Apparatus
An electronic instrument or system, a piece of media technology that remains fixed in place, like a stereo or answering machine.
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Year: 1921
Quote: “There were several earlier types which, although they had their defects, were very effective and frequently ‘spotted’ the Kaiser’s subs at distances of several miles and aided our sub-chasers in running them down and giving them the spurlos versenkt with one of our neat little ash cans. The more modern apparatus upon which I personally worked was not perfected in time to have actual service overseas. This remarkable ‘gadget,’ which is known as the multi-unit or M.V. Type of hydrophone, consists in general of two lines of twelve equally spaced microphones. They are mounted – one on each side – below the water line and either beneath a protective ‘blister’ outside the skin of the vessel or sometimes within the forward water tank.”
Author:
Source: The Technology Review. v23n3. July, 1921
Year: 1922
Quote: ““Geoffrey has actually torn himself away from his horrible old wireless,” Sylvia remarked. “For nearly a fortnight we’ve hardly seen him.” / “I’ve been awfully busy on a new gadget,” the young man replied with a laugh. Then, turning to May, he added: “Sylvia is always poking fun at me because I happen to be enthusiastic over my work.””
Author: Le Queux, William
Source: London: Stanley Paul & Co. p. 174
Year: 1929
Quote: “…pathologist and dentist, took the body apart. They found that its jawbones were decayed, also parts of the skull, a bone in the right thigh, and four teeth. The heart and lungs were sound, but other internal organs yellow with rot. # The death of Mrs. Cardow, onetime dial painter for the Waterbury Clock Co., like the deaths and protracted illnesses of U.S. Radium Corp. scientists and minor employes (TIME, June 4, Nov. 26) is a social penalty for the public’s demand to have night-luminous watches, clocks, gadgets.”
Author:
Source: Time Magazine: 1929/04/01
Year: 1934
Quote: “Only about a decade ago, we had an infant industry, manufacturing radio sets, which was facing a problem unprecedented in business history. For in order to sell its product and thrive, it had to produce something else which that product could pluck out of the air. This was the beginning of broadcasting. / A gadget which boys of all ages had put together in the attic, came down into the living-room. Promptly technical discoveries began revolutionizing the gadget itself; and a growing and vociferous demand for good programs created a second bewildering problem.”
Author: Reeves, Earl.
Source: The Rotarian. May 1934
Year: 1936
Quote: “H. Leslie Atlaas is head man of WBBM and the Chicago office of Columbia. His home is equipped with special lines so he can hear without a radio what his station and network are broadcasting by simply dialing a special telephone gadget. Also, the same system permits him to listen in on the monitor wire and hear what the engineers in the control rooms are saying to each other.”
Author:
Source: Radio Mirror
Year: 1939
Quote: “Yet in all our wide reading about the unfortunate incident, we recall not one hint of certain broader implications. Too much was said of war psychosis and nothing of the normal human equation. We had thought that the Brooklyn Bridge would find no “buyers” now, yet the confidence men who periodically “sold” that structure in the old days had a harder job than the broadcasters of H. G Wells’ drama, for the latter explained over and over what they were doing. It begins to look as though there must be something inherent in the radio, in the mystery of a voice coming from an unseen speaker through a gadget of wires and tubes, that inspires unquestioning confidence. Otherwise, despite the war psychosis explanation, why did not more people question this particular broadcast as did one man we know who did not hear the original announcement?”
Author:
Source: Scientific American 160, 9-9 (January 1939)
Year: 1939
Quote: “A radio receiver, in addition to being a musical instrument, is also unfortunately a piece of furniture and a complex scientific gadget. As a musical instrument it finds its response limited at high frequencies by station-crowding in the wavelength bands, which at present sets a legal upper limit of 5000 cycles, while furniture fashion cuts off the low frequencies by preventing the use of a suitable loud-speaker.”
Author: Harrison, George Russell
Source: New York: William Morrow & Company
Year: 1942
Quote: ““Getting Acquainted With Electricity. By Alfred Morgan. “ Aimed at the average man who frequently finds himself slightly bewildered by the innumerable electric gadgets in his home, in his automobile, and in his place of business the text of this book is phrased in laymen’s language that makes painless reading”
Author:
Source: Scientific American 167, (August 1942). p. 90-92
Year: 1948
Quote: “Quite literally, the chassis is the foundation of any electronic gadget. It’s the place where you hang all the parts. You can bend it up out of tomato cans, cut it from a breadboard, or use the orthodox kind that you buy in radio stores.”
