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"Everything starts as somebody's daydream. And, when you're daydreaming, it is science fiction. It's when you start work out how you put it together, true science fiction becomes real science."
- Larry Niven

Automatics  
  Machinery capable of running some aspect of a space ship's operation on its own.  

As far as I know, this is the first use of this handy expression.

Snap and I were in control of the ship. For temporary periods the automatics would handle the gravity-shifters. I could operate them here from the turret. We had a downward velocity toward the Moon; five hundred miles below us, no more, was the base of that diabolical gravity ray which was so swiftly pulling the twenty-five Grantline ships to their destruction!
Technovelgy from Wandl, The Invader, by Ray Cummings.
Published by Astounding Stories in 1932
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