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Science Fiction
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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
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![]() Robert Heinlein did not invent the term "hush-a-phone" - but he did expand on the original device with futuristic attachments.
The original Hush-a-Phone was first manufactured and sold in 1921. It was a very simple device that provided privacy, avoided annoying other people and helped you hear better. It had versions for pedestal phones as well as those new-fangled handsets. It was a very simple device that just slipped onto the phone; it had no moving parts or electrical components.
Heinlein, however, has added some improvements. The rubber mask improves noise suppression; the bone-conduction receiver means that none of the other person's part of the conversation ever goes out in the open air.
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
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'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
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'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
Anthropic's Claude AI Creates Legal Citation From Whole Cloth
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DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
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