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19-letter words containing a, d, r, i, t

  • bit-paired keyboard — (hardware)   (Obsolete, or "bit-shift keyboard") A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. Looking at the ASCII chart, we find: high low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was *not* the weirdest variant of the QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives became known as "bit-paired" and "typewriter-paired" keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical - and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The "typewriter-paired" standard became universal, "bit-paired" hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
  • blue-breasted quail — a small, brightly colored quail, Coturnix chinensis, of southern Asia and Australia, widely kept as a cage bird.
  • blue-tongued lizard — a large Australian lizard, Tiliqua scincoides, characterized by having a cobalt-blue tongue.
  • board certification — the process of certifying that a physician has passed an examination and met the standards of a professional organization representing a particular medical specialty.
  • board of trade unit — a unit of electrical energy equal to 1 kilowatt-hour
  • boat-tailed grackle — a large grackle, Quiscalus major, of the southeastern U.S., that folds its tail into a shape resembling the keel of a boat.
  • brand contamination — the process by which the reputation of a particular brand or product becomes tarnished by adverse publicity
  • brush-tailed possum — any of several widely-distributed Australian possums of the genus Trichosurus
  • building contractor — an individual or company that contracts for the construction of houses, etc
  • butabarbital sodium — a barbiturate, C 10 H 15 N 2 NaO 3 , used as a sedative and hypnotic.
  • cable-stayed bridge — a type of suspension bridge in which the supporting cables are connected directly to the bridge deck without the use of suspenders
  • capital expenditure — expenditure on acquisitions of or improvements to fixed assets
  • captain of industry — You can refer to the owners or senior managers of industrial companies as captains of industry.
  • cat scratch disease — a disorder characterized by fever and swelling of the lymph glands, caused by a viral infection resulting from the scratch or bite of a cat.
  • cat-scratch disease — an ailment characterized by fever and swollen glands and believed to be caused by bacteria transmitted by the scratch or bite of a cat
  • cathodic protection — a technique for protecting metal structures, such as steel ships and pipelines, from electrolytic corrosion by making the structure the cathode in a cell, either by applying an electromotive force directly or by putting it into contact with a more electropositive metal
  • chamber of deputies — the lower house of the legislature of certain countries, as Italy.
  • chandrasekhar limit — the upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf, equal to 1.44 solar masses. A star having a mass above this limit will continue to collapse to form a neutron star
  • chartered librarian — (in Britain) a librarian who has obtained a qualification from the Library Association in addition to a degree or diploma in librarianship
  • chassis dynamometer — A chassis dynamometer is a piece of test equipment fitted with rollers for the wheels of a vehicle, that is capable of providing drive input and measuring output such as power and torque at the wheels.
  • cherenkov radiation — the electromagnetic radiation produced when a charged particle moves through a medium at a greater velocity than the velocity of light in that medium
  • chicken-fried steak — a cheap cut of beefsteak that is fried in batter
  • chloroplatinic acid — a red-brown, crystalline, water-soluble solid, H 2 PtCl 6 ⋅6H 2 O, used chiefly in platinizing glass, metals, and ceramic ware.
  • christian democracy — the beliefs, principles, practices, or programme of a Christian Democratic party
  • circular definition — a definition in which the definiendum (the expression being defined) or a variant of it appears in the definiens (the expression that defines it).
  • circulating decimal — repeating decimal
  • clandestine entrant — a person who hides in or on a vehicle as it enters the United Kingdom with the aim of avoiding immigration controls
  • cobaltous hydroxide — a rose-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Co 2 O 3 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in the preparation of cobalt salts and in the manufacture of paint and varnish driers.
  • coefficient of drag — the ratio of the drag on a body moving through air to the product of the velocity and surface area of the body.
  • colorado tick fever — a usually mild viral disease occurring in the Rocky Mountain regions of the United States, carried by a tick, Dermacentor andersoni, and characterized by fever, sensitivity to light, headache, and leg and back pain.
  • command interpreter — (operating system)   A program which reads textual commands from the user or from a file and executes them. Some commands may be executed directly within the interpreter itself (e.g. setting variables or control constructs), others may cause it to load and execute other files. When an IBM PC is booted BIOS loads and runs the MS-DOS command interpreter into memory from file COMMAND.COM found on a floppy disk or hard disk drive. The commands that COMMAND.COM recognizes (e.g. COPY, DIR, PRN) are called internal commands, in contrast to external commands which are executable files.
  • comminuted fracture — a fracture in which the bone is splintered or fragmented
  • committed data rate — (communications)   (CDR) The data transfer rate that an ISP guarantees a virtual circuit will carry. The CDR is the data portion of Committed Information Rate (CIR).
  • common de-nominator — Mathematics. a number that is a multiple of all the denominators of a set of fractions.
  • compact disc player — a machine for playing compact discs
  • compact disc writer — (storage)   (CD burner) A device that can write data to Compact Disc Recordable (CD-R) or Compact Disc Rewritable (CD-RW) discs. Now both these CD formats are often combined with a DVD writer.
  • compact disk player — a device for playing compact disks.
  • computer dictionary — Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
  • confederate jasmine — star jasmine.
  • confidence interval — an interval of values bounded by confidence limits within which the true value of a population parameter is stated to lie with a specified probability
  • consultation period — a period during which consultations are held before a policy decision is made
  • contemplative order — a religious order whose members are devoted to prayer rather than works.
  • contra-guide rudder — a rudder having a horizontal offset of its upper and lower halves to improve the flow characteristics of the propeller race.
  • contradistinctively — In contradistinction.
  • contradistinguished — Simple past tense and past participle of contradistinguish.
  • contradistinguishes — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of contradistinguish.
  • coordinate geometry — analytic geometry.
  • coordination number — the number of coordinated species surrounding the central atom in a complex or crystal
  • cordillera oriental — the eastern ranges of the Andes, in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru.
  • counter-advertising — the act or practice of calling public attention to one's product, service, need, etc., especially by paid announcements in newspapers and magazines, over radio or television, on billboards, etc.: to get more customers by advertising.
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