Author:
Source: Popular Science, November 1948
Year: 1949
Quote: “The effects of war on science itself were also both good and bad. Unfortunately, the spectacular achievements of the war years led many people to believe that the sole function of science was to develop either weapons of war or the gadgets of peace. Radar, rockets, and the atomic bomb, together with plastic automobiles, nuclear power plants, and television sets were regarded as the sole products of science, the reason for its existence, or the chief currency with which to measure its value.” Example: “A steel mill is built to make steel. As the bars of steel come out of the mill the ear not labeled as to whether they shall be used for battleships or tanks or trucks or guns or plows. Steel is a raw material. It will be fabricated into whatever structures, gadgets, devices, or weapons are most in demand at the moment.” “Too often we judge the value of knowledge by the new machines or gadgets or weapons it provides. But a more far-reaching effect of knowledge is its effects on men’s minds.” “
Author: DuBridge, Lee A.
Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Vol. 5, No. 6. Jun 1949. p. 201.
Year: 1952
Quote: “Late in the 18th century Charles Stanhope, third Earl, a British statesman and inventor, built the first true logic machine, the Stanhope Demonstrator. The Demonstrator was a crude gadget for solving syllogisms. A syllogism consists of a major premise and a minor premise, the first making a statement about a “predicate term” and a “middle term,” the second about the same middle term and a “subject term.” By eliminating the middle term one arrives at the correct conclusion as to the relation of subject to predicate. In Stanhope’s Demonstrator the middle term was represented by a small wooden panel called the “holon.” It had a frame through which other panels could be slid to cover all or part of the holon. A panel of gray wood, representing the subject, was pushed in from the left, and one of red glass, representing the predicate, was pushed in over this from the right.”
Author: Gardner, Martin
Source: Scientific American 186, (March 1952). p. 68-73
Year: 1952
Quote: “The early extracurricular interests of these men were varied, but here, too, there are some general patterns. More of the physicists than of the other groups showed early interests directly related to their later occupations, but this seems quite clearly to be due to the common small-boy preoccupation in this country with physical gadgets–radio, Meccano sets and so on. The theoretical physicists were omnivorous readers, the experimentalists much less so. […] From fiddling with gadgets to becoming a physicist may be no great leap, but the attractions of theoretical physics are not so obvious or well known, nor are those of the social sciences or advanced biology.”
Author: Roe, Anne
Source: Scientific American 187, (November 1952). p. 21-25
Year: 1952
Quote: “Arvey Andrew, Sumner Senior Scores 83 Points With Sound Gadget. Arvey Andrew, 17 years old senior at Sumner high school, placed third in science fair awards as was announced yesterday. His device, a home made oscilloscope, was scored 83 points out of a possible 100. … He gave several lectures and explained his gadget to many a person.”
Author:
Source: The Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 04-25-1952 • Page [1]
Year: 1953
Quote: “Lie Gadgets: The technological methods of lie detection appear to be losing favor among the experts. The Atomic Energy Commission has just issued a new policy directive on the use of the lie detector at Oak Ridge. It will no longer be used for periodic mass examinations of the several thousand employees assigned there to ‘sensitive’ jobs. Future lie detector examinations anywhere in the AEC will be confined to specific cases and will be undertaken on a ‘voluntary’ basis and only when authorized by the general manager.” “
Author:
Source: Scientific American 188, (June 1953). p.44-54
Year: 1953
Quote: ““Note the new things: Sound movies, color movies, radio and TV, refrigerators, freezers, washers, cleaners, and other household gadgets, air conditioners, airplanes big and fast, tough metals, new chemicals, plastics, man-made fabrics, electronics, radar, new drugs, psychiatry, new farm machines, modern architecture, 3-D movies, and the atom at work.”
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Source: Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas) • 07-24-1953 • Page 6
Year: 1953
Quote: “With all the emphasis on modern design and functionalism, it is significant that fashion is the only area of art where decoration often takes precedence over function. In an era where we insist that our automobiles have power and performance as well as beauty; that our electrical gadgets have smoothly running motors, and that even our teacups have the handle placed just right for the greatest comfort and ease of sipping, it is significant that we mortals (presumably of sound mind) continue to let our clothes wear us rather than wear them.”
