Word: ti
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During the 1970s, Texas Instruments was a shining star of American technology. The Dallas-based electronics giant became the world's leading producer of semiconductors, calculators and digital watches. Its annual sales quintupled to $4 billion by 1980. More than any other U.S. company, TI was admired by industry analysts as an innovative, aggressive outfit that was up to the challenge of beating the Japanese at one of their best games: consumer electronics...
...TI's glow is fading like the flickering display on a calculator with dying batteries. The firm's profits are down 55% for the first 9 months of this year. It has laid off 2,800 employees, or 3% of its work force. The price of its stock has plunged 50%, from $150 to $75. TI's once dominant share of the calculator market is being squeezed on the high-priced end by Hewlett-Packard, while the Japanese have cornered sales of economy models. Its attempt to break into the home-computer business has been disastrous...
...gray leather-jacketed Swiss police and platoons of reporters and photographers. Inside, the oil ministers lived like the modern-day kings they have become. They dined on sumptuous meals that included filet de truite fumée, poussin de Bresse aux morilles and coeur de Charolais róti aux herbes...
...compact electronic learning aids that can be toted to and from school like a lunch box and cost from under $20 to about $120. Texas Instruments, a pioneer in "talking" computer chips, is the leading producer of these less expensive aids. (Others: Mattel, Coleco, Milton Bradley.) In 1978 TI introduced Speak & Spell, a talking learning aid, which imitated the human voice-questioning, coaching and correcting the user -with an integrated circuit on a single silicon chip. On a later machine, called Speak & Read ($75), a child can complete sentences at three levels of difficulty by pressing letters on a keyboard...
Almost any school system can afford some sort of portable learning aid. School District 7, in New York City's South Bronx, where every child receives a federally funded free lunch because they are all below the poverty line, has purchased several dozen TI learning aids for remedial students. Helen Giuliano, an administrator in the district, believes that exposure to computers is vital for otherwise underprivileged children: "They are starting behind in basic literacy. Let's not let them get behind in computer literacy." Such logic still fails to persuade some educational administrators. "They see computers...