James Freyn, the narrator, is 106, a dropped-out philosophiser, reminiscing into Cowley's tape-recorder about a trip he made in his 20s into the interior of a god-forsaken British colony in South America, to collect two horses from a French-Swiss religious nutter worshipped by robotically obedient natives.

ECONOMIST: First novels

After experience with early hand- held calculators at Rockwell International, with the first consumer video tape recorder at Cartridge Television, and with the original computer controlled video editing systems at CMX Systems, a CBS-Memorex joint venture, he began his own management consulting business in 1974.

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But by using compression software and getting Galileo to record data on its tape-recorder for later transmission, almost all of the probe's objectives have still been achieved.

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It suffered from short-circuits, faulty radio and power systems, an unreliable tape-recorder, a sticky camera platform, and the loss of much of the gas that supplied its stabilising thrusters a problem overcome by repositioning its solar panels and main antenna so that they acted as solar sails, stabilising the probe via the gentle pressure of sunlight.

ECONOMIST: The long arm of the celestial repairman

Grant sported a hidden tape recorder during drinks with a former celebrity-beat journalist and published the most scandalous and interesting parts of their conversation in the New Statesman, including whether or not Rupert Murdoch had any idea about the phone hacking that journalists were doing at News of the World, one of the newspapers owned by News Corp.

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The central thread is interviews, recorded with shopkeepers and residents on an old-fashioned tape recorder.

ECONOMIST: Oxford

She sets her video camera and tape recorder, tools of the trade, on the passenger seat and blushes when she notices the boxed porta-potty in the backseat.

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They also had problems with the digital tape recorder, which were an even more amazing remote fix, but these were more remote control work-arounds to fix hardware issues rather than software patches.

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He began collecting material on a tape recorder when he was 20, starting with the Seeger family's maid, Elizabeth Cotten, a self-taught guitarist.

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