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"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way."
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The innovation here is that a person could get the time from a central source, rather than a local timepiece that had been synchronized with a central source (but which now varied).
As early as 1904, the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) was broadcasting time signals from the city of Boston as an aid to navigation. In 1922, the BBC added time "pips' to their broadcast to aid in time synchrony. In the 1850's, a Meridian Circle Telescope was installed in the University of Michigan's Detroit Observatory in Ann Arbor; the time as determined from observation of stars and the Sun was used to coordinate shipping and trains in the Great Lakes region.
Today, of course, we all carry smartphones that get their time directly from a central source.
The communication disk also served as a telephone:
But the dead flatness of her voice against the tiny diaphragm told her that this device too was altered to enforce obedience to the edict her parent had but now pronounced...
Compare to the pulse-timer from Heretics of Dune (1984), by Frank Herbert and the voice-clock from The Martian Chronicles (1950), by Ray Bradbury. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
ESTHER Tennis Robot V. Fact (1934) And Fiction (1952)
'THE red tennis robot scooted desperately across the court...'
Japan's LignoSat Space Wood Satellite And Dan Simmons' Treeship
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Skyline Robotics Instantiates Heinlein's 'Window Willie' Skyscraper Robot
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Drone Bombings In Moscow Foreseen 100 Years Ago
'Once the target is confirmed, it uses an IR laser to send a coded signal back to the parent, clearing it to attack.'
I Didn't Know You Can Already Buy Flesh Putty
'I filled your bullet hole with flesh putty and the lattice.'
'A Sign in Space' Gives Practice In Decoding ET Messages
'... it will be easy to form an alphabet which shall enable us to converse with the inhabitants of the moon.'
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Lazy Lawyer's Trust In ChatGPT Misplaced
'The Law Society has strict rules on the use of pseudo-intelligent software...'
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