Author: Henderson, Freddye S.
Source: Crusader (Rockford, Illinois) • 07-24-1953 • Page 5
Year: 1953
Quote: “Joe Black may have had a tough sophomore year, but he has some good equipment. Although a lot of people said Joe didn’t have a good fast ball, a machine called the Dumont Oscillograph measured his pitches at a speed of 93.2 miles per hour. Some of his other teammates tried the gadget, and Podres’ pitch registers 88.5 miles per hour, and Bob Milliken’s, 83.5.”
Author: Pollard, Fritz
Source: Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas) • 10-02-1953 • Page 3
Year: 1954
Quote: “Claude E. Shannon, Hagelbarger’s colleague at Bell Labs, built a second penny matcher along the same lines, but using a different criterion for deciding when the opponent’s play pattern justifies a departure from random choices. In an article in the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Shannon describes how the designers tried to figure out mathematically which machine could beat the other. They finally had to give up and leave the experiment. They built a third machine to act as umpire and go-between, plugged all three together and let them run, ‘to the accompaniment of small side bets and loud cheering.’ Although he does not specify the owner of the winning gadget, Shannon reports that the ‘more precipitate of the who consistently beat the larger, more deliberate one in a ratio of about 55 to 45.”
Author:
Source: Scientific American 191, (July 1954). p. 42-48
Year: 1954
Quote: “The men have been crowded nearly off the ship by electronic gadgets. Radar sets and automatic control devices take up so much room that the crew must sling its hammocks in odd corners and queue up for an hour to get a meal. Water is rationed because machines have replaced some of the storage tanks. So the sailors begin to extract a vacuum tube here, drop a quiet monkey wrench there. The press, as over-hasty in taking reassurance as it had been in taking alarm, was naively relieved to learn that the trouble was not foreign sabotage but just a revolt of the crew.”
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Source: Scientific American 190, (June 1954). p. 44-52
Year: 1954
Quote: “Among other discoveries, it was found possible to make the brain stimulate itself by positive feedback. The electric impulses from the brain were connected through the recording machine to the electronic gadget that produced the flashes of light. In this way a brain response to a flash triggered a new flash and so on. This method of self-excitement is particularly effective for revealing a hidden tendency to epileptic seizures. It resembles very closely the way an engineer may test the stability of a transmission system: he applies positive feedback to disturb the system and observes how effectively the system’s inherent negative feedback operates to damp the disturbance and restore equilibrium.”
Author: Walter, W. Grey
Source: Scientific American 190, (June 1954). p. 54-63
Year: 1956
Quote: “It is safe to say that few of us Americans fully realize the progress this country has made in a handful of years. The editor of the Port Gibson, Mississippi, Reveille touches on this in relating how that town has improved its community life. In 1928, he said, “Port Gibson was struggling along with flickering lights, and a few small motors, which seemed they might burn out any minute, until the town finally voted to sell its worn out municipal plant to the Mississippi Power & Light Company. “Had there been television in 1928,” he said, “we think it would have been useless in Port Gibson, to say nothing of home freezers, electric refrigerators, washers, dryers, garbage disposals, industrial motors, air conditioning, and a host of other gadgets run by that wonderful force which no one can adequately define, but everyone calls electric power.””
Author: Hamlett, James A. Jr.
Source: Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 07-13-1956 • Page 2
Year: 1957
Quote: “One night, about two in the morning, the door of our shack was thrown open with a bang and, before I knew what was happening, I felt a hand gripping my throat, squeezing it viciously. I knew damned well I wasn’t dreaming. Then a voice, a boozy voice which I recognized instantly, and which sounded maudlin and terrifying, shouted in my ear: ‘Where’s that damned gadget?’ / ‘What gadget?’ I gurgled, struggling to release the grip around my throat. / ‘The radio! Where are you hiding it?”
Author: Miller, Henry
Source: p. 73
Year: 1957
Quote: “A group at Stanford University is reported to have generated infrared rays by directing million-volt electrons through a bumpy magnetic field. It remains to be seen whether these methods will prove feasible for spectroscopy or for gadgets such as radar. Whenever a practical method is developed for generating high-power radio waves in the region between one half millimeter and five millimeters-a source which is tunable and produces highly monochromatic waves-it will be of great value to science and to industry.”
