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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
 |
| Talking Speedometer | ||
| A gauge that tells you its value verbally |
This is an early use of the idea of a gauge that does not need you to look at it to get a "reading."
| He pressed the accelerator under his finger, and as he passed the 150-k.p.h. mark the speedometer's mechanical whisper cut in- "One sixty- One sixty-eight- One eighty-" |
| From Biddiver,
by Theodore Sturgeon. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
Sturgeon couldn't resist adding another example:
"Four hundred twelve k.p.h.-"
"Altitude twenty-three thousand fifty-"
He went quite peacefully to sleep then, ignoring the new whispering voice that joined that of the speedometer:
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