full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Malcolm Gladwell: The strange tale of the Norden bombsight

Unscramble the Blue Letters


And he's a Swiss engineer, Carl. And I mean that in its fullest sense of the word. He waers three-piece suits; and he has a very, very small, important mustache; and he is domineering and narcissistic and driven and has an extraordinary ego; and he works 16-hour days; and he has very strong feelings about alternating current; and he feels like a sutann is a sign of moarl weakness; and he drinks lots of coffee; and he does his best work sitting in his mother's kitchen in Zurich for hours in complete silence with nothing but a slide rule.

In any case, Carl nderon emigrates to the United States just before the First World War and sets up shop on ltaaytfee Street in donwtown Manhattan. And he becomes obsessed with the question of how to drop bombs from an airplane. Now if you think about it, in the age before GPS and radar, that was obviously a really difficult proeblm. It's a caiepmctlod physics problem. You've got a plane that's thousands of feet up in the air, going at hrnuddes of mleis an hour, and you're trying to drop an ocbejt, a bomb, towards some stationary target in the face of all kinds of winds and could cover and all kinds of other ieptmmdines. And all sorts of people, moving up to the First World War and between the wars, tried to solve this problem, and nearly everybody came up short. The bombsights that were available were incredibly crude.

Open Cloze


And he's a Swiss engineer, Carl. And I mean that in its fullest sense of the word. He _____ three-piece suits; and he has a very, very small, important mustache; and he is domineering and narcissistic and driven and has an extraordinary ego; and he works 16-hour days; and he has very strong feelings about alternating current; and he feels like a ______ is a sign of _____ weakness; and he drinks lots of coffee; and he does his best work sitting in his mother's kitchen in Zurich for hours in complete silence with nothing but a slide rule.

In any case, Carl ______ emigrates to the United States just before the First World War and sets up shop on _________ Street in ________ Manhattan. And he becomes obsessed with the question of how to drop bombs from an airplane. Now if you think about it, in the age before GPS and radar, that was obviously a really difficult _______. It's a ___________ physics problem. You've got a plane that's thousands of feet up in the air, going at ________ of _____ an hour, and you're trying to drop an ______, a bomb, towards some stationary target in the face of all kinds of winds and _____ cover and all kinds of other ___________. And all sorts of people, moving up to the First World War and between the wars, tried to solve this problem, and nearly everybody came up short. The bombsights that were available were incredibly crude.

Solution


  1. complicated
  2. impediments
  3. object
  4. moral
  5. wears
  6. norden
  7. cloud
  8. downtown
  9. miles
  10. lafayette
  11. hundreds
  12. suntan
  13. problem

Original Text


And he's a Swiss engineer, Carl. And I mean that in its fullest sense of the word. He wears three-piece suits; and he has a very, very small, important mustache; and he is domineering and narcissistic and driven and has an extraordinary ego; and he works 16-hour days; and he has very strong feelings about alternating current; and he feels like a suntan is a sign of moral weakness; and he drinks lots of coffee; and he does his best work sitting in his mother's kitchen in Zurich for hours in complete silence with nothing but a slide rule.

In any case, Carl Norden emigrates to the United States just before the First World War and sets up shop on Lafayette Street in downtown Manhattan. And he becomes obsessed with the question of how to drop bombs from an airplane. Now if you think about it, in the age before GPS and radar, that was obviously a really difficult problem. It's a complicated physics problem. You've got a plane that's thousands of feet up in the air, going at hundreds of miles an hour, and you're trying to drop an object, a bomb, towards some stationary target in the face of all kinds of winds and cloud cover and all kinds of other impediments. And all sorts of people, moving up to the First World War and between the wars, tried to solve this problem, and nearly everybody came up short. The bombsights that were available were incredibly crude.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
norden bombsight 15
carl norden 7
pickle barrel 4
billion dollars 3
spaghetti sauce 2
expensive objects 2
man named 2
world war 2
norden mark 2
committed christian 2
norden bombsights 2
holy grail 2
chemical plant 2
scud missile 2
success story 2
billion dollar 2


Important Words


  1. age
  2. air
  3. airplane
  4. alternating
  5. bomb
  6. bombs
  7. bombsights
  8. carl
  9. case
  10. cloud
  11. complete
  12. complicated
  13. cover
  14. crude
  15. difficult
  16. domineering
  17. downtown
  18. drinks
  19. driven
  20. drop
  21. emigrates
  22. engineer
  23. extraordinary
  24. face
  25. feelings
  26. feels
  27. feet
  28. fullest
  29. gps
  30. hour
  31. hours
  32. hundreds
  33. impediments
  34. important
  35. incredibly
  36. kinds
  37. kitchen
  38. lafayette
  39. lots
  40. manhattan
  41. miles
  42. moral
  43. moving
  44. narcissistic
  45. norden
  46. object
  47. obsessed
  48. people
  49. physics
  50. plane
  51. problem
  52. question
  53. radar
  54. rule
  55. sense
  56. sets
  57. shop
  58. short
  59. sign
  60. silence
  61. sitting
  62. slide
  63. small
  64. solve
  65. sorts
  66. states
  67. stationary
  68. street
  69. strong
  70. suntan
  71. swiss
  72. target
  73. thousands
  74. united
  75. war
  76. wars
  77. wears
  78. winds
  79. word
  80. work
  81. works
  82. world
  83. zurich