Word: steersman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...good and evil. Cartoonists delight in giving computers robotlike stature and minds of their own that like to play tricks on ordinary mortals, and computers have been made the mute but decisive villains of three recent bestselling novels. The science of computers, called cybernetics after the Greek word for steersman, is the subject of an endless round of study and discussion devoted to pondering both the problems and opportunities that confront what social scientists call "the cybernated generation...
...Capital idea, decided the Italians, the Swiss and the Americans, who added steel runners, steering wheels, crash helmets, specially constructed bobsled runs, speeds up to 90 m.p.h.-and took turns dominating the sport. The U.S. won five championships in the 1930s and '40s, and Italy's great steersman, Eugenic Monti, led his team to eight world titles (both two-man and four-man) in seven years...
...sled was too fast for its own good: on a practice run, Steersman Larry McKillip hit a rut and lost control coming out of Shamrock Bend, and smashed full force into the retaining wall. The sled's frame was hopelessly bent, and McKillip bruised an arm. The solution seemed obvious: slow down. But that didn't work, either: Steersman James Hickey took the four-man G.M. sled into Devil's Dyke so slowly that it could not hold the wall. The sled dropped like a stone from the face of the curve, and the runners were damaged...
...Wiener published his famous Cybernetics, which caused a still-continuing stir in scientific circles. The word cybernetics, which Wiener coined, is based on the Greek word for "steersman," and he made it stand for the science of control mechanisms that he showed to be part of neurology, psychology and many other disciplines. The human brain is a control mechanism; so are a computer, a missile's guidance system, even a simple household thermostat. All of them obey the rules that Wiener spelled...
...recorded selection of Adenauer speeches and a baroque desk clock, which promptly rang the hour, leading Cabinet jesters to wonder for whom it tolled. But final blood went to Erhard supporters in the interministerial glee club which serenaded Adenauer's departure with a chorus from The Flying Dutchman: "Steersman, leave the watch!" His hackles raised by a critic's description of him as "the thinking man's Mickey Spillane," British Mystery Writer Ian Fleming, 53, sniffed to a New York Herald Tribune reporter: "I can't remember any piece of knowledge that Spillane has given...