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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Chin Plates | ||
| A means of control within a space suit helmet; switching between options with the chin. |
Heinlein liked this idea so much, he reused it the following year in Starship Troopers (see the hands-free helmet).
| ...the helmet was monstrous. It contained a drinking tank, pill dispensers six on each side, a chin plate on the right to switch radio from "receive" to "send," another on the left to increase or decrease flow of air, an automatic polarizer for the face lens, microphone and earphones, space for radio circuits in a bulge back of the head, and an instrument board arched over the head. The instrument dials read backwards because they were reflected in an inside mirror in front of the wearer's forehead at an effective fourteen inches from the eyes. |
| Technovelgy from Have Space Suit - Will Travel,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Scribners in 1958 Additional resources -
|
You might also be interested in the dental switchboard from The Stars My Destination, a 1956 Alfred Bester novel.
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
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Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
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'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
