make-and-break

The never-ending make-and-break of synapses contributed a crackling hail of complex rhythms.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 5 2010

This make-and-break activity - together with managing our media to provide our favorite sit-coms round the clock and protect us from knowing what our brave lads are having to do for them to a bunch of simply beastly foreigners, and manipulating our governments and promoting wars as we see in our various 'civilized' countries right now - is their trade!

Financial Crisis: What crisis? 2008

But indeed, when you talk to his staffers, they will tell you that this is obviously a make-and-break state for him.

CNN Transcript Jan 12, 2008 2008

Poised to put in an additional 20,000 troops into Iraq, three times the total number the British have in place, he is ready for a make-and-break "surge" that he hopes will bring peace to Iraq.

Archive 2007-01-01 Richard 2007

In addition the transmitter had make-and-break points such as an ordinary telephone bell has, and when these came in contact with the current, the springs inside continually gave out a sort of wail keyed to correspond with the pitch of the spring.

Ted and the Telephone Sara Ware Bassett 1920

I was going to file a nick in the make-and-break business but they're too foxy to give me a file.

Tom Slade on a Transport Percy Keese Fitzhugh 1913

If Reis had been willing to experiment with his apparatus so that it did not make-and-break, he would probably have been the true father of the telephone, besides giving it the name by which it is known.

Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. 1 1910

Bell's patent of 1876 was of an all-embracing character, which only the make-and-break principle, if practical, could have escaped.

Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. 1 1910

Incidentally it may be noted that Edison in experimenting with the Reis transmitter recognized at once the defect caused by the make-and-break action, and sought to keep the gap closed by the use, first, of one drop of water, and later of several drops.

Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. 1 1910

His machine was operated by a ` ` make-and-break '' current, and so could not carry the infinitely delicate vibrations made by the human voice.

The History of the Telephone 1910