Hard selling is aggressive advertising or salesmanship. In sales, a typical hard sell technique, as utilised by among other companies Kirbyvacuum cleaners, Zenith windows and doors, and Craftmatic adjustable beds, is to exhaust a potential customer into agreeing to buy. A standard soft sale might involve simply asking the potential customer if they should like to purchase a product. In a hard sell, often a potential customer will be presented with an arduous demonstration and talk, perhaps lasting for as much as three hours at the end of which the customer is so exhausted by the experience they can no longer rationalise and will sign almost anything to end their ordeal. During a hard sell presentation, if the potential customer tries to terminate the presentation is usual for the salesman to employ guilt as a weapon, asking the customer if he or she might telephone his boss to explain why he has failed to make the sale, often then passing the telephone to the potential to receive more sales pitch from the 'manager'. Hard sells are employed in the second-hand car industry to sell worthless warranties and expensive credit agreements. Customers are deliberately kept waiting for hours while 'the paperwork is arranged' and then hurriedly asked to sign various agreements, the exhausted customer by then is too tired and fed up to carefully check what they are signing. Research Hard Sell
Evangelista Torricelli was an Italian physicist. He was born in 1608 and died in 1647. He studied mathematics in Rome, and there became fascinated by the work of Galileo, whom he aided in the preparation of his Discorsi. Torricelli succeeded Galileo, on the latter's death, in the chair of philosophy and mathematics at Florence. Torricelli is famous for balancing the weight of a column of mercury against the pressure of the atmosphere, the principle of the barometer. The space above the mercury in a barometer is still called the Torricellian vacuum. Research Evangelista Torricelli
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan was a British inventor. He was born in 1828 at Sunderland and died in 1917. Educated privately, he joined a firm of manufacturing chemists at Newcastle as an assistant, where he turned his attention to improving methods of photography, in 1862 patenting the carbon process. He is best known, however, for his work on electric lighting, in 1860 producing a carbon filament lamp and in 1880 publicly exhibiting a successful carbon filament vacuumlamp. Research Joseph Swan
Pierre Gassendi (properly Pierre Gassend) was a French philosopher and mathematician. He was born in 1592 and died in 1655. At nineteen he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at Aix. His Exercitationes Paradoxicae adversus Aristotelem (1621), while they gave great offence to the Aristotelians, obtained him a canonry in the cathedral of Digne; but a second book of Exercitationes excited so much enmity that he ceased all direct attacks on Aristotle, contenting himself with the exaltation of Epicurus. He strenuously maintained the atomic theory, in opposition to the views of the Cartesians, and, in particular, asserted the doctrine of a vacuum. He was appointed lecturer on mathematics in the College-Royal at Paris in 1645, but was compelled to return to Digne from 1647 to 1653, in which interval he published his De Vita, Moribus et Doctrina Epicuri (1647), and Syntagma Philosophise Epicuri (1649). In 1653 he went again to Paris, where he published biographies of Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Peurbach, and Regiomontanus (John Muller). Research Pierre Gassendi
The diaphragm is the primary muscle responsible for respiration. Connected to the abdominal wall, the lumbar vertebra, the lower ribs, the sternum, and the pericardium of the heart by tendinous tissue, the thin diaphragm creates a partition between the thoracic and abdominal cavity. The
diaphragm forms a domed structure, and when the diaphragm muscle contracts, it lowers to a more flattened arrangement. This flattening causes a vacuum in the thoracic cavity and pressure in the abdominal cavity. The vacuum is filled by the expanding lung tissue and inhaled air. The pressure on the lower viscera are helpful in childbirth and in pushing fecal matter through the lower intestinal tract for expulsion. When the diaphragm relaxes to its domed structure, the air is exhaled and the lungs contract. Though the intercostal and abdominal muscles are also used in respiration, during sleep, it is primarily due to contractions of the diaphragm. The diaphragm is supplied by the inferior and superior phrenic arteries and the musculophrenic artery. It is innervated phrenic nerve. Research Diaphragm
An aerostatic press is a contrivance for extracting the colouring matter from dye-woods and for similar purposes. A liquid intended to carry with it the extract is brought into contact with the substance containing it, and a vacuum being made by an air-pump suitably applied, the pressure of the atmosphere forces the liquid through the intervening mass, carrying the colour or other soluble matter with it. Research Aerostatic Press
A brake is a contrivance for retarding or arresting motion by means of friction. In machinery it generally consists of a simple or compound lever, that may be pressed forcibly upon the periphery of a wheel, fixed upon a shaft or axis. A similar contrivance is attached to motor vehicles and railway carriages, but continuous brakes applied to every pair of wheels in a railway train, and operated by air either by the compression or vacuum method, are now generally used on railways. By the compression method, of which the Westinghouse brake is an example, the air is compressed by a pump on the locomotive and conveyed by pipes and tubes to cylinders which are under each car, and the pistons of which act on the brake-levers. In the vacuum method, exemplified in the Loughridge brake, the air is exhausted from the device beneath the car, and the pressure of the atmosphere operates the brake-levers. Research Brake
A computer is a programmable, usually electronic, device. The modern computer is generally accepted to have been invented during the 19th century by the mathematician Charles Babbage.
