Word: underground
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When the nuclear powers negotiated a test ban treaty in 1963, they were forced to confine their agreement to atmospheric testing. On-the-spot inspections of underground tests were politically unacceptable to the Russians, and remote monitoring by seismographs was considered unreliable. The trouble was, some explosions were likely to go un detected, and low-yield tests, when they were recorded, could not be reliably distinguished from earthquakes. But now, as negotiators are getting back to business again in Geneva, a new element has entered the argument. The U.S. is putting the finishing touches on an ultrasensitive seismic listening post...
...everyone will agree, the best place for a utility or telephone line is underground, where it cannot be seen. But many a new subdivision still bristles with overhead wires and poles for the simple reason that going underground costs the developer more money. Last month the Federal Housing Administration decreed that all new residential subdivisions will have to have under ground wiring to qualify for FHA-insured mortgage loans...
Then came Total Underground. The new system was developed last year by Puget Sound Power & Light Co., with a boost from the Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Co. It buries everything, including transformers, which are submerged in deep, grate-covered pits. Thanks to newly developed, highly insulated coverings, the cables can be dropped into machine-dug trenches without the cumbersome metal casings of previous systems. And the telephone company can put its lines in the same trench, cutting costs even further...
Even with these savings, Total Underground still costs about $160 extra a lot. But Puget persuaded the FHA that the beauty of a wireless front lawn increased the value of the average subdivisions plot by $200. As a result, the FHA upped its assessments of houses so serviced, allowing local banks to offer proportionately increased FHA-guaranteed mortgages to prospective homeowners. Thus the homeowner can spread the increased cost of his mortgage over 20 years...
While his superiors haggle over procedure, Palmer slogs through some of London's more picturesque byways and inadvertently slays a CIA agent during a throat-tightening exchange scene in an underground garage, where triggermen and headlights dare each other to blink. The scientist is ransomed, but his memory seems oddly impaired. Soon the hero is fleeing kidnapers, the CIA, and an unknown British traitor or two. After one fracas aboard a boat train to Paris, he wakes up drugged in what appears to be an Albanian prison-actually, it's somewhere in the center of London-and begins...