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"I can remember when the first pulsars were discovered. I was able to go and sit down and listen to graduate students talking about what their theories, to explain what pulsars really were."
- Vernor Vinge
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| Flexible Metal Arms (Tentacles) | ||
| An interesting description of how mechanical tentacles might function. |
| ...after months of weary trials, he had been able to furnish the brain with arms or members, two small, hollow limbs of flexible metal that projected from each end of the brain-case, being actuated by a chain of electro-magnets inside, so that the brain, by sending the correct electrical current through these magnets, could twist the arms about at its pleasure. |
| Technovelgy from The Metal Giants,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Weird Tales in 1926 Additional resources -
|
He continues:
Compare to the steel tentacles from The War of the Worlds (1898) by HG Wells.
He wrote that as he watched the flexible, snakelike metal arms flashing about with beaker and test-tube and burner, unerringly, swiftly, he realized that he had constructed an intelligence that was more than human.
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and Technology from The Metal Giants
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Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton
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'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
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'This robot is a creature... It is a manlike being. Therefore, like any other talking, thinking man, he is entitled to a court trial!'