Author: Gordy, Walter
Source: Scientific American 196, (May 1957). p. 46-53
Year: 1960
Quote: “I saw meanness, nobility, comedy. And tragedy. At first the blazing vitality and power of Africa in ferment frightened me. Amid insistent elbows I knew claustrophobia. But faces go with elbows, and many faces smiled and spoke kind words. These are my fellow humans, yearning for health, education, a place in the sun for | their children, the entrancing gadgets of the modern world, respect, peace, and? “ Free-DOM! “”
Author: Kenney, Nathaniel T.
Source: National Geographic: 1960: September
Year: 1962
Quote: “Sterling will furnish its Teleguide service free of charge, and will support the venture by selling one-minute advertising spots, live nr on film, which will he limited to two and a half minutes out of every fifteen minutes of programming. Unlike the tourists who will absorb enlightenment from Teleguide, brokers hoping to benefit from the services rendered by Telequote II, a prodigious gadget, already in operation, that compresses all market information into a single system and flashes stock quotations in Kelly green, have to pay a rental fee of seven hundred and fifty dollars … Four of Telequotes eight channels feature current last-sales prices of issues traded on the N. Y. and the American Stock Exchanges. Telequote II was developed by the Teleregister Corporation, of Stamford. (Telequote I performed the same function, in a less elaborate way outside of N.Y.), it was also developed by the Teleregister Corporation.”
Author: Brodeur, Paul
Source: New Yorker: 1962-01-20: p. 19-23
Year: 1963
Quote: “For years, our friend had subscribed to a telephone-answering service, but recently, in an access of modernity, he decided to employ a recording gadget instead, and so informed the answering service. By return mail, he received a letter of dissuasion and supplication from the company. Many people (the letter reasonably pointed out I will be confused and annoyed by having a machine answer their call, and still hang up without leaving any message at all. Patients look for personal interest in their calls, and the cold and mechanical approach of a machine destroys personal confidence.”
Author: Boutwell, Jane
Source: New Yorker: 1963-02-16: p. 23-27
Year: 1966
Quote: “The President has tried everything short of plastic surgery to remodel his image. To polish his TV personality, Johnson has tried contact lenses, light face makeup, and a variety of electronic prompting gadgets, only belatedly realizing that he winds up looking shifty-eyed and irritable. In desperation, L.BJ. of late has banned all TV cameras from his press conferences.”
Author:
Source: Time Magazine: 1966/09/23
Year: 1968
Quote: “The whites are still proud of Europe, their point of take-off on their way enroute to America. But what of the Black man? — Save his pour soul == The American TV, the piped-in brainwashing home equipment ever designed by man, has reorientated the Black man into constant ferocious denounciation of Africa. But the Black man owes no apologies, for he was confronted with a powerful gadget and situation over which he has no strong control.”
Author: Nwuneli, Emmanuel
Source: Milwaukee Star (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) • 06-08-1968 • Page 13
Year: 1968
Quote: “Programmed with the salaries of the participants, the device starts with the push of a button and, on a wall-mounted Scoreboard, flashes a minute-by-minute reckoning of the conference cost. The more and the mightier the brass, Lyngso explains, “ the more power is used, the faster the wheels run and the larger the bill becomes. “ # A tinkerer who started out in a small basement shop 16 years ago, Lyngso credits the gadget with cutting down the proliferation of meetings that have come with the growth of his own firm, Soren T. Lyngso, Dansk Servo Teknik, to two plants and 160 employees. He finds that the machine starts saving money even before conferences start: nowadays his managers whenever possible skip calling meetings rather than watch the machine add up the cost.”
Author:
Source: Time Magazine: 1968/04/05
Year: 1969
Quote: “Nance was graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in English. He writes: “After an exposure to the fascination of electronic gadgetry during service in the Air Force I changed fields and studied physics and mathematics at Purdue University. For seven years I was a research engineer with General Motors, finally combining my two loves–words and gadgets–as a technical editor.”