Computers are of two distinct types: analog and digital. Analog computers operate by manipulating electrical potentials, voltage in simple terms. Digital computers operate on fixed values, usually the binary code of one and zero. Modern computers are generally digital, and certainly all personal computers are digital.
Early digital computers used electrical relays as their two-state (binary) devices - two-state, they were either 'on' or 'off'. These early digital computers were first made during the 1940's, were large and were used for military purposes and in a few research laboratories. They were unreliable due to the unreliability of the physical contacts of the relays, and were very low speed - compared to modern computers. During the 1950's valves or vacuum tubes replaced relays in digital computers, and by the 1960's they in turn were replaced by transistors - enabling a computer with the power of one which filled a room in the 1950's to be built which would fit in a shoe box. Transistors were in turn replaced by the integrated circuit or 'silicon chip', allowing computers to be made even smaller and smaller.
In 1980 Sir Clive Sinclair revolutionised computing with the invention of the ZX80 domestic micro computer, and a year later marketed the ZX81, the first computer to be built with just four siliconchips. Shortly afterwards the personal computer or PC emerged aimed at the business market. Research Computer
The cryophorus is an instrument invented by Wollaston about 1812 to demonstrate the relation between evaporation at low temperatures and the production of cold. Wollaston's cryophorus consists of two glass globes united by a moderately-wide glass tube. Water is poured in and boiled to expel the air, and while boiling the apparatus is hermetically sealed. When it is to be used the water is made run into one of the globes, and the other is buried in a freezing-mixture. The aqueousvapour in the globe being thus condensed, a vacuum is produced, fresh vapour rises from the water in the other globe, which is again condensed, and this proceeds continuously until the water remaining in the globe has been, by the evaporation, cooled to the freezing-point. Research Cryophorus
Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, also commonly called bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, is a colourless, oily liquid with a slight odour. It was patented in 1933, and is primarily used as one of several plasticisers in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resins for fabricating flexible vinyl products. These PVC resins have been used to manufacture teething rings, pacifiers, soft squeeze toys, balls, shower curtains, raincoats, adhesives, polymeric coatings, components of paper and paperboard, defoaming agents, enclosures for food containers, animalglue, surface lubricants, flexible devices for administering parenteral solutions, and other products that must stay flexible and uninjurious for their lifetime. It is also used to manufacture vinyl gloves used for medical examinations and surgery. As a non-plasticizer, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate is used as a replacement for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in dielectric fluids for electric capacitors. It is also used as a solvent in erasable ink, an acaricide for use in orchards, an inert ingredient in pesticides, a component of cosmetic products, and a vacuumpump oil; it is used to detect leaks in respirators and to test air filtration systems. Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate is insoluble in water, miscible with mineral oil and hexane, and soluble in most organic solvents. It is easily dissolved in body fluids such as saliva and plasma. Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate is a combustible liquid; it may burn, but does not readily ignite. It produces poisonous gas in a fire. When heated to decomposition, it emits acrid smoke. Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate is also known as bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, bis(2- ethylhexyl)-1,2-benzenedicarboxylate, di(2-ethylhexyl)ortho-phthalate, di-sec-octyl phthalate, 2- ethylhexyl phthalate, NCI-c52733, disec-octyl phthalate, 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, bis (2- ethylhexyl) ester, DOP, DEHP, and octoil. Research Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Hard Sell
