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"IMHO, having students do computer games projects is absolutely the best possible way to teach programming, graphics, software engineering, object oriented programming, etc."
- Rudy Rucker
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| 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:
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.
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)
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Tech news articles related to works by E. Edsel Newton
| Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly |
| Nano-Chainmail 2D Mechanically Interlocked Polymer |
| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| FlexRAM Liquid Metal RAM And One Particular SF Movie Robot |
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
