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"In WWII, they had a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think the modern equivalent of that is that there are no jaded, bored people in the high-tech industry, in the land of really good hardcore geeks."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Mail-Post Letter-Ball | ||
| A system of sending mail quickly from town to town via steam-cannon-powered hollow spheres. |
| In those days, the ancient method of conveying the post having been found much too slow for so enlightened a people, an ingenious scheme had been devices, by which the letters were put into balls and discharged by steam-cannon, from place to place; every town and district having a piece of toile melalique or woven wire, suspended in the air so as to form a kind of net to arrest the progress of the ball, and being provided with a cannon to send it off again, when the letters belonging to that neighborhood should have been extracted: whilst, to prevent accident, the mail-post letter-balls were always preceded by one of similar description, made of thin wood, with a hole in its side, which, collecting the wind as it passed along, made a kind of whistling noise, to admonish people to keep out of the way. |
| Technovelgy from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century,
by Jane Webb Loudon. Published by Not known in 1828 Additional resources -
|
I enjoyed the juxtaposition of this extraordinary application of technology with the existence of carrier pigeons, which are also mentioned in the story.
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'...small electric motors at the principal joints worked the prosthetic framework by means of steel cables...'
'Living protoplasm incorporated into the Ampek F-a2 recording system...'
'Twoflower's Luggage, which was currently ambling along on its little legs...'
'He came to as the ship went into free flight, arching in a high parabola over the plains...'
'The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays...'
'The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it...'
‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.
