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"I never saw why I had to give up science in order to write, or the other way around, so I didn't!"
- Gregory Benford
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| Instant Customized Clothing | ||
| A machine that produced a selected item of clothing, on the spot, based on customer demand. |
| He sat himself down in a sales cubicle and dialed the code number for kilts. He let the pictures of cloth designs flicker past his eyes while he let the persuasive voice of the catalog drone on until a pattern showed up which was distinctly unmilitary and not blue, whereupon he arrested the display and punched the combination for his size.
The plain blue uniform kilt he stuffed in the refuse hopper of the sales cubicle and left, nattily and somewhat flamboyantly attired.
 (Astounding cover, 1941) |
| From Methuselah's Children,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
There is an interesting correspondence between the functionality of this device, and the matter compilers shown elsewhere. It is not clear how the device functions; suffice it to say that Heinlein looked ahead to a point in time where the manufacture of customized, to-order clothing was practical.
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'the registration number which the traffic control automatically photographed as she left the controlway...'
'It could maintain a steady six miles per hour...'
'Then they press one of these here thirteen buttons...'
'...without burning a single hydrocarbon molecule to injure the diseased atmosphere any further.'
'Bird-like robots now descended from the ceiling of the theatre...'
'The efficient robot waiter of the Sky Club had cleared away the remnants of an epicurean meal.'
'...in the tank the new body and the new mind and memory and life has taken almost instant form.'
'pirate three-vee satellites sanded out of orbit...'
'The atmosphere yielded its moisture with reluctance. It had to be coaxed down...'
