Word: microchipping
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...slowdown in computer sales has been most devastating for the semiconductor industry. When the market was strong, computer firms were all wildly optimistic in placing their microchip orders. Says Ken McKenzie, an associate director of the Dataquest research firm in Sunnyvale, Calif.: "Every company that produced a clone of the IBM Personal Computer expected to get 22% of the market, and there were 60 of those companies." When computer makers realized that their sales would not come close to expectations, they started canceling chip orders, leaving the semiconductor companies to sit on mountains of inventories. The glut of chips drove...
...newest frontiers in the industry is talking cards. The voice comes from a minute speaker connected to a microchip, where the message is stored. One card by American Greetings has the words "Open this birthday card fast" printed on the outside. When the card is opened, a relieved voice says, "Thanks, it was really getting stuffy in here. Happy Birthday!" Priced as high as $10, the electronic cards are still a novelty item. But since the cost of microchips is coming down, the industry hopes that tuneful and talking cards may eventually become a mainstay of Mother...
...avoiding reference to technologies that have evolved since the novel was written. Typically the omnipresent telescreens project Big Brother's propaganda in black and white, never color, and their shape is that of antique sets. At the Ministry of Truth, no one has ever heard of the microchip. The height of sophisticated communication is represented by the pneumatic tube and the dial phone. And when O'Brien tortures Winston into submissiveness to the state, his instruments are the old-fashioned table with leather straps and electroshock. All of this matches perfectly the external world through which Winston and Julia stumble...
...idea of being able to zap enemy missiles from the heavens is not appreciably closer to being translated into hardware than it was when Reagan first proposed the SDI nearly two years ago, despite important breakthroughs in microchip and other crucial technology. A report by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment declared the prospect of an effective missile & defense "so remote that it should not serve as the basis for public expectations or national policy." But the concept does have its well-placed supporters, including George Keyworth, the President's science adviser, and Robert Jastrow, founder of the Goddard Institute...
...bathroom in a Brighton hotel when an I.R.A. bomb demolished four floors of the hotel and damaged the spot where she had been standing minutes before. Terrorism came of high-tech age that night; the explosives had apparently been planted under the floorboards weeks earlier and detonated by a microchip timer...