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"The immediate problem with our meat brains is that they have no back-up. We can lose the most precious information we have from one bump on the head or stroke. You want a mind system with back-up that can access other databases."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Mechavalet | ||
| An entirely automated dressing assistant. |
| A closet door slid into a wall. A slender machine, five feet tall and with sixteen long metal tentacles rolled across the room on soft rubber wheels.
It looked like a mechanical monster from another world, but it was merely a very efficient machine to undress the house's masters—a mechavalet. The mechavalet paused behind the woman's back. Sixteen rubber-tipped metal tentacles reached out. The machine normally undressed a person with smoothness and gentleness. This time the house made it operate as roughly as possible.
 (Mechavalet from 'The Angry House' by Richard R. Smith) The sixteen tentacles moved swiftly and the machine tore the woman's dress to shreds before she could even scream. |
| Technovelgy from The Angry House,
by Richard R. Smith. Published by Startling Stories in 1955 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the electrical valet from The Lord of Tranerica (1939) by Stanton A. Coblentz and the dressing machine from Roll Out the Rollov! by Christopher Anvil.
See also the automatic valet from Looking Forward: A Dream of the United States of the Americas in 1999 (1899) by Arthur Bird, the butler-valet robot from The Jester (1951) by William Tenn, the robant from The Impossible Planet (1953) by Philip K. Dick, the consumption robots from The Midas Plague (1954) by Frederik Pohl, the robutler from The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970) by Harry Harrison and the autobutle from The Godmakers (1972) by Frank Herbert.
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Tech news articles related to works by Richard R. Smith
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
