Word: inventors
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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DIED. JOSEPH ZIMMERMANN, 92, answering-machine inventor; in Brookfield, Wis. In 1948, when this U.S. Army Signal Corps veteran and enterprising engineer couldn't afford a secretary, he rigged up an 80-lb. contraption that used a lever to lift a phone receiver, a 78-r.p.m. record player to convey a personalized greeting, and a wire recorder to capture callers' 30-sec. messages. More than 6,000 of these "electronic secretaries" were in use by 1957, when he and a partner sold the patent to General Telephone Corp...
...taste of a past partner. Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) discovers this after tracing a note to ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet), asking mutual friends not to raise his name in conversation with her. Since the ex is not supposed to see these notes, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), the inventor of the treatment and the founder of Lacuna, agrees to perform the operation on Joel as well. The centerpiece of the movie begins as Joel slowly realizes that, though his final memories of the relationship are tough to handle, he wants to remember at least some of the more pleasant...
...seized the imagination of the great visionaries of 20th century architecture, though they approached the question with their usual indifference to public taste. The pioneer modernist Le Corbusier wrote a famous essay in praise of "Mass Production Houses." He just never got around to producing one. Geodesic-dome inventor Buckminster Fuller spent years tinkering with his Dymaxion House. But he insisted on making it circular and steel walled. Americans weren't ready for a house that looked like a flying saucer...
...When IBM inventor Ed Kelley suddenly discovered that his telephone calling card had been canceled--the number had been stolen and used for exorbitant calls to Central America and Asia--he decided he'd had enough. To put an end to swiped identities and pilfered credit cards, he and IBM engineer Franco Motika set about developing a new generation of smart cards. The recently patented, theftproof card contains a computer chip and features a tiny numerical keypad right on its face. The cardholder inputs a PIN, stored directly in the card's circuitry; the same code must be entered before...
...chapter of The Purpose-Driven Life puts it bluntly: "It's not about you." Explains Warren: "Looking within yourself for answers doesn't work. If it did, we'd know it by now. As with any complex invention, to figure out your purpose, you need to talk to the inventor and read the owner's manual--in this case, God and the Bible...