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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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072489
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07248900.030
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1990-09-17
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NATION, Page 25American NotesROBOTSMeet Manny, One Tough G.I.
He talks. He walks. He does push-ups. He sweats. And he is
almost inhumanly brave. Well, strike the almost. Manny is a robot,
though with a body temperature of 98.6 degrees F and a chest that
heaves with each "breath," he is astonishingly lifelike. Come
October, he will wade into clouds of nerve gas, which his owner,
the U.S. Army, would never dare subject a real soldier to. Manny's
mission, at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, will be to
test protective clothing -- for example, to determine whether
walking, bending or sweating might cause the clothing to leak and
let gas through. Built for $2.35 million by Battelle's Pacific
Northwest Laboratories and based largely on Disney technology, this
is one expensive G.I. -- but then the taxpayer needn't worry about
feeding or paying him.