Word: plastic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...once be activated by merely speaking the number with eyes closed, then had to be worked by coordinating eye and forefinger, and now, with the advent of all-digit dialing, demand intellectual concentration as well. But wait. A device called Dial-A-Word has come to the rescue. A plastic disk that slips over a dial gives a choice of two consonants for every number, which can then be combined with vowels (which are placed so that they don't register) to translate any combination of digits into an easily remembered phrase. Thus the number...
...dairy in a pail, then in bottles, then mostly in leak-prone cartons, is now flowing back by the pailful. Several hundred dairies are now delivering milk in five, six-or ten-quart containers, consisting of a cardboard box shaped to fit easily into the refrigerator; inside is a plastic bag with a dispensing nozzle. Advantages: the milk, protected from exposure to air and from the "heat shock" caused by removal from the refrigerator, lasts much longer, takes up less room-and is delivered...
...where to cut off the engine. And the underwater swimmer, after years of face masks that cut vision from 180° to 75° and made the prettiest girl look like a sea monster, can now buy a new kind of contact lens: a tiny mask made of shatterproof plastic that covers the entire eyeball. Invented by Washington, D.C., Optometrist Alan Grant and Navy Captain Edward Beckman, the new lenses cost $175 a pair, or roughly the same as regular contacts...
Even more novel is the artificial grass of the court itself. It is made by a Japanese patented process originally devised for doormats. The plastic is poured into a square mold with 800 indentations per square inch. When the drying plastic is pulled away, the nubs stick, and stretch into "blades" of grass. Then the squares are laid on an asphalt court, just as a homeowner might lay tile on a kitchen floor. The result is a durable and resilient surface, which is divot-proof, affords better footing and less leg fatigue and keeps both balls and players free from...
...land of typhoons and earth quakes, carrier pigeons have proved themselves reliable disaster insurance, able to get through with photographic negatives (up to 20 frames of 35 mm. film in a plastic capsule) where modern communications are blacked out. The pigeons broke into journalism when the great 1923 earthquake turned Tokyo into a shambles, forced editors to rely on a small signal-corps flock. The birds soon earned the title "Hato-san."* As recently as 1959, when a typhoon smashed the industrial city of Nagoya, leaving telephone and wirephoto services dead, the Nagoya Chubu Nippon used its 200 birds...