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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner

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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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Adam Link's Vengeance
  More Ideas and Technology by Eando Binder
  Tech news articles related to Adam Link's Vengeance
  Tech news articles related to works by Eando Binder

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