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"We were essentially being shell-shocked by rapid change. That was one of the things you needed science-fiction writers for back in the Sixties, because we could cope with the future."
- Peter Watts

Joystick Controls w/Remote Display  
  A fire-by-wire remote-controlled weapon system.  

This remarkable prediction contains several interesting elements. The rifles are aimed by what amounts to a joystick controller; the rifleman is protected from enemy fire, observing the field of fire with a remote display.

The riflemen [in the ironclad, armored infantry vehicle] each occupied a small cabin of peculiar construction. Their rifles, however, were very different pieces of apparatus from the simple mechanisms in the hands of their adversaries. These were in the first place automatic [weapons, reloaded] from a magazine each time they fired... and they had the most remarkable sights imaginable, sights which threw a bright little camera-obscura picture into the light-tight box in which the rifleman sat below. This ... picture was marked with two crossed lines, and whatever was covered by the intersection of these two lines, the rifle hit. [The rifleman's one hand] held the [control like a draftsman's dividers] for judging distance, and the other grasped a big knob like a door handle. As he pushed this knob about the rifle above swung to correspond ... and then [he] pressed a finger upon a little push like an electric bell-push, conveniently placed in the centre of the knob. Then the [target] was shot.
Technovelgy from The Land Ironclads, by H.G. Wells.
Published by Unknown in 1903
Additional resources -

I found a cool-looking model of the Ironclads from the story here at H.G. Wells' Land Ironclad. Thanks to S. Jones for contributing this item and a quote.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Land Ironclads
  More Ideas and Technology by H.G. Wells
  Tech news articles related to The Land Ironclads
  Tech news articles related to works by H.G. Wells

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