New Wrinkles

"Audrey." Scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories have tried for years to build a machine that will "understand" human speech. First step was to transform spoken words into dancing patterns on a cathode-ray tube. Now they have built "Audrey" (for automatic digit recognition), an electronic telephone girl that recognizes ten spoken digits, 1 through 0. Hooked up to an ordinary telephone, Audrey listens to a spoken telephone number and matches its digits against sound patterns in her memory. Then she flashes numbered lights to show what she has heard. Audrey can be tuned to one man's vocal manners and will read his speech correctly 98% of the time. When Bell scientists equip her with a larger vocabulary and teach her to recognize anyone's speech, they hope to put her to work as a telephone operator.

Canned Pump. In the atomic-submarine Nautilus (TIME, Dec. 17, 1951), the same heavy water that promotes the nuclear reaction in its atomic furnace will heat the boilers of its steam turbines. This stuff will be dangerous. Even the best modern pumps spring leaks, and the smallest leak of radioactive water would make the submarine's cramped quarters uninhabitable. Westinghouse now has an answer to this atomic-age hazard: a "canned" pump, with all its electrical parts locked tight in stainless steel. The whole pump is buried in the water pipe, needing no seals or packing that can leak. One such buried pump has been running steadily at full load for 13,000 hours (1 1/2 years).

Sound Cleaner. Fairbanks Ward Industries in Chicago told about its portable "Electro-Sonic" washing machine: a foot-high aluminum cylinder with an electrically activated heart. The heart's beatings create sound waves too high for the human ear to hear. The waves ripple through the wash water, driving soapy jets through the tightest-woven cloth. There are no drum or paddles to maltreat the clothes. The machine, says Fairbanks Ward can wash its own weight (14 lbs.) in clothes at one time.

Grass Cutter. Well ahead of spring's burgeoning, the United States Rubber Co. announced that "Kem-Kut," its new chemical growth inhibitor (maleic hydrazide) can slow down a fast growing lawn for a whole season. Mixed with water and sprayed on the most aggressive turf, Kem-Kut slows cell division. The grass stays green but grows no more than it does through a normal winter. Largescale application of Kem-Kut requires a power sprayer that few amateur lawn-tenders are likely to own. But, with only a hand spray, a man can slow up the grass around flower beds, trees and in other hard-to-cut places.

Super-Speed Camera. University of California scientists described their new camera that needs less than a three-millionth of a second to click off a single picture. Unlike conventional motion-picture cameras with moving rolls of film the U.C. camera has two stationary strips of film and a bank of lenses. A thin mirror, spinning at 10,000 r.p.m., flashes the moving image from lens to lens down the film strips. As many as 100 snapshots can be taken in 1/120,000th of a second. Probable purpose of the superspeed camera: to photograph the luminous, super sonic shock wave from the early stages of exploding A-bombs.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.