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"It wasn't until I was past forty that it bacame clear that I was going to be quote, successful, unquote."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Probability Time Wave Tube | ||
| A device that allows the user to see every possible event. |
True genius is rare - but maybe it's better to have a great many minor tinkerers, than just one genius.
| "They had the tube then. They called it the PTW tube - Probability Time Wave. They'd been trying to make a television set that would see through walls..." "Their PTW tube caught and displayed every possibility that was ever to exist. And somewhere in that vast sweep of probability, every possible thing existed. Somewhere, the wildest dream of the wildest optimist was, and became fact." |
| Technovelgy from Elimination,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
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The short story Elimination appears in the collection Who Goes There, published in 1948. These stories were published under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart.
See also the infinite improbability drive from Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Elimination
More Ideas
and Technology by John W. Campbell
Tech news articles related to Elimination
Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell
Probability Time Wave Tube-related
news articles:
- LEXID Sees Through Walls To Next Apartment
- See People Through Walls
| 3D-Printed Exoskeleton Learns From Your Hand |
| Smartwatch Powered By Slime Mold |
| Carpentopod Walking Table |
| Quaise Uses Beams Of Energy To Dig Geothermal Wells |
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'...small electric motors at the principal joints worked the prosthetic framework by means of steel cables...'
'Living protoplasm incorporated into the Ampek F-a2 recording system...'
'Twoflower's Luggage, which was currently ambling along on its little legs...'
'He came to as the ship went into free flight, arching in a high parabola over the plains...'
'The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays...'
'The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it...'
‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.
