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"I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development."
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I don't know if Vance was aware of it, but the Cephaloscope was an actual device invented in 1842 for use by physicians who worked with hearing problems. "Cephalo" refers to the head.
The modern lie detector was invented by Dr. William M. Marston in the 1917. The machine was also called a polygraph - literally "many writings", referring to the method of recording several physiological responses at the same time. He also wrote under the pen name Charles Moulton - creating the Wonder Woman comic strip. Wonder Woman, as you may recall, had a magic lasso that caused anyone she caught with it to tell the absolute truth.
Compare to the psychoprobe from Satellite Five (1938) by Arthur K. Barnes, the
mechanical judge from The Lord of Tranerica (1939) by Stanton A. Coblentz, the
quizzer from Agent of Vega (1949) by James Schmitz, the
psychic probe from Foundation and Empire (1952) by Isaac Asimov, the
truth meter from The Star Beast (1954) by Robert Heinlein, the
veridicator from Little Fuzzy (1962) by H. Beam Piper.
Also, see the cephalochromoscope from A Scanner Darkly (1977) by Philip K. Dick. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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