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"...being predictive, being right about the future, is not the point of any given story or novel. The point is about exploring as wide a range of possibilities as possible."
- Peter Watts

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.

Technovelgy 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
  Tech news articles related to Diabologic
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