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"There's no point in making a mistake unless you understand the mistake so that you don’t make it again."
- Alfred Bester
 |
| Monowheel | ||
| A single-wheeled police car. |
Although this is perhaps the first (of very few) uses of this word in science fiction, it was probably used before (see below).
| He made himself fairly comfortable on the back seat of the darkgreen SIC car, a late model Hebster Monowheel.
 ('Monowheel' from 'Firewater' by William Tenn [Astounding])
|
| Technovelgy from Firewater,
by William Tenn. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Several designs for single-wheel vehicles were introduced in the mid-19th century, which is the most likely time for this word to have been coined.
Compare to the gyrocar from Two Boys in a Gyrocar the story of a New York to Paris motor race (1911) by Kenneth Brown, the Gyro-Hat from An Experiment in Gyro-Hats (1926) by Ellis Parker Butler, the Two-Wheeled Ground Car from First Lensman (1950) by E.E. 'Doc' Smith, the Gyro Two-Wheeled Truck from The Sign of the Tiger (1958) by Alan Nourse (w/Meyer), the Gyrocar (Gyro) from The Ring (1969) by Piers Anthony (w/R. Margroff) and the smart bike from Distraction (1998) by Bruce Sterling.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Firewater
More Ideas
and Technology by William Tenn
Tech news articles related to Firewater
Tech news articles related to works by William Tenn
| The Amazing Lightfoot Electric Scooter With Solar Assist |
| Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology |
| Inmotion Electric Unicycle In Combat |
| Congress Considers Automatic Emergency Braking, One Hundred Years Too Late |
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'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
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'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
