Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"...a few centuries of coherent humanist thought, set against a million odd years of evolved killer ape tendency. No-one's going to give you very good odds on humanism, are they?"
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Telechronometer | ||
| A watch that synchronizes itself to a remote source. |
The task of setting a chronometer has always been as much of a problem as making one run properly. Heinlein happened on a very modern solution to this task in 1940.
| Harrington glanced at his wrist watch - a bulky affair - and whistled. "Good heavens," he exclaimed, "I forgot the time!" "We are in zone plus-seven; this shows zone plus-five - it's radio-synchronized with the master clock at Washington..." "I call it a telechronometer; it's the only one of its sort to date." |
| From Blowups Happen,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Street and Smith Publications in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Today, of course, you can actually purchase a watch like this:
Introducing the worlds first dual time zone, analog/digital atomic watch by Atomix. Both analog and digital time displays are automatically synchronized with the US atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. The Atomix watch updates both analog and digital time ...
Want to know the right time? Visit the NIST radio station WWVB, broadcasting the correct time within about 1800 miles of colorado.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Blowups Happen
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Blowups Happen
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
| Podtime Sleeping Pod Like Niven's Napcap |
| A Cool DIY Magnetically Levitated Bed |
| Swede's Home Nuclear Reactor On Back Burner |
| Philips Luminous Textile Panel Soft Cells |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'The gas gave sufficient heat for the culinary apparatus...'
'He pressed hard with his tongue against his right upper first molar.'
'The prototype blue-bellied, gray-backed tracer-bird with the wide-angle eye...'
'See Vee Threepio - Vee for versatility - at your service...'
'Three and a half centimetres in diameter, permanently fixed in the centre of his forehead.'
