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"[Science fiction] has become big business, where books are merchandised and promoted and distributed and placed on sale like slabs of bacon or cans of soup."
- Frederik Pohl

Slaver Disintegrator  
  Sometimes used as a digging tool.  

Most of the tools that you buy in hardware stores are designed to not hurt anyone, rather than to be the most powerful or effective tools they could be. Not so in the world of Ringworld, were tools stay close to their roots.

The disintegrator was indeed a digging tool. Where its narrow beam fell, the charge on the electron was temporarily depressed. Solid matter, rendered suddenly and violently positive, tended to tear itself into a fog of monatomic dust.
Technovelgy from Ringworld, by Larry Niven.
Published by Ballantine in 1970
Additional resources -

Now that's a digging tool.

Some interesting cutting tools came out of WWII, when metal parts for airplanes and tanks were being mass-produced. Better methods for cutting metal were needed. A new method of welding was invented that used an inert gas fed through an electric arc. Charging the gas with an electric current formed a barrier around the weld. Decades later, it was found that temperatures could be raised by speeding up the gas flow and making the release hole smaller. This plasma arc created such high temperatures that it cut through metal easily.

Learn more about it at How Plasma Arc Cutters Work.

Compare to nuclear shears from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov, the toaster from Accidental Flight (1952) by WF Wallace, the Lasgun from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert, and the atomic torch from One Against the Legion (1939) by Jack Williamson.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Ringworld
  More Ideas and Technology by Larry Niven
  Tech news articles related to Ringworld
  Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven

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