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"I am first of all not a science fiction writer … I write, I suppose, what the Latin Americans call magic realism."
- Harlan Ellison

Face-Plate  
  The transparent front of a space suit helmet.  

First use of this phrase.

Back in the control room, Dunark and Sitar let their pressure decrease gradually to that of the terrestrial vessel and removed the face-plates from their helmets
From Skylark Three, by E.E. 'Doc' Smith.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1930
Additional resources -

Murray Leinster used the same phrase just a year later, in The Power Planet:

He buckled the last breast-strap, closed the face- plate of his helmet and tried out the air-supply, and opened the face-plate again.

The girl was clad in a suit exactly like his own. Baggy and clumsy, with an effect of transverse striping on every part of it, which was the wire reinforcement. She fumbled awkwardly with her own face-plate. It was three plates of Caldwell glass, which is opaque to radiations having a heat-effect.

Compare to the transparent space-helmet from The Sargasso of Space (1931) by Edmond Hamilton and the space helmet from The Disc-Men of Jupiter (1931) by Manly Wade Wellman.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Skylark Three
  More Ideas and Technology by E.E. 'Doc' Smith
  Tech news articles related to Skylark Three
  Tech news articles related to works by E.E. 'Doc' Smith

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