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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl

Tickler  
  Clears smog and saves the residue for later use.  

Didn't I see one of these in the Sharp catalog? Maybe for one room in your house; this one would freshen the air in your neighborhood.

You remember that anciently there was smog in the cities. Oh, it could be drawn out of the air easily enough. All it took was a tickler. Albert made a tickler machine. He would set it fresh every morning. It would clear the air in a circle three hundred yards around his hovel and gather a little over a ton of residue every twenty-four hours. This residue was rich in large polysyllabic molecules which one of his chemical machines could use.
Technovelgy from Eurema's Dam, by R.A. Lafferty.
Published by New Dimension in 1972
Additional resources -

I seem to recall Nicholas Negroponte pontificating about how WiFi would free the internet by making "lilypads" of access (200 foot diameter circles around WiFi access points). Well, that would be nice; but I think having lots of 300 yard diameter clean air zones would be nicer.

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  More Ideas and Technology from Eurema's Dam
  More Ideas and Technology by R.A. Lafferty
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  Tech news articles related to works by R.A. Lafferty

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'The remotely-operated robot tank is an old idea...'

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'...small electric motors at the principal joints worked the prosthetic framework by means of steel cables...'

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'Living protoplasm incorporated into the Ampek F-a2 recording system...'

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'The autofreighter smashed into the boat...'

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'Twoflower's Luggage, which was currently ambling along on its little legs...'

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'You've got an aggressive machine up in the air now.'

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'He came to as the ship went into free flight, arching in a high parabola over the plains...'

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'The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays...'

Robots Repair And Modify Themselves
'The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it...'

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‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.

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