Word: instrumentality
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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What Harvard University unblushingly described as "the world's greatest mathematical calculating machine" was last week shown to newsmen. In the presence of high officers of the Navy, which gets exclusive use of the instrument for the duration, Harvard unveiled a bewildering, 50-foot panel of knobs, wires, counters, gears and switches (see cut). It has 500 miles of wire, 3,000,000 electrical connections and, according to the University, will make any mathematical calculation suggested on earth, as well as a number posed by the celestial universe...
...heavy-laden Monsoon slashed through a treetop, dented a belly blister before she began to climb. This mishap did not interfere with her flight to Manchuria. Neither did an instrument panel fire en route, nor the discovery that three vital instruments (altimeter, rate of climb gauge and airspeed indicator) were knocked out, probably by the treetop. Duplicate instruments...
Point of No Return. Since mid-1942, when the Raj last imprisoned the Mahatma, both he and his political instrument, the All-India National Congress, had declined in power. Malaria, amoebic dysentery, low blood pressure, hookworm, anemia, weak heart & kidneys had sapped his body. His wife had died. All the leading members of the Congress Working Committee had been jailed since they voted an ultimatum to Great Britain to leave India to the Indians immediately or face mass civil disobedience (Gandhi's famed, fateful "Quit India" resolution...
Imperfect Perfection. Piano tuning is difficult mainly because the piano is an imperfect musical instrument. It does not possess enough keys to play all the notes in music. (One key, for example, must do for both F sharp and G flat.) The compromise by which piano strings are tuned to represent musical tones that are close in pitch, but not identical, involves a mathematical theory of Einsteinian complexity.* Practically, the problem is to put the piano systematically and artistically out of tune, by equalizing the tonal distances between the black & white keys. In getting each note of the piano just...
...theory known as "equal temperament" permits the tuning of a keyboard instrument so that it can be played in any key with equal facility. It was the inspiration for Johann Sebastian Bach's famous collection of 48 preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys: The Well-Tempered Clavichord...