Word: vastness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This is a vast increase in naval power since World War II, when the Red fleet hardly existed; even as recently as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the Kremlin had to back down in the face of U.S. naval supremacy. That, presumably, was a humiliation the Russians decided would never happen again. Since then Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, commander of the Soviet navy for the past 22 years, has modernized his fleet, increased its firepower and greatly extended its range. At one time his ships rarely ventured far from Russia's shores. But as he has commissioned new vessels that...
...Saudis realize that with so small a population they cannot possibly build an army large enough to defend their vast frontiers. (Indeed, simply to begin developing their country, they have imported a foreign labor force of about one million.) Their only hope for defense, they believe, lies in acquiring modern weapons, like the F-15, that require limited manpower. The Saudis believe they need a military force capable of holding out against attack for at least two or three days−just long enough for a powerful friend to come to their aid. They want that friend...
Amid the hype and hoopla that usually enliven its annual meetings in a vast warehouse at Needham, Mass., Polaroid Corp. last week pulled a few more rabbits from its seemingly bottomless hat of technological tricks. President William McCune Jr. showed off a new SX-70 camera that uses ultrasonic waves to focus its lens instantly and automatically. With unaccustomed modesty, Chairman Edwin Land, the father of instant photography, said: "This is the first development in which the only part I played was in expressing admiration for those who did the work...
...painting or contemporary sculpture. The idea of disinterested art patronage in the service of some imagined "public good" did not occur to him−any more than it would have occurred to his successors, the royal families and saber-toothed generalissimos of 16th and 17th century Europe, who amassed vast collections to glorify themselves and reinforce their power by visible imagery...
...consider a public home for it. As president of the museum his father built, Mellon recounts: "It would have pleased me to give them to the National Gallery; the trouble was, it could never have hung more than an infinitesimal part of this very comprehensive collection, so the vast majority would have been in storage. I didn't like the idea of that." Yale, however, was pre-eminent in English 18th and 19th century literary studies, and so, "to have the paintings and the rest of the collection at Yale made more sense." The center's first director...