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"I don't have an e-mail address. As much as I admire the Internet I suffer literally agoraphobia, which in it's original sense means a fear of the marketplace. I do not want to receive three hundred e-mail messages per week from strangers…"
- William Gibson

Chronoscopy  
  Using a device to view different points in time.  

"They’re not interested in chronoscopy. I've come to you, sir, because for two years I have been trying to obtain permission to do some time-viewing — chronoscopy, that is — in connection with my researches on ancient Carthage."
From The Dead Past, by Isaac Asimov.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1956
Additional resources -

Still a worthwhile concept to explore:

You saw the way my wife reacted to the news of a chronoscope in the basement. I had envisioned a chronoscope used for research purposes. All she could see was the personal pleasure of returning neurotically to a personal past, a dead past. The pure researcher, Foster, is in the minority. People like my wife would outweigh us.

For the government to encourage chronoscopy would have meant that everyone’s past would be visible. The government officers would be subjected to blackmail and improper pressure, since who on earth has a past that is absolutely clean. Organized government might become impossible.”

Compare to the time dredge from Time Dredge (1942) by Robert Arthur.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Dead Past
  More Ideas and Technology by Isaac Asimov
  Tech news articles related to The Dead Past
  Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov

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