Word: magneto
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Avco's apparatus, called a magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) electric generator, works on the principle that any conductor of electricity that is moved through a magnetic field will generate in itself a current of electricity. This applies not only to copper wires (as in conventional generators), but to gases, which become conductors when they are made so hot that some of their atoms separate (ionize) into electrically charged particles. If forced through a magnetic field, a stream of ionized gas causes an electrical current to flow across it. This principle has been known for years, and many efforts have been...
...howl with speed just standing still. For push-pull power, Thompson remade two 1957 Chrysler engines and geared the first to the front wheels and the second to the back. To soup up the engines to a total of 850 h.p., Thompson and his buddy, Fred Voigt, added a magneto to each for hot-spark firing (standard ignition gradually weakens as engine speed increases), lengthened the piston strokes by five-eighths of an inch, rebored the cylinders and boosted the compression ratio from 8 to 1 to 12 to 1. At the heart of the retooled engines were specially ground...
...1780s by opening a "Hymeneal Temple." Centerpiece of this edifice was the "Celestial Bed," over which "presided" a pretty young healer named Miss Emma Lyons. Gentlemen who found the "Celestial Bed" (fee: ?100 per night) somewhat fatiguing could retreat to another bed to be refreshed with charges of "Magneto-Electric" virility (fee: ?50 per night). Dr. Graham soon abdicated from his "Electrical Throne," but Emma Lyons married Sir William Hamilton and, in due course, became the historic sharer of the celestial bed of Admiral Lord Nelson...
...Tacho used to test his foes' veracity with a magneto-powered shocking device, la maqui-nita (the little machine), wired to the victim's testicles. "Hell," Tacho once said, "the damned thing isn't so bad. I've tried it myself-on my hand...
Currently the darling of the sportswriters, Mays has been widely depicted in print as a high-spirited chatterbox, a dugout wit and locker room clown. On the field he often does crackle like an old Ford magneto, kids in a boy-and-father way with Manager Durocher. But off the field Mays curbs his tongue and his curiosity. "When Willie wants to know something," says Guardian Forbes, with considered understatement, "he'll ask a simple question. All he wants is a simple answer. Then he don't see any reason for chewing it up any further. Willie...