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"I think crypto will slowly percolate its way up and people will adopt it gradually as user friendly, cheap products, become available."
- Neal Stephenson
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| X Gun (X-Beam Projector) | ||
| A device that projected soft x-rays into small planetoids to determine their composition. |
So you're out out Saturn-way, looking for mineral deposits in the small bodies ringing the gas giant. What would you use to check to see if a given planetoid was worthwhile?
| As the pencil of soft x-rays, under the guidance of his skilled hand, probed into the twenty-foot planetoid, its reflections trembled ghostily in the milk-luminous chart...
Osgood rotated the handle of the X-beam projector, the "X gun," with the expertness of a machine gunner, and read the fluctuating, melting Fraunhofer designs out of the corner of his eye. |
| Technovelgy from Diamond Planetoid,
by Gordon A. Giles. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1937 Additional resources -
|
What's more, this ship was equipped with a special converter that meant you didn't need to interpret some sort of crystallography design, either. Read up on the spectroscopic robot converter.
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'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.'
'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
'... oblongs were all over the floor and surfaces.'
