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"[Science fiction] is the one literary medium left in