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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Chart Cabinet | ||
| Used in astrogation, this device can see the positions of stars and planets over a thousand year period. |
| He blew the smiling picture an ironic kiss, from his big brown hand, and then bent again to the hooded view-plate of the chart cabinet. Miles of microfilm, within the instrument, intricate reels and cams and gears, ingenious prisms and lenses, could give a true stereoscopic picture of the System, as it would appear from any point in its stellar vicinity, at any desired telescopic power, at any time within a thousand years. The integrators could quickly calculate the speediest, safest, or most economical route from any one point to any other.
The big man found the light fleck that was Oberon, outermost satellite of cloudy-green Uranus. His great hands deftly moved the dials, to bring it into coincidence with the tri-crossed hairs in the view-plate. He read the destination from the indicators and set it up on the keys. And then, while the humming mechanism was analysing and re-integrating the many harmonic factors involved in moving the Phantom Atom across a billion miles of space, to a safe landing on that cold and lonely moon, his bronze-glinting eyes went back to the smiling picture on the bulkhead. |
| From One Against The Legion,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Astounding in 1939 Additional resources -
|
See also automatic navigator in A Matter of Size (1934) by Harry Bates, the pilot-robot in Collision Orbit (1941) also by Williamson, the 3D tank display in Triplanetary (1930) by 'Doc' Smith, the article on astrogation in Methuselah's Children (1941) by Robert Heinlein and the telechart in Crashing Suns (1928) by Edmond Hamilton.
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