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"Cyberpunk worked when the Internet was in its hand-wound crystal radio phase, when you had to be a sort of hobbyist to do e-mail, and it all had a very steep learning curve. Those days are over."
- William Gibson

Transparent Aluminum  
  Invisible light steel.  

As far as I know, the first instance of the phrase "transparent aluminum".

"This ship is five hundred feet in length, eighty feet wide amidships, and is perhaps forty-five feet high, which includes the cabin. It is built of transparent steel, the discovery of which I made while experimenting with machinery for taking substance from the air. I had already discovered the means of taking palatable food and water from the air, not to mention the salt and all other requirements of the human body. In the discovery of the metal of which this ship is built, I found that it was as bard and tough as steel, and lighter than aluminum. I therefore built my electromagnetic motors of this material. They, too, are transparent, save for the parts of copper and iron which constitute the electro-magnets. The gas bag is built of the same material, with many girders running crosswise and lengthwise of the bag. It is filled with helium, which I have also succeeded in taking from the air. I have a machine for the purpose of making each. Therefore, when your friend crashed into me near the Mohave desert and broke a dangerous hole in the forward end of the bag, I gained altitude as quickly as possible. I made the necessary amount of what you may call transparent aluminum and the necessary repair.
Technovelgy from The Space Hermit, by E. Edsel Newton.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1929
Additional resources -

This is what it looked like:

It seemed like a sort of dirigible car made of glass and there was a man standing inside it and staring at us. That's all I saw of him when Claxon smashed the Waco right into the thing."


('The Space Hermit' by E. Edsel Newton)

I gasped. I could not doubt Sails.

"I circled and started back to get a good view of whatever it was up there. I got only a glimpse of it before it disappeared like a bullet into the sky above. It looked like a huge glass fish turned on its side with a cabin suspended underneath, and it was transparent and I could see inside the thing.

For those who are curious, the first appearance (!) of Wonder Woman's invisible jet was in 1942.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Space Hermit
  More Ideas and Technology by E. Edsel Newton
  Tech news articles related to The Space Hermit
  Tech news articles related to works by E. Edsel Newton

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