Word: toying
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...change began with the phonograph. The machine which Edison invented in 1877 was an impractical toy which, as its needle scratched a cylinder of tin foil, made noises like a man strangling to death. The commercial "gramophones" which followed (colloquially called screech boxes) were not much better. But the early disc phonographs, which delivered both Caruso and Cohen on the Telephone, were too delightful to be resisted. The speed with which they became a national obsession was reflected by the financial statements of the Victor Talking Machine Co., which did $500 worth of business in 1901 and $12 million...
...through the days and half the nights, drew to a close, Italian workers brought votive offerings to the leaders on the dais-sacks of flour and rice for the congress' kitchen, an electric iron, a bicycle, a motorcycle, a Fiat car with headlights blazing. Most educational was a toy consisting of three tiny trucks on rails; one was labeled "reaction," and moved only backwards, the second was labeled "conservatism" and did not move at all, and the third was labeled "Socialism and United Peace Front" and zoomed merrily forward...
Simian Sainta. In Denver, Mrs. Billie Shannon and her nine-year-old monkey, Skippit, entertained 23 less fortunate monkeys from the city zoo. Skippit was dressed like Santa Claus and passed out tiny wheelbarrows and toy washboards to his colleagues. In Kansas, whose citizens may legally consume nothing stronger than 3.2 beer, police poured $25,000 worth of whiskey down a drain. But elsewhere liquor sales-particularly of bonded Bourbon-boomed. An Indianapolis liquor dealer contrived a new kind of window display -a Nativity scene set up in a Haig & Haig carton...
...toy industry was late getting into big production because retailers delayed orders last spring, waiting for lower prices which never came. When the orders finally began pouring in, toy manufacturers, like everyone else, were slowed up by shortages of materials. As a result, the industry has scant hope of bettering its last year's gross of $250 million...
Germany has sent over some sleek hand-sized cars, some with gear shifts and brakes, and others with remote-control steering. But they are scarce; foreign toy imports so far this year have been less than $1,000,000. Trickiest U.S. model: an aluminum racer that runs more than 15 m.p.h. on compressed...