Word: roof
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Willard Custer has never forgotten the day back in 1925 when he had to dive into a barn to escape a big wind roaring through the Back Creek Valley of West Virginia. A few minutes later the roof took off. Custer, who knew that an airplane wing generates lift by moving through the air, wondered what force had raised the roof. After all, he reasoned, the barn had been standing still before the roof soared into space. No engineer, 26-year-old Willard Custer tackled the problem with an open mind...
...tubes. Toward the back of each wing he mounted an engine, its propeller tips just clearing the curve of the trailing edge. If his calculations were correct, when the spinning props sucked air through the U-shaped channels, Custer's plane would fly-like that West Virginia barn roof a quarter-century before...
...Occupation, and the departure of the Allied Commissioners, was drawing near-but not complete independence. What made Adenauer rejoice was the drawing of a "roof treaty," to go into effect when-in the terms of the occupying powers' odd figure of speech-the walls are added. The treaty will make West Germany an almost-free state. West Germany must agree to let allied troops remain, but as defenders, not occupiers. She must allow the allies to intervene if the security of their forces seems threatened, from within Germany or without. Most important of all, she will get her near...
These ifs are the walls, waiting to be put up, but last week the roof was ready and Konrad Adenauer could smile...
...living so well when so many gaps in its defense were plain to see? In many items, notably aircraft (see BUSINESS & FINANCE) U.S. defense lagged far behind schedule. Meanwhile, did one U.S. garage lack a new automobile because the factory was turning out tanks? Did one U.S. roof lie bare because radar was needed more than television sets...