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cruiser
cruiser large, fast, moderately armed warship, intermediate in type between the aircraft carrier and the destroyer. During World War II, battle cruisers operated as small battleships, combining in one vessel maximum qualities of gun caliber, armor protection, and speed. Upon the retirement of the ...
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spark chamber
spark chamber in physics, device for recording the passage of elementary particles produced by reactions in a particle accelerator . Particles pass through a stack of metal plates or wire grids that are maintained with high voltage between alternate layers. A high-pressure gas fills the gaps bet...
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battery
battery in criminal and tort law, the unpermitted touching of any part of the person of another, or of anything worn, carried by, or intimately associated at that moment (as a chair being sat on) with another. Contact must be intended by the aggressor, must be reasonably considered offensive, and m...
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entrapment
entrapment in law, the instigation of a crime in the attempt to obtain cause for a criminal prosecution. Situations in which a government operative merely provides the occasion for the commission of a criminal act (e.g., when an undercover agent posing as a narcotics dealer is approached by a would...
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elevator
elevator in machinery, device for transporting people or goods from one level to another. The term is applied to the enclosed structures as well as the open platforms used to provide vertical transportation in buildings, large ships, and mines; it is also applied to devices consisting of a continuo...
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cable television
cable television the transmission of televised images to viewers by means of coaxial cables. Cable systems receive the television signal, which is sent out over cables to individual subscribers, by a common antenna (CATV) or satellite dish. Early cable systems developed in the late 1940s to improve...
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John Ancrum Winslow
John Ancrum Winslow 1811-73, American naval officer, b. Wilmington, N.C. Appointed a midshipman in 1827, he served in the Mexican War and was commissioned commander in 1855. In the Civil War, Winslow first served with the Union flotilla operating on the upper Mississippi River. Promoted to captain ...
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Bill Gates
Bill Gates (William Henry Gates 3d), 1955-, American business executive, b. Seattle, Wash. At the age of 19, Gates founded (1974) the Microsoft Corp., a computer software firm, with Paul Allen. They began by purchasing the rights to convert an existing software package. In 1980 they agreed to produ...
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omnivore
omnivore (diversivore) A heterotroph that feeds on both plants and animals, and thus operates at a range of trophic levels....
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Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), independent executive bureau of the U.S. government established by the National Security Act of 1947, replacing the wartime Office of Strategic Services (1942-45), the first U.S. espionage and covert operations agency. While the CIA's covert operations receive t...
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