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"This is a predictive tool I've used: There are goals we've sought for ten thousand years, and we'll go on seeking them. Instant transport and travel, immortality (or at least longevity and miracle cures.), instant learning …"
- Larry Niven

Telesolidograph  
  Projects three-dimensional images at great distances.  

The Hierarchy’s solidograph is a three-dimensional motion picture. The telesolidograph is the same sort of thing, except that the primary multiple-beam is invisible, long-range, and highly penetrating, only erupting into a visible, three-dimensional image when it reaches the focus. Slightly analogous to a needlepoint spray. So, for instance, if we want bare feet scampering around, or what not, we just fake a solidograph of them and feed the tapes into the projector. Phantoms to order! Vocal manifestations work in about the same way.

“The instrument I used is a bit more complicated, of course. Two-way. Viewer and projector. So I’d have a miniature image of the general focal region to guide me in operating my lifesize phantoms and manipulating the remote controls of the house.

Technovelgy from Gather, Darkness!, by Fritz Leiber.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1943
Additional resources -

It is possible to use interference techniques to dissolve such phantoms: see the entry on the Polyfrequency Neutralizer.

Compare to the solido projector from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Gather, Darkness!
  More Ideas and Technology by Fritz Leiber
  Tech news articles related to Gather, Darkness!
  Tech news articles related to works by Fritz Leiber

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