Word: supergadget
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...explosante/fixe . . . is scored for eight instruments, each equipped with floor microphones, plus an electronic supergadget called the Halaphone. In the first performance of the piece by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Halaphone not only transmuted the instrumental sounds electronically, but sped those sounds around the concert hall via loudspeakers pinned to the walls. Boulez remained onstage cuing the technicians. The title of the composition is descriptive: while the violin, flute or vibraphone plays on a given pitch level (fixe), the trumpet or cello explodes (explosante) with violent rhythms or scale passages. But fixation can sometimes change to explosion...
...Beam That Sees. An electronic supergadget which "sees" as well in the dark as in the light, radar projects a radio beam which, on striking an object near or far, returns an echo that is translated into a visual image on the radar screen. Radar can see the flight of a shell, the wake of a ship, the explosion of a target, the fall of a hit plane. At sea, it can detect buoys, reefs and other ships more than 20 miles away...
...radar's toughest identification problems-and one of the most fascinating sidelights on the great supergadget-was how to tell whether detected planes or ships were friendly or hostile. It was solved by an ingenious instrument called I.F.F. ("Identification, Friend or Foe"). When an I.F.F.-equipped plane is hit by a friendly radar beam, the instrument automatically flashes back a coded identifying signal...
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