Word: sandia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Measured against the mammoth computers for which they were designed, the tiny bits of ceramic hardly seem significant. But the memory units developed by the Sandia Corp. of Albuquerque may succeed in teaching man's rapidly evolving mechanical brains how to talk in another mathematical language...
Although binary numbers are remarkably handy, they are also noticeably bulky. Complex computers now need hundreds of thousands of yes-no units before they can be said to have a satisfactory memory. Sandia's memory units should allow considerable shrinkage...
Magnetic Ceramic. The ceramic is magnetized by pulses of electricity, but instead of recording simply the presence or absence of magnetism, the Sandia material responds differently to different amounts of electricity. Two pulses magnetize it twice as strongly as one pulse; three pulses do three times the job. The ceramic is so sensitive that any digit up to nine can be recorded on a single piece...
Engineer G. Corry McDonald of Sandia Corp., Albuquerque, is sure that an old-fashioned approach will solve the problem of the modern missileman. McDonald's advice to his colleagues: Go back to the launching method used by Jules Verne in his From the Earth to the Moon. Verne's fictional spaceship of 1865 was fired out of a giant cannon-and the shot would have failed, for several reasons. For one thing, air resistance would have slowed the moon-bound vehicle. But McDonald argues for a sophisticated, factual approach to the Verne fiction...
Instrument packages from high-flying rockets are sometimes dropped by parachute, and to keep them from drifting out of reach, Sandia Corp. is developing a homing parachute controlled by a small radio. When the radio locates the proper impact area, air is automatically spilled from the proper segment of the parachute to make it slant toward a convenient landing...