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"I can remember when the first pulsars were discovered. I was able to go and sit down and listen to graduate students talking about what their theories, to explain what pulsars really were."
- Vernor Vinge

Solar-Powered Electric Helicopter  
  An electric helicopter, with sun cells.  

An early mention of this idea, the first I know about.

Denn stepped on the starter, and began turning over the compact, efficient little sun-engines of the helicopter...

Power fed into the ship’s six lift propellors from hidden photo-cell storage units. Through the glass roof of the cabin he could detect the spinning blur of' the metal “props”, could catch the rising whine of the trembling engines. Then they were in the air, rising straight up from the light-jeweled darkness of the Chicago of A.D. 2163.

From Into the Meteorite Orbit, by James Patrick Kelly.
Published by Teck Publications in 1933
Additional resources -

Not quite enough power to get to space:

Oh, all my life I’ve thought about it, and planned — and dreamed ... To be the first to go out across space! It would be worth living for! And why hasn’t it been done? Because men have always been afraid; afraid to face the thought of going out into infinity alone ! They’ve been contenders with their rocket-ships and their ’copters and their sun-motors...

He also mentions "sun-mirrors", writing "Those miles of sun-mirrors south of Capetown..."

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Into the Meteorite Orbit
  More Ideas and Technology by James Patrick Kelly
  Tech news articles related to Into the Meteorite Orbit
  Tech news articles related to works by James Patrick Kelly

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Robot Gas Station Attendant Fills Tank - Which I Saw In 1962
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'

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'...the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers.'

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'LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.'

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'...a rolled-up sheet of a thin, dark metal strange to them.'

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'... his contract with Space Industries required him to work summers in their orbital factory complex.'

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'Space-weather men had been placed at their disposal...'

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'... Wendis stared thoughtfully at the brilliant lines on the spectroscope screen.'

Modern App Provides Video Technology From Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451'
'A special spot-wavex scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.'

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