Author:
Source: Scientific American 221, (July 1969). p. 16
Year: 1969
Quote: “Within a couple of years. computers will not only pinpoint crime target areas but also automatically assign patrols when and where they are needed, making possible what Reddin. calls “ instant cop? an officer at the scene of a call minutes after it’s made. Hipped on technology, Reddin wants gadgets that will permit officers to see in the dark, frisk suspects without touching them, # | and halt speeding automobiles without firing a shot. In his conception of law enforcement, computerization and gadgetry are not ends in themselves but will free officers to get at the real task of policing: knowing the people.”
Author: Mathews, Linda McVeight
Source: Atlantic Monthly: 1969: March: 84-6, 91-3
Year: 1970
Quote: “[…] the feeling that no little TV set could survive a shot like that so he took it out of the box, attached the battery pack and switched it on in the terminal. Some sputtering pictures showed up. “ See that, “ said the porter, “ she coming in good. “ It came as no great surprise to Towns when the pictures bleeped out and turned to darkness. There was a package of warranties in the box, but Towns had no heart to get started with them. Besides, he had the feeling that once a mechanical gadget was injured, it went downhill no matter what you did to it. He gave the porter a look and then tossed the set lightly into a trash container. Someone in the terminal said the astronauts were going to be down in forty-five minutes. There wasn’t any time to fool around now.”
Author: Friedman, Bruce Jay
Source: Harpers. March 1970. pp. 68-72.
Year: 1970
Quote: “Lately there is a new symbol of status. Free of charge, Washington’s C &; P Telephone Co. has installed ten of its still experimental “ picturephones “ in the offices of the highest presidential advisers. The gadgets, small TV sets attached to the telephone, allow the presidential elite to dial-in one another’s images as well as voices-not that any one of them is likely to forget what the others look like. Apart from broadcasting status, the picturephones contribute little to the smoother workings of Government. To Egghead Kissinger, they are a technological mystery. He will not call on the device, but does take calls, with a bit of fuming and fussing as he tries to work the thing.”
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Source: Time. 14 December 1970.
Year: 1970
Quote: “In adult life, in depressive and schizophrenic states, suicides and macabre mutilations are performed in the kitchen; and death by gas oven asphyxiation is a common type of suicide. Cases are reported where the individuals put their heads into the oven. The obsessive-compulsive neurotic fears sharp instruments and constantly worries about the gas heater being turned off or the toaster being disconnected. In the hysterical individual, the appliances often symbolize objects of both an oral and genital nature, wherever there can be substitute gratification and punishment. The hysterical patient may be fascinated with gadgetry and at the same time be worried about the safety of such automatic controls as timers, defrosters, and thermostats, as are built into the appliances. All modes of energy are transformed, neutralized, and regulated in the service of making life easier and supposedly more pleasureful. Very often the hope is that new devices will be both labor-saving and in the long run “ pay for themselves. “ Abetting the economic factor is the condensation of many processes and functions in the same unit.”
Author: Hsu, Sung-peng
Source: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1970
Year: 1971
Quote: “Shortly after noon––after a nearby siren yelped for a few seconds to remind one, if he had forgotten, of the perilous state of the world––Willie kicked on Lesser’s door with the heel of his shoe, holding in both arms, in fact weighed down by it, his massive typewriter. Lesser, for a surprised second, couldn’t imagine why he had come, was startled by the sight of him. Willie wore a blue-and-purple sack-like woolen African tunic over his overalls. His hair wasn’t Afro-styled, as Lesser had thought, but combed straight as though against the grain, with a part on the left side, and raised in back like a floor plank that had sprung up. The stringy goatee flowering under his chin lengthened his face and seemed to emphasize the protrusive quality of his eyes, more white than brown. Standing, he was about five ten, taller than Lesser had imagined. “ Could I park this gadget here till the morning? I would hate to have it stolen out of my office. I been hiding it in the closet but that ain’t hiding, if you dig. “ Lesser, after hesitation, dug. “ Are you through for the day? “ “ What’s it to you? “ “ Nothing, I only thought? “ “ I go on from eight to twelve or thereabouts, “ said the black, “ full four hours’ work and then goof off?”
Author: Malamud, Bernard
Source: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 1971.
