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"One can see the free software movement as a precusor for a "free hardware" or "free wetware" movement--one that will provide free libraries of designs for biological or nanotechnological products that replicators can be programmed to churn out."
- Charles Stross

Paralyzing Gun  
  Renders senseless any human in its path.  

Vince Southern's handsome features twisted into a sneer of contempt. He didn't land at once in the clearly marked area beside the building. Instead he guided his craft low over the observatory, sweeping the latter with a wide beam of powerful waves from a paralyzer gun. Anyone inside the structure would be temporarily rendered senseless.
Technovelgy from The Achilles Heel, by Raymond Z. Gallun.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1940
Additional resources -

The gun "disorganized the functions of brain and nervous centers".

Compare to the paralysis bomb from If This Goes On... (1940) by Robert Heinlein and the paralysis ray from Satellite Five (1938) by Arthur K. Barnes. Also, compare to Heinlein's paralysis bomb from Methuselah's Children (1941), the paralyzing eye from L. Sprague de Camp's The Best Laid Scheme (1941), the paralyzing ray from Ray Cumming's Blood of the Moon (1936), the paralyzing cone from The Atomic Conquerors by Edmond Hamilton (1927) and the para-beam from EC Tubbs' Mechanical Monarch (1958).

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Achilles Heel
  More Ideas and Technology by Raymond Z. Gallun
  Tech news articles related to The Achilles Heel
  Tech news articles related to works by Raymond Z. Gallun

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