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"My father was a master mechanic; I grew up with a screwdriver in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Automated Bomber | ||
| A bombing plane that automatically targets, drops, returns for fuel and more munitions, all automatically. |
| There was no one in the control room to read the clock, calendar, thermometer, radarscreen, or
any of the indicators which had their places on the walls and tables...
The absence of light and techncians did not disturb the functioning of the great airport's apparatus, for it had been designed to work automatically... So when sonar and radar picked up the sound and form of approaching aircraft from the north, it was instantly and correctly identifled as friendly, specifically an RB87 returning to base. The information was transmitted to the anti-aircraft batteries, to the intelligence depot thirty miles away, to the tabulators which recorded the bombing runs, to Fuel Control, far underground, and to the munitions dump, hidden beneath layer after layer of concrete and lead. There were, of course, no rows of lights to mark the field, but this lack was of no consequence to the mighty eight-engined bomber; for it depended, not on human perceptions and reactions but on the precise mathematical calculation of equipment adjusted to its charted flight and acutely sensitive to every variation of the weather, the terrain below, inimical devices, or even suddenly developed inadequacies of its own. During every second in the air these instruments computed, compensated, checked, and kept the ship on an inexorable and preordained course. The RB87, responding to the wind direction and velocity as well as a number of other factors, aimed itself at the two mile long concrete runway and skimmed down its length, coming to rest at last with its propellers still revolving pointlessly at the exact spot indicated in the reckonings which governed its navigation, marked on the runway by two small daubs of paint. |
| Technovelgy from Flying Dutchman,
by Ward Moore. Published by Adventure in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the automatic gun from The Gun (1952) by Philip K. Dick.
Compare to the robot gun from Aliens (1986), by Alan Dean Foster; this weapon uses artificial intelligence and object recognition. Also, see the invisible watchmen from Murder in the Void (1938), by Edmond Hamilton
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'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
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'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'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...'
