12 lines
2.5 KiB
HTML
12 lines
2.5 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>waldo</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../W.html" title="W"/><link rel="previous" href="WAITS.html" title="WAITS"/><link rel="next" href="walk.html" title="walk"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">waldo</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="WAITS.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">W</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="walk.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="waldo"/><dt xmlns="" id="waldo"><b>waldo</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/wol´doh/</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [From Robert A. Heinlein's story <i class="citetitle">Waldo</i>]
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</p></dd><dd><p> 1. A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human
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limb. When these were developed for the nuclear industry in the mid-1940s
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they were named after the invention described by Heinlein in the story,
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which he wrote in 1942. Now known by the more generic term <span class="firstterm">telefactoring</span>, this technology is of intense
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interest to NASA for tasks like space station maintenance. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. At Harvard (particularly by Tom Cheatham and students), this is
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used instead of <a href="../F/foobar.html"><i class="glossterm">foobar</i></a> as a metasyntactic variable
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and general nonsense word. See <a href="../F/foo.html"><i class="glossterm">foo</i></a>,
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<a href="../B/bar.html"><i class="glossterm">bar</i></a>, <a href="../F/foobar.html"><i class="glossterm">foobar</i></a>,
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<a href="../Q/quux.html"><i class="glossterm">quux</i></a>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="WAITS.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../W.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="walk.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">WAITS </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> walk</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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