Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"The first thing that's wrong with being a science-fiction writer today is that the present has caught up with the future and surpassed it."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Home News Printer | ||
| A device that prints out the newspaper of your choice right in your own home. |
This is a very early use of this idea. Remember that the idea of a "printer" - a device that you have in your home that prints out material at your command - has not been invented yet. In 1879, a "printer" is a person who works in a shop producing many copies of the same paper.
| Mr. Wanlee seemed ill at ease. He did not reply to his friend's raillery. He cast a stealthy glance at his knees in the mirror, and then went to one side of the room, where an endless strip of printed paper, about three feet wide, was slowly issuing from between noiseless rollers and falling in neat folds into a willow basket placed on the floor to receive it. Mr. Wanlee bent his head over the broad strip of paper and began to read attentively.
"You take the Contemporaneous News, I suppose," said the other. "No, I prefer the Interminable Intelligencer," replied Mr. Wanlee. "The Contemporaneous is too much of my own way of thinking. Why should a sensible man ever read the organ of his own party? How much wiser it is to keep posted on what your political opponents think and say." |
| From The Senator's Daughter,
by Edward Page Mitchell. Published by Not known in 1879 Additional resources -
|
The only real-life predecessor to this device that I can think of is the ticker tape machine, also called a stock ticker. This device was used to remotely print stock price information conveyed over telegraph lines from 1866 to 1970. Thomas Edison patented a stock ticker in 1869 that printed one alpha numeric character per second! The stock ticker is the real-life counterpart to the virtual ticker shown at the bottom of the screen on financial television.
Compare this device to the personalized news from Hugo Gernsback's 1911 novel Ralph 124c 41 + and the homeopape from his 1969 novel Ubik (it is also called the homeostatic newspaper in his 1963 story If There Were No Benny Cemoli).
Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Senator's Daughter
More Ideas
and Technology by Edward Page Mitchell
Tech news articles related to The Senator's Daughter
Tech news articles related to works by Edward Page Mitchell
| Pop Secret Pop Dongle Lets You Smell The Corn A Poppin' On Your Smartphone |
| Transparent Smartphone Prototype From Polytron |
| Not Going To Google IO |
| Dead Cellphone? Try Solar-Powered Public Charging Stations |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'Copseyes floated overhead... each a sonic stunner... they were there to enforce the law...'
'It was not a large office, but it was quite spy-proof and quite undetectably so.'
When you hear that music, you know you're in for adventure - and predictions of possible technological futures!
'Vergil had trained the lymphocytes in the past six months to interact as much as possible with each other and with their environment...'
'This was really free power... Power carried across millions of miles on Addison's tight-beam principle.'
'Whoever was placed inside the apparatus instantaneously experienced all the charms, lures, wiles, winks and witchery of all the fairer sex in the Universe at once.'
