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Moving Desks Not SciFi After All
One of my favorite examples of science fiction technovelgy are the metal desk cars from Golden Age author Don Wilcox's manic 1939 masterpiece Ben Gleed, King of Speed:
The eager King of Speed donned a brain stimulator, glanced at his assignments, mounted a car, sailed up the wall, and delved into the cases.
Charged with hope, he zipped from stack to stack...
(Read more about metal desk cars)
And now this, from the morning Twitters:
The research workers rode up and down among the walls of books and filing cabinets in little metal desk cars, like marbles chasing through an upright maze.
Over the years I've seen old pictures of the moving desks of the Central Social Institution of Prague, but I had no idea they were still in use. pic.twitter.com/d2wh9PtZLp
— Justin Joque (@jjoque) January 28, 2020
People often ask me to make definitive statements about who invented what idea, but it's really difficult to do. I had no idea these really existed.
Don Wilcox also wrote one of the very first stories about a Multi-Generation Space Voyage leaving from Earth.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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