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"In my mind I have gone all over the universe, which may make it less important for me to make piddling little trips... I did enjoy seeing Stonehenge. It looked exactly the way I thought it would look."
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As far as I know, this is the first use of the idea of connecting what we now call a television or video camera to a telescope in science fiction.
Here is another excerpt with more details on how this is used:
A portlike door opened with a brisk swiftness in the
blinding sunlight. A long metal arm reached out. A
lens glittered at its end. A little scanning-disk began
to twinkle vividly...
Presently the long lens-bearing tube changed its position. The lens had pointed roughly toward the sun.
It was as if an observation had been taken to find the
Power Planet and check the course of the rocket. Now
it pointed back toward the earth.
Again seeming motionlessness save for the twinkling
of the scanning-disk. The scanning telescope would
bring the earth astoundingly close. The continents and
the polar caps would be quite distinct...
Historians may recall that, before LCDs or even cathode ray tubes, there was a mechanical means of creating, transmitting and showing a picture:
Mechanical-scanning methods were used in the earliest experimental television systems in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the first experimental wireless television transmissions was by John Logie Baird on October 2, 1925, in London. By 1928 many radio stations were broadcasting experimental television programs using mechanical systems. However the technology never produced images of sufficient quality to become popular with the public.
(Via Wikipedia)
Although not quite the same thing, the inventor of the scanning disk idea actually patented it as an "electric telescope" in 1884:
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
Splendid View Of Eclipse From Orbit Visualized And Repurposed By Arthur C. Clarke
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
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