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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Slideway | ||
| A slidewalk, or moving walkway, that moves people forward. |
| Hamilton Felix let himself off at the thirteenth level of the Department of Finance, mounted a slideway to the left, and stepped off the strip. |
| Technovelgy from Beyond This Horizon,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1942 Additional resources -
|
Compare this to the slidewalk in Lieber's 1941 story Sanity.
You might be able to argue that an earlier version of this general concept can be found in the moving roadway from H.G. Wells' 1899 story When the Sleeper Wakes. The first commercial passenger conveyor belt was built in 1954 (by Goodyear for the Hudson and Manhattan railroad). As far as I know, the "electric stairway", or escalator, was introduced in 1900.
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'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
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'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
'Gaines and Harvey mounted tumblebugs, and kept abreast of the Cadet Captain...'
