Word: ton
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Although cold is a customary way of life during New England winters, many cities in Maine have already exhausted their snow-removal budgets. Highway crews in Connecticut have eaten through a 48,000-ton mountain of road salt near Hartford. "You might get a bucketful if you took a broom and swept the yard," said Edward Archibald, a highway department official. While blizzards battered Boston, the doughty breed of ice fishermen in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts pensively sipped Jack Daniel's, and kept right on angling in their snug lake shacks...
...athlete of steel and iron with not a superfluous ounce of metal on it!" exclaimed William Dean Howells before the centerpiece of Philadelphia's International Exhibition celebrating our nation's 100th birthday. He was inspired to these words by the gigantic 700-ton Corliss steam engine that towered over Machinery Hall. When President Ulysses S. Grant and Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil turned the levers on May 10, 1876, a festive crowd cheered as the engine set in motion a wonderful as sortment of machines- pumping water, combing wool, spinning cotton, tearing hemp, printing newspapers, lithographing wallpaper, sewing...
...tanker of 28,000 tons was considered so impressive that Britain's Princess Margaret formally launched it. By 1960, tankers of more than 100,000 tons were becoming commonplace. Now the supertankers make the 18,743-ton Argo Merchant seem like a skiff by comparison. Over 30% of the world's tanker fleet consists of ships with capacities of over 200,000 tons. Japan's Globtik Tokyo (length: 1,243 ft.; draft: 91 ft. 11 in.) can carry a whopping 476,292 tons. The hazards such ships pose are correspondingly enormous...
About a year ago, Schumacher appeared on public T.V.'s "Nova", demonstrating intermediate technology's answer to the two ton tractor. Consisting of a blade attached to a motor driven winch, 50 yards of cable, and an anchor, the "intermediate plow" works as follows. One farmer walks ahead of the plow and plants the anchor. His partner then starts the plow's lawnmower engine and winches himself, plow and all, right up to the anchor. The first man runs ahead and sets the anchor again...
...labor-intensive method designed for countries where labor is abundant. A two-ton tractor, by contrast, would require a peasant family's entire income just to keep it in gasoline and thirty-weight...