Word: steel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tournaments, and TV networks were broadcasting even routine matches. On the amateur level, a game that could claim just 14 million adult regular players in 1972 had by 1976 some 26 million participants eager to invest in such paraphernalia as fluorescent balls, designer outfits, $30 shoes and $62 carbon steel racquets. Now the game has gone soft, at least as a business...
...York City, have failed to renew their pledges. Most telling of all, sales of racquets, which peaked at $184 million in 1976, skidded to $137 million last year and are expected to fall another 30% this year. Wilson Sporting Goods, the PepsiCo subsidiary that introduced the first steel racquet in 1967, has been losing money and is widely rumored to be up for sale...
Meanwhile, shortages have begun turning up everywhere. Aluminum is in short supply, and such companies as Boeing and McDonnell Douglas must place their orders far in advance to have enough on hand to meet aircraft delivery schedules. Metalworking machinery is also scarce, as are the steel forgings needed by automakers. That, in turn, has helped create shortages of small, fuel-efficient cars, and boosts imports of competing foreign models. There is even a squeeze on fans for people who want to save money by turning off air conditioners, and shortages of insulation for homeowners who are eager to cut winter...
...France, Premier Raymond Barre is scrapping much of the policy, which dates back to Louis XIV, that the government should determine the amount of investment and fix prices. Controls on goods from bread to books, from steel to cars, have been freed. State-owned companies, which control more than 25% of France's economy, have been instructed to operate as if they were private enterprises by relying less on subsidies and making a determined effort to turn a profit...
What's your pleasure? A "steel pianist" who plays Beethoven's Für Elise on the cut-off top of a 55-gal. oil drum? Step right up. A conga drummer with a silver earring in one nostril and a red gem in the other, or a classical guitarist in top hat, tails and tennis shoes? Right this way. String quartets, punk rockers, brass quintets, bagpipers, country crooners, dixieland stompers, ad hoc duos of every string, woodwind and percussive persuasion? Just around the corner...