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"In 1970 I found little difficulty staying 30 years ahead of the man in the street, and now I find it difficult to stay 18 months ahead of the man on the street."
- Vernor Vinge
 |
| 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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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
