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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl

Schrieber Analyzer  
  Superior automatic air testing - for the discriminating space traveler.  

Whenever Wayne Hillder, space scout extraordinaire, sets down on a new planet, he has to perform a few tests. Chief among them is testing the quality of the planet's atmosphere.

Pre-exit rule number one is that air must be tested. What suited that crowd outside would not necessarily agree with him. Anyway, he'd have checked air even if his own mother had been smoking a cigar in the front rank of the audience.

The Schrieber analyzer required four minutes in which to suck a sample through the pilot-tube, take it apart, sneer at the bits, make a bacteria count and say whether its lord and master would condescend to breathe the stuff.

From Diabologic, by Eric Frank Russell.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1955
Additional resources -

The sarcastic tone of this story makes it a lot of fun to read.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Diabologic
  More Ideas and Technology by Eric Frank Russell
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