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" I think that computers today allow us one last opportunity to provide something like a level playingfield in America."
- William Gibson
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| Vitalium | ||
| A rare radioactive metal which enables solar power cells. |
| It utilizes the remarkable properties of the rare radioactive metal, vitalium, which is believed to be the very basis of life, since it was first discovered to exist in minute traces in those complex substances so necessary to all life, the vitamins. Large deposits were discovered at Kepler and elsewhere on the moon during the twenty-first century. Under the sun's rays vitalium undergoes a change to triatomic form, storing up the vast energy of sunlight. The vitalium plates from the sunshine are built into batteries with alternate sheets of copper, from which the solar energy may be drawn in the form of electric current. As the battery discharges, the vitalium reverts to its stabler allotropic form, and may be used again and again. The Vitalium Power Company's plants in Arizona, Chili, Australia, the Sahara, and the Gobi now furnish most of the earth's power. |
| Technovelgy from The Prince of Space,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
