Word: plastic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...gifts began pouring in to Blair House. The first grade at Nance School in Clinton, Okla., wrote that they had seen him on television and wished him well. Kindergarten children in a Long Island public school spent the $1 surplus from their cookie fund for a couple of plastic toys, some crayons, a coloring book, lollipops and a jigsaw puzzle, sent them along to the hospital...
...much of the quibbling produced by the cautious politics and flaring passions that surrounded the King himself. The little prince had indeed stolen the show. The proof, in a sense, lay in the two extra trunks bought in the U.S. by the Arabs, in which will be shipped the plastic toys and doodads that are gifts from American children...
...Alvar Aalto showed that the same thing could be done with molded plywood. In the U.S., Architect Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames teamed up in 1940 to produce a molded plywood chair that shifted the emphasis to organic shape, form-fitted to the human body. Using molded plastic, Saarinen then developed the idea into his famed "womb" chair; Eames evolved a whole series, ranging from his early hard-surfaced plywood "potato chip" chair to plastic chairs which dovetail into stacks for storage, that today makes him a modern bestseller and last week earned him the American Institute of Architects...
Instead of classrooms, Caudill & Co. have Learning Labs, with light plastic walls that can be put up and taken down in a trice. Along with the Learning Labs are Teaching Elevators that can be equipped by Central Service in any way a teacher wants. Suppose, say the architects, a teacher wants "an aviary with six different species of birds and a soundproof booth where recorded birdcalls can be played ..." What does she do? She simply rings up Central Service, which lowers a Teaching Elevator, equips it as requested, then sends it back up again-"and the teacher has a tailor...
...turn beta particles directly into electric current, but they have often run into trouble because the particles damage the current-yielding parts of the battery. The Kidde-Elgin battery sidesteps this difficulty by mixing the promethium 147 with a phosphor (light-giving substance) and enclosing the mixture in transparent plastic. Electrons from the Pm-147 make the phosphor glow, and its light is turned into electricity by a photoelectric surface of silicon on each side of the plastic wafer. No electrons escape from the plastic, and so the silicon is not damaged...