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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Iridium-Sponge Brain | ||
| A human-like metal brain for robots. |
Ah, to create a robot brain!
| Dr. Link, my creator, had taken
twenty years to build my complex metal
brain. I duplicated the feat in a month.
Dr. Link had had to devise every step
from zero. I had only to follow his
beaten path. As an added factor, I
work and think with a rapidity un-
known to you humans. And I work 24
hours a day.
...I switched on the electric current. Slowly I rheostated it up, to reach the point at which electrons would drum through the iridium-sponge brain, as thoughts drum in the human mind, under the forces of life. I watched, holding my breath—no, I have no breath. Sometimes I forget I am a metal man. But the idiom stands as descriptive of my feelings...
 (Robot from 'Adam Link's Vengeance' by Eando Binder) I heard the hum of the electron-discharge, coursing through the metal-brain I hoped to bring to life. And then — movement! The eyelids of the head flicked open. The brain saw. |
| Technovelgy from Adam Link's Vengeance,
by Eando Binder. Published by Amazing Stories in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the synthetic brain from Mad Robot (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the positronic brain from Reason (1941) by Isaac Asimov, the neuristor from My Name is Legion (1976), by Roger Zelazny and the artificial brain from Edmond Hamilton's 1926 classic The Metal Giants.
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'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