Year: 1971
Quote: “You’d want it to be able to telephone the police automatically. But I’ve decided, for now, not to get involved in the financial and legal transactions I’d have to have with the phone company before I’d he allowed to connect the computer to the phone and have it place calls or answer the phone when was away and dialled it to get a status report on the house. ‘’ Mr. Prugh is quick to admit that a number of relatively inexpensive gadgets – a clock, a calculator, a player piano, a text-editing typewriter,a burglar-alarm system, and so on – can, separately, perform many of the tasks his computer has learned, and also that his computer is “ not what we at the Defense Department call cost-effective. “ However, he admires the computer’s versatility (“ No clock can cope with my income taxes “), and he believes that a home computer will be economically feasible in the not very distant future.”
Author: Trow, George
Source: New Yorker. 16 January 1971.
Year: 1972
Quote: “Other than his merchandising interests and his fondness for tinkering with electrical gadgets, Muntz had also been involved in auto racing during the 1930s, owning three midget racers. Being retired at last, he now saw himself sliding slowly into a funk of boredom.”
Author:
Source: Sports Illustrated. 17 April 1972.
Year: 1973
Quote: “I’ve taken a great many pains, Mr. Crainpool – and gone to considerable expense, too, I might add – to reinforce your clerk’s ambience, to clericalize you. Yet you persist in your taste for the newfangled. I suppose you’ve been thinking in terms of electric typewriters and Xerox machines. What’s next, sir, conference telephones, gadgets that take your calls? Mr. Crainpool is unavailable right now. Your message will be recordedand played back for him when he returns. Please begin speaking when you hear the electronic bleep… Bleep.’ “ “ No, sir. “ “ No, sir.’ You’re damned right, sir, no sir. And what happens to the thick ledgers with the careful rulings inked down the center of the page? The big gray and black cardboard boxes with their snaps and clasps and […]”
Author: Elkin, Stanley
Source: Random House. 1973
Year: 1975
Quote: “Until the mid-1960s, air-traffic controllers had to rely on old-fashioned radar to scan the skies and keep track of moving “ blips “ that represented individual aircraft. Now the controllers’ vision has been increased enormously by improved radar and new electronic gadgetry. Every aircraft that flies above 18,000 ft. and in designated control areas carries a radar transponder that answers ground radar by flashing an identifying signal.”
Author:
Source: Time Magazine, 22 Dec 1975.
Year: 1975
Quote: “There are two basic kinds of security systems. The first is “ perimeter “ defense, or covering-the exterior of a facility to guard against entry. The second is “ volume, “ or spatial intrusion defense, to detect an intruder once he is inside. The options in these categories are almost endless. Sensor Systems, Inc., of 2 N. Riverside Plaza, which designs and markets security systems for some of Chicago’s largest commercial and institutional clients, specializes in sophisticated gadgetry. It recently helped design a nearly foolproof perimeter system for a Chicago area plant handling nuclear materials.”
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Source: Chicago Tribune. 15 May 1975.
Year: 1975
Quote: “Evolutionary successor of the minicomputer, the microcomputer is a set of microelectronic “chips” serving the various computer functions. It has opened up new realms of computer applications. […] In the 1980s microcomputers will be commonplace in the home in consumer electronic products, appliances, security devices and innumerable gadgets and toys.”
Author: Vacroux, André G.
Source: Scientific American 232, (May 1975). p. 32-40
Year: 1976
Quote: “The only thing he could see was a tricycle in the background, dimly. “ Big B., can you hear me? “ “ Where are you? “ “ It’s Endor. “ “ Talking from where? “ “ On the floor, “ the voice said. “ Don’t want you to see me. But I want you to hear. Can you do that? “ “ You’re coming in weak. “ “ How about now? “ “ Better. “ “ I’m down on the floor shouting up into the talk gadget. Don’t try to see me. Do you know where I am? “ “ Down on the floor. “ “ I mean where in what locale. “ “ The hobby room. “ “ Good guess. “ “ I recognized the tricycle. “ “ That’s where I am, all right. Walked in early this morning. Came in from the hole. Came limping through the mud and grass. I’ve been digging, lad. Clawing my way down.”
Author: DeLillo, Don
Source:
Year: 1977
Quote: “Serena phoned. She was flying into Los Angeles and was free to spend the night with him, she said. He immediately canceled his other plans and agreed to collect her in three hours at the airport. Almost automatically, he asked where she was. “ There is no message, “ she whispered. Levanter took a taxi to the airport. He was half an hour early and dismissed the cab. He wandered through the lounges, watched the departing passengers lined up to pass through the gates of the electronic surveillance gadgetry, had a cup of coffee, and finally went to stand at the entrance of the terminal, where he was to meet her.”
Author: Anthony, Piers
Source:
Year: 1983
Quote: “Okay, come on over to the chart table. “ The Dallas’ chart table was a new gadget wired into the BC-10 and projected onto a TV-type glass screen four feet square. The display moved as the Dallas moved. This made paper charts obsolete, though they were kept anyway. Charts can’t break.”
Author: Arthur, Elizabeth
Source:
Year: 1988
Quote: “Your file says that you are very clever with electronic gadgets, Gennady losifovich. “ Filitov waved at the file folder on his desk. “ That is my job, Comrade Colonel. “ Bondarenko was more than just “clever,” and both knew it. He had helped develop laser rangefinders for battlefield use, and until recently had been engaged in a project to use lasers in place of radios for secure front-line communications.”
Author: Clancy, Tom
Source:
Year: 1988
Quote: “The tapes that prompted Richard Nixon’s Watergate resignation in 1974 might never have existed had he not been such a klutz with gadgets. Nixon was reluctant to have his conversations recorded, writes former Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman in Prologue, a National Archives publication. But if there had to be a taping system, the President said, he wanted something simple – like Lyndon Johnson’s manually operated setup. # Haldeman was worried that his chief would forget to turn the gizmo on when he wanted it, or – worse – to turn it off when he didn’t. Haldeman also fretted “ that this President was far too inept”
Author:
Source: Time Magazine: 1988/09/12
Year: 1988
Quote: “This new gadget facilitates computer use in the home. It’ s Spectrum AC (for alternating current), a new type of modem that allows data to be transmitted at high speed over the standard electrical wiring in homes. Computers and accessories wouldn’ t need to have special cables connecting them, making it easier to move them between rooms without clumsy rewiring. NEC Corp. of Japan says the product will be available in the U.S. later this year, probably retailing below $300. Since at least two modems are needed. . .”
Author: Tannenbaum, Jeffrey A.
Source: Wall Street Journal: 19880111: . pg. 1
Year: 1989
Quote: “The list of “ indirect “ spinoffs from Project Apollo features one of the most revolutionary gadgets of modern times: the home computer. Back in the late 1950s, the state-of-the-art computer was the size of a city block. The space program encouraged an extraordinary process of miniaturization that down-sized master computers. As it happened, the Eagle’s 17-pound model was not equal to its task. But its development helped spark the personal-computer revolution.”
Author: Hurt, Harry III
Source: Newsweek: 1989: : 48-49
Year: 1989
Quote: ““When us older guys got into ham radio, we didn’t have that much to distract us,” says Texas radio amateur Jerry Stover, 69. “Now they’ve got television, computers, video-all sorts of electronic gadgets. And lifestyles have changed.” “The trouble is nobody really knows about ham radio,” says Steve Bosnyak III (KA9ZZA), 15, a Taft High School student.”
Author: Petersen, Clarence
Source: Chicago Tribune: 19890815: . pg. 1
Year: 1990
Quote: “The deal makes Geffen’s new Japanese employer the biggest entertainment company in the world, a massive experiment in corporate synergy (page 51). MCA brings Universal Studios, movie theaters, theme parks, MCA records and publishing to the altar; Matsushita mass-produces every conceivable electronic gadget, from Panasonic and Technics stereos to rice cookers and computers. The deal is the largest Japanese acquisition of an American company ever, and raises some of the same thorny foreign-ownership questions that surrounded Sony’s nearly $5 billion purchase of Columbia Pictures in 1989.”
Author: Schwartz, J. and Murr, A.
Source: Newsweek: 12/10/90: Vol. 116 Issue 24, p44
Year: 1991
Quote: “Tom, a telephone company executive, happened to have a device known as a caller ID box connected to his phone. This gadget, available for about $6 a month in perhaps 40% of phone exchanges nationwide, keeps a log of many incoming calls, including the telephone numbers from which they were placed.”
Author: Dingle, D.T.
Source: Money: Aug91: Vol. 20 Issue 8, p96