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"One can see the free software movement as a precusor for a "free hardware" or "free wetware" movement--one that will provide free libraries of designs for biological or nanotechnological products that replicators can be programmed to churn out."
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As far as I know, this is the first use of the idea of connecting what we now call a television or video camera to a telescope in science fiction.
Here is another excerpt with more details on how this is used:
A portlike door opened with a brisk swiftness in the
blinding sunlight. A long metal arm reached out. A
lens glittered at its end. A little scanning-disk began
to twinkle vividly...
Presently the long lens-bearing tube changed its position. The lens had pointed roughly toward the sun.
It was as if an observation had been taken to find the
Power Planet and check the course of the rocket. Now
it pointed back toward the earth.
Again seeming motionlessness save for the twinkling
of the scanning-disk. The scanning telescope would
bring the earth astoundingly close. The continents and
the polar caps would be quite distinct...
Historians may recall that, before LCDs or even cathode ray tubes, there was a mechanical means of creating, transmitting and showing a picture:
Mechanical-scanning methods were used in the earliest experimental television systems in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the first experimental wireless television transmissions was by John Logie Baird on October 2, 1925, in London. By 1928 many radio stations were broadcasting experimental television programs using mechanical systems. However the technology never produced images of sufficient quality to become popular with the public.
(Via Wikipedia)
Although not quite the same thing, the inventor of the scanning disk idea actually patented it as an "electric telescope" in 1884:
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
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