Word: instrumentality
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...crew began looking for some other target, found a fine fat factory in Hamamatsu (55 mi. south of Nagoya) and plunked their bombs squarely among its buildings. Then came the letdown. Back on Saipan, Anderson reported his emergency measure-and got a big laugh. The plant was a musical instrument factory...
...Gyroscopic Autopilot is the basic instrument for all automatic flying. This is a contraption with two gyroscopes, one spinning on a vertical axis (controlling the plane's tilt), the other horizontally (controlling direction). They are connected, electrically or by air locks, with the plane's controls (rudder, ailerons and elevators). When the plane pitches, banks or makes the slightest deviation from a set course, the gyroscopes make instant corrections in the controls to put it back on course. The gyropilot acts much more quickly and holds a course more steadily than a human pilot...
Landing is accomplished by means of radio. In a normal instrument landing, a pilot aligns his plane on a radio signal beam from the field and steers his plane along it. In the new system, the radio signals themselves steer the ship; the pilot need not touch the controls. One instrument, the "localizer," guides the plane toward the middle of the runway; another, the "glide path," controls its descent. The instruments can pick up a plane 15 to 35 miles away at 3,000 feet altitude and glide it in to a perfect three-point landing...
...spot that would be occupied by a piano keyboard, is a cloth-covered fingerboard about three feet long and three inches wide. This is a rheostat. By pressing the finger on it at any given point, the player controls the amount of electricity that goes into the instrument's generator tube. Depending on the amount of current that goes into one of the grids of the tube, the vibration frequency which controls the pitch is changed up & down...
Players and Program. The emiriton is merely an instrument. At last week's premiere, none of the performers was yet a Heifetz or a Kreisler. Co-inventor* Alexander Antipovitch Ivanov was best. Others included a tall man who never seemed to move or be moved, two girls of about 17 who swayed ecstatically with their work and two nervous young men who looked as if they ought to stop fooling around with emiritons and get out and play football...