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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner

Control Helmet  
  A device which causes an entire race of people to think and feel the same as the wearer.  

Slugger Martin is hurled into the unknown by ol' Doc Murtha's field projector and winds up on a distant planet. It seems that every member of the dominant alien race is subject to Control by higher authorities.

When he arrives, he is obviously out of Control, and is taken to see the Controller of their society.

"There was war here on Calthor, too, many ages ago," Zura said quickly. " People fought, and rioted, and quarreled constantly with one another, because they had different mental attitudes...

"That is why our forefathers originated Control. It is a device to make certain that everyone has the same mental attitude on important questions. The wisest of our race is always the Controller. He wears the sacred Control helmet, the supreme achievement of our science, which amplifies and broadcasts the neuro-electric currents of his brain as a powerful vibration that affects every other human brain, setting up the same currents, the same basic ideas, in them all."

Technovelgy from Easy Money, by Edmond Hamilton.
Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938
Additional resources -

The Control helmet is never turned on full blast, because then everyone would be an automaton, a slave to the will of the Controller.

Here's what the helmet looked like:

He was sitting on a dais, doing nothing. I knew then he was the big shot, for only a big shot can do nothing but sit and look wise.


(Control Helmet from 'Easy Money' by Edmond Hamilton)

This guy had a queer metal thing on his head, like a big diving helmet, only the front was cut away so his face showed. There were a lot of little screws or knobs on the side of this helmet, and a little ring of glowing white lights on top.

"...his square face was very brooding and heavy and thoughtful, something like an alderman worrying about his ward, only a million times more so."

Compare to the cogitator or Chair of Reflection from Daniel Defoe's 1705 story The Consolidator.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Easy Money
  More Ideas and Technology by Edmond Hamilton
  Tech news articles related to Easy Money
  Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton

Control Helmet-related news articles:
  - TMS Decreases Belief In God, Increases Belief In Immigrants

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