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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
 |
| Transparent Aluminum | ||
| Invisible light steel. |
As far as I know, the first instance of the phrase "transparent aluminum".
| "This ship is five hundred feet in length, eighty feet wide amidships, and is perhaps forty-five feet high, which includes the cabin. It is built of transparent steel, the discovery of which I made while experimenting with machinery for taking substance from the air. I had already discovered the means of taking palatable food and water from the air, not to mention the salt and all other requirements of the human body. In the discovery of the metal of which this ship is built, I found that it was as bard and tough as steel, and lighter than aluminum. I therefore built my electromagnetic motors of this material. They, too, are transparent, save for the parts of copper and iron which constitute the electro-magnets. The gas bag is built of the same material, with many girders running crosswise and lengthwise of the bag. It is filled with helium, which I have also succeeded in taking from the air. I have a machine for the purpose of making each. Therefore, when your friend crashed into me near the Mohave desert and broke a dangerous hole in the forward end of the bag, I gained altitude as quickly as possible. I made the necessary amount of what you may call transparent aluminum and the necessary repair. |
| Technovelgy from The Space Hermit,
by E. Edsel Newton. Published by Amazing Stories in 1929 Additional resources -
|
This is what it looked like:
I gasped. I could not doubt Sails.
"I circled and started back to get a good view of whatever it was up there. I got only a glimpse of it before it disappeared like a bullet into the sky above. It looked like a huge glass fish turned on its side with a cabin suspended underneath, and it was transparent and I could see inside the thing.
For those who are curious, the first appearance (!) of Wonder Woman's invisible jet was in 1942.
It seemed like a sort of dirigible car made of glass and there was a man standing inside it and staring at us. That's all I saw of him when Claxon smashed the Waco right into the thing."
('The Space Hermit' by E. Edsel Newton)
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| Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick |
| GNoME AI From DeepMind Invents Millions Of New Materials |
| Omniphobic Liquid-like Surfaces And de Camp's Telelubricator (1940) |
| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
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'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
