It conjured images of complex, expensive whole-house systems that required regular visits from technicians and were prone to malfunction the moment you wanted to show off your home theater to neighbors.
Yes, controlling the costs of space missions, while ensuring their success and safety, will be a steep challenge for NASA, but NASA's workforce, from technicians to top executives, is among the government's most dedicated and capable.
He struggled to breathe, brightened at any mention of the first lady and was canny enough to take his cues from technicians, who would be candid with him about what the doctors really meant.
The latest iPhone is a surprisingly common sight in Havana, and there are hundreds of privately run mobile-phone stores where people can buy and repair equipment and get applications installed on their phone directly from technicians' computers instead of the internet.
Lewis said, "In my first three days at Paramount, nobody could find me" — because he was wandering the studio, talking with and learning from technicians in every department, from camera and sound to lighting and editing (but, he said, not the contracts department — "not lawyers").
Accordingly, type design was taken over from technicians and engineers by lettering and calligraphic artists and scholars, including Stanley Morison, Jan van Krimpen, William Addison Dwiggins, Bruce Rogers, Frederic Goudy, and Hermann Zapf, who designed some of the best typefaces of the 20th century.
"Every employee from technician to manager was hot for the new, exciting stuff," he went on.
In less than a year, Mr. Redden ascended from technician to manager and doubled his pay, to $30,000 annually.
An e-mail message from Technician Sahlberg on Sept. 2 alerted The Times that the identifications were incorrect; this correction was delayed for verification of the correct identifications.
Actual performance of a technician in section j from technician's category k at period t.
Expected performance of a worker in section j from technician's category k at period t.
