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"The primary attraction [of writing sf] is the sheer pleasure of creating something from whole cloth."
- Dan Simmons

Way Station Materializer  
  By sending impulses that describe a creature from star to star, transport across the galaxy is accomplished.  

This is the first description of this process that I know about, in a novel anyway.

Moments ago the creature in the tank had rested in another tank in another station and the materializer had built up a pattern of it - not only of its body, but of its very vital force, the thing that gave it life. Then the impulse pattern had moved across the gulfs of space almost instantaneously to the receiver of this station, where the pattern had been used to duplicate the body and the mind and memory and the life of that creature now lying dead many light years distant.

And in the tank the new body and the new mind and memory and life had taken almost instant form - an entirely new being, but exactly like the old one, so that the identity continued in the consciousness (the very thought only momentarily interrupted), so that to all intents and purposes the being was the same. There were limitations to the impulse patterns, but this has nothing to do with the speed, for the impulses could cross the entire galaxy with but little lag in time. But under certain certain distances the patterns tended to break down and this was why there must be many stations, many thousands of them. Clouds of dust or gas or areas of high ionisation seemed to disrupt the patterns and in those sectors of the galaxy where these conditions were encounter end, the distance jumps between the stations were considerably cut down to keep the pattern true. There were areas that had to be detoured because of high concentrations of the two stars and gas and dust.


(Materializer from 'Way Station' by Clifford Simak)

Enoch wondered how many dead bodies of the creature a good now rested in the tank has been left behind at other stations in the course of the journey it was making, as this body in a few hours time would lie dead within this tank when the creatures pattern was sent out again, riding on the impulse waves.

A long trail of dead, he thought, left across the stars, each to be destroyed by a wash of acid and flushed into deep lying tanks, but with the creature itself going on and on until it reached its final destination to carry out the purpose of its journey.

Technovelgy from Way Station, by Clifford Simak.
Published by Doubleday in 1963
Additional resources -

Compare to cosmic express from the 1930 short story of that name by Jack Williamson, the nutrient gelatin tank from The Isotope Men (1936) by Nat Schachner and the emergency treatment tank from Agent of Vega (1949) by James Schmitz.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Way Station
  More Ideas and Technology by Clifford Simak
  Tech news articles related to Way Station
  Tech news articles related to works by Clifford Simak

Way Station Materializer-related news articles:
  - 3D Printer 'Teleports' Objects Like Simak's Way Stations
  - Is Teleportation A Death Sentence?
  - Prototype 3D Printer Could Print Arteries In Seconds

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