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"I went [to the top of] Vehicle Assembly Building and looked down, and tears burst from my eyes. The size of this cathedral where the Rockets take off to go to the moon is so amazing."
- Ray Bradbury
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| Electronic Brain | ||
| Inorganic matter functioning as a source of intelligence and action. |
As far as I know, the earliest use of the phrase "electronic brain" in science fiction. As you will see, the author does not assert that it thinks for itself as a person does.
| “I believe this research we have been making has enabled us to construct a thinking, mechano-electronic brain!”
Then I saw the Brain. It was a glass globe, nine inches in diameter, mounted on a brass ring or base. A thick sheaf of fine, insulated wires led into the globe through this base; and on one side of the globe, but rather widely separated, were two platinum rings, inset into the glass, containing round lenses. These lenses resembled eyes, although the transparent sphere of glass in no wise gave the impression of possessing a face... I MAY say that within this globe was a glass pedicule projecting upward from the base, and that this pedicule upheld a six-sided prism of pale honey-yellow beryl. When functioning, the surface atoms of this crystal were kept in a state of suspension due to a modulated impact of alpha particles from a source contained within the globe, and this modulation was directly controlled by fast electrons emitted by the beryl crystal itself reacting on certain suitably placed targets. Furthermore, there was a curved glass shield, dotted with forty-nine tiny metal studs, each stud being connected to one of the wires which projected from the base. Martery hoped that once the crystal could be stimulated it would become aware that it could play on these studs with emitted electrons, much as a musician touches the keys of a piano. Also, that it would notice that the impulse imparted to these studs resulted in definite motions of the mechanical body in which he proposed to install it. I have mentioned two eyelike lenses; I may say that these lenses were placed so as to project images of surrounding objects on two facets of the beryl, which were coated with a film of light-sensitive matter... When at last the head was finally put in place, the general appearance of the mechanism was sufficiently human to be vaguely repellent. Then, for several whole days, Martery worked with a soldering iron inside the thing’s vitals, connecting the hundred or more wires which trailed down from the brain into the torso. |
| Technovelgy from Alchemy of Outer Space,
by D.L. James. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938 Additional resources -
|
It was time to activate the electronic brain within the robot:
“Look!”
He was pointing to the left arm of the mechanism...
I could no longer deny that the thing was emerging mentally from that black slough of non-existence into a queer kind of inorganic consciousness.
Those first arm motions were slow, purposeless; then they gradually became more vigorous and directed...
How did the brain work?
No, the Brain wouldn’t have to be taught, he declared; and before that night was over I fully agreed with him...
NOW it came clumping across the laboratory floor with this platinum pot, placing it on the workbench, underneath and in the full illumination of an overhanging electric bulb.
Martery’s excitement reached fever heat.
“Heavens!” he gasped, between teeth that were still clenched on the stem of his long-dead pipe. “It’s going to mix up something!”
The created material opens up a rift in space. Both men are pulled into it. The brain and its robot body disappear. The author speculates:
Or possibly the Brain’s consciousness had its real existence in some outer space. Perhaps the beryl crystal was but some integral part of a vaster organism projected into our three dimensioned space, a feeler or tentacle, extending along a fourth dimension, which it had chosen to withdraw.
Thus I reasoned. And on top of this came the sudden discovery that my hands and arms — in fact all parts of my body — were invisible to me. I held my hands over my eyes. They in no way impaired that strange sense of vision, for I could still see that ash-gray plane stretching infinitely away in all directions from me.
Compare to the computer brain from The Cosmic Blinker (1953) by Eando Binder, Multivac from Franchise (1955) by Isaac Asimov and the Central Computer from The City and the Stars (1956) by Arthur C. Clarke.
Martery twirled a knob on the front of the thing. I heard a switch click over.
Nothing happened.
That is, nothing happened except for a nebulous blue light which commenced to lap around inside that glassy skull.
I don’t think I realized just how tense I was until Martery’s voice startled me.
“Right now it’s thinking,” he remarked...
A crystal such as this beryl, he said, was a drawdng together of matter into individual units of latent thought. Crystalline structures, with their angles and planes and molecular groupings, constituted the sum total of mathematics, the alpha and omega of electrical, mechanical, and chemical law.
Perhaps the Brain had wanted to get away, and had used its alien knowledge coupled with some subtle alchemy in erecting this avenue of escape. And as it withdrew it had inadvertently carried us along with it. Possibly its unhuman reason taught it of some extra space, some ulterior abyss or dimension, uncomprehended by man.
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'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
