrument
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Shrime's company, Micro Star, next month will begin offering the paperback-size instrument in both a plastic case ($400) and a brass one ($700). To use the device, travelers press a button to enter the name of the city they are visiting. A built-in microprocessor then does virtually all the rest. Shrime, a Lebanese Christian, spent two years designing the guide after consulting with Middle East Islamic leaders. The device has legions of potential customers: Islam counts more than 500 million followers...
...Santa Clara, Calif. (1983 sales: $1.2 billion). The firm pleaded guilty to 40 charges of defrauding the Government by failing to test electronic products properly, and agreed to pay nearly $1.8 million in civil and criminal fines. The Defense Department is investigating 14 other military suppliers, including Fairchild Camera & Instrument, a Silicon Valley firm...
...wears on his belt. Columpus, 52, who now works as a counselor to the deaf in San Diego, has regained 70% of his understanding of the spoken word, although in groups he can decipher only one voice at a time. He can hear music played on a single instrument; orchestral sounds are garbled. This wedding of the computer to the hearing aid is the work of Kolff Medical, Inc., the makers of the artificial heart that was implanted in the late Barney Clark...
...instrument becomes more sophisticated, its enormous potential will probably outweigh any drawbacks. The synthesizer could create a new class of performers, since it offers opportunities for musical expression even to those without conventional instrumental skills...
That may be an extreme view-as long as music is played, there will be a need for violinists, clarinetists and pianists-but the statement contains more than a little truth. Inventor Buchla, busy designing a new generation of machines in his Berkeley workshop, envisions an instrument without a keyboard at all. Moog, now in North Carolina, is "working with musicians who need instruments that don't exist." If they succeed, the future could hold an aesthetic in which unconventional sounds fall as lightly and harmoniously on the ear as the C major scale...