Word: pendulum
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Director and Co-Writer Leo McCarey told this tremulous tale once before in 1939 (Charles Boyer v. Irene Dunne). On this familiar old heart-wrenching ground, Cinemanipulator McCarey, whose heart is as big as a whale's, carefully swings the plot pendulum-like between gladness and sadness. Cary and Deborah agree to rid themselves of their previous encumbrances, make a date to meet again after six months devoted to finding themselves (she was once a singer; he painted). But on the day of their reunion, a screech of brakes is heard offscreen, and next thing Deborah is a cripple...
Thus to my Hegelian sensibility, the pendulum theory appears an arbitrary construct. Western culture incorporates not only Biblical and Hellenic elements, but also Gothic. It takes up parts of these traditions and discards others. The classical Renaissance did not simply resurrect the Ancients in their old form. Gibbon dressed his Romans and his Christians as neo-classicists, and while Hellenism dominated the synthesis, it did not emerge pure. Consequently, it hardly seems likely that the impending transformation will be accomplished with a religion designed for the Hellenic Babel...
...axis in relation to the "fixed" stars-or any other points of reference-no matter on what path it is carried by the motion of a vehicle or the rotation of the earth. Such a gyroscope is one element of Inertial Guidance. The other element is an electronic "Schuler pendulum" that always points toward the center of the earth, regardless of an aircraft's acceleration (speeding up or slowing down).* The unchanging gyroscope line and the line of the plumb bob, which tells which way is down, form an angle that changes as the plane follows the earth...
From the angle made by the platform and the Schuler-pendulum, corrected by a chronometer which allows for the earth's rotation, exact readings of a plane's (or missile's) latitude and longitude are made, then translated into instructions for the servomechanisms that operate the controls. (A variant of this layout, not described by Draper, uses similar gyros to fix position, radios continuously back to home base for flight instructions.) Throughout the flight, the control system also operates like a normal automatic pilot, making necessary minor corrections for pitch, yaw and roll...
...Maximilian Schuler, a German professor of applied mechanics, discovered in 1923 that acceleration would have no effect on a hypothetical pendulum the length of the earth's radius; the M.I.T. device simulates Schuler's effect electronically...