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"I would say 75% of the economy is now being run by ex-science-fiction fans."
- Greg Bear
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| Nerve Wire | ||
| In which silver wire could be attached to living nerves, making possible direct stimulation. |
| “ ‘And now came the great discovery. It happened that a man had had his hand cut off in an accident. It had been the custom previously to provide such unfortunates with artificial limbs of marvelous ingenuity and dexterity. Now the man’s surgeon, whose name was Brightman, suggested a metal hand which should be controlled by silver wires; and that the ends of the silver wires should be drawn out exceedingly fine, and attached to the nerves controlling the motions of the fingers. The nerves of the body are themselves like wires; they carry the messages of the brain to the muscles and of the muscles back to the brain. What Brightman was proposing was that the brain should deliver its message to the artificial metal nerves, thus causing the metal hand to move as a live hand would. It was his theory that all nervous impulses are delivered by electrical means, and if this was true the process would work.
“ ‘THE theory was not new, nor the idea; but previously there had been lacking any means to connect the metal wires to the nerves. This time it was done by the process discovered for building up human protoplasm; the connection between the silver wire and the nerve was made; it was placed in an electrical bath and given an atomic bombardment; and behold! the connecting end of the silver wire became itself a nerve wire of the same material as the rest of the nerve! “ 'Thus the plan worked — at first, not well nor rapidly, but it worked. And as it was tried in succeeding cases, it worked better and better until a perfect artificial hand could be produced that was as good as a new one. |
| Technovelgy from The City of the Living Dead,
by Laurence Manning (w/F. Pratt). Published by Science Wonder Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
Of course, progress produced new miracles!
The next step came when the plan was applied to a man who had hopelessly lost his sight. Back of each eye is one of these nerves, which carries the message of what you see to the brain...
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'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
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