Word: split-second
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Split-Second Timing. Hattori, founded in 1881 by a clock salesman of that name, started out as a shoestring importer of foreign timepieces, later pioneered Japan's own watch industry. Destroyed by a 1923 earthquake, Hattori rebuilt, only to be leveled again by U.S. bombers. That disaster proved to be a blessing. In starting from scratch the third time, the company virtually scrapped hand-assembly methods, today makes 75% of its watches by machine. As a result of its super-efficiency, Hattori claims to have been for five years the non-Communist world's largest maker of jeweled...
...Shields. As a Johnny-come-lately to ocean racing (in 1946), Shields was appalled to find that on the 635-mile course from Newport to Bermuda, which takes four to six days, skippers allowed their crewmen to relax. Not Shields. He insisted on enforcing the same tense, split-second discipline that he knew from racing for a couple of hours around three buoys in Long Island Sound. The wonder is that Captain Bligh Shields had no mutiny. But by then he had won, along with his international championships, the right to be the autocrat of the cockpit. Nobody who questions...
...Merrill Lynch since 1960 has opened a network of offices in seven European cities, is now pushing a big selling campaign in West Germany, which is considered the best hunting ground for potential customers. Bache & Co. is wooing its customers in Geneva with a new machine that can provide split-second quotes on 4,000 U.S. stocks, and this month Western Union will install a stock-ticker service in 15 U.S. brokerage houses in Switzerland. Altogether, close to 50 New York Stock Exchange members have moved into Europe...
Thereafter, on a predictable split-second schedule, practically everything goes wrong. At the climax, Old Wave Director Henri Verneuil achieves a scene that is a gem of understatement. Plopped down at poolside like a bull walrus minus his tusks and a billion clams, Veteran Actor Gabin blinks goodbye to his ill-gotten gains, filling the moment with memorable stupefaction. Best side bets of Any Number Can Win are glimpses of the human flotsam and jetsam beached on the Riviera, but all in all it is a cinematic gamble that never quite pays...
...Masked and bearded for their roles, the actors show their youth only in their piping voices. They are prodigious acrobats. Li-Pu's groom does not scale an enemy wall; he vaults over it with a somersault. The soldiers' duels mate the formality of ballet with the split-second timing of a trapeze act. Girls make ribbons of cloth hiss, curl and swirl through the air like rainbow-colored py thons. The evening's most exquisite miming re-creates a boat trip upriver. Using only two paddles as props, the players sway and dip with uncannily precise...