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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
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The innovation here is that a person could get the time from a central source, rather than a local timepiece that had been synchronized with a central source (but which now varied). As early as 1904, the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) was broadcasting time signals from the city of Boston as an aid to navigation. In 1922, the BBC added time "pips' to their broadcast to aid in time synchrony. In the 1850's, a Meridian Circle Telescope was installed in the University of Michigan's Detroit Observatory in Ann Arbor; the time as determined from observation of stars and the Sun was used to coordinate shipping and trains in the Great Lakes region. Today, of course, we all carry smartphones that get their time directly from a central source. The communication disk also served as a telephone:
She seized her jewelled communication disk and in a voice rendered almost unrecognizable by fury, called: "Father! Father!" Compare to the pulse-timer from Heretics of Dune (1984), by Frank Herbert and the voice-clock from The Martian Chronicles (1950), by Ray Bradbury. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Sleep Pods At Daxing International Airport
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
Robot Baristas Learn Their Trade Without Paying Royalties
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
Robot Bricklayer Or Passer-By Bricklayer?
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
Robot Gas Station Attendant Pumps Gas For You
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
Engineer Creates Crazy Motorized Track Hospital Bed
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
Tiny Flying Robot Weighs Just One Gram
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
Some Ringworld Configurations Are Stable
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
TRANSFORM Dynamic Furniture Concept Becomes What You Need
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
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