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"The trouble with too much genre SF is that it's so obviously the product of the conscious mind."
- William Gibson
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| Audio Relay | ||
| A communication device implanted behind the ear; also used as an alarm for wake-up calls. |
Here's a handy invention that would have been impossible in the 1940's (when the story was written) but is eminently manufacturable in the 21st century. Not satisfied with technologies that were merely forty years ahead of his time, Heinlein skipped right over the entire cell phone era.
| The sort of phone my Section uses is not standard; the audio relay is buried surgically under the skin back of my left ear - bone conduction. |
| Technovelgy from The Puppet Masters,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Doubleday in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Hopefully, it uses a very low level of radiation in transmitting back to the caller.
As far as I know, the first person to suggest this idea was sf's own Hugo Gernsback, who filed for a patent on an "osophone" in 1923; the patent was granted in 1924.
In 2000, Digital Angel created a subdermal device that "can be used to monitor a person's key body functions -- such as temperature and pulse -- and transmit that data wirelessly, on a real time basis, along with the accurate location of the person, to a web-enabled ground station or monitoring facility," according to their press release.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Puppet Masters
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to The Puppet Masters
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
Audio Relay-related
news articles:
- Bone Conduction Cell Phone
- Cellphone Inventor Cooper Trails Heinlein Again
- Surreal iPhone Ad Video Parody Channels Dick, Heinlein
| Birds Learn To Sing Pictures ala Frank Herbert's Distrans |
| Polish Turns Your Nail Into A Stylus |
| Huawei Pura X Folding Phattie Phone |
| Positioned Cybertrucks With Free Starlinks WiFi In LA |
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'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
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'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
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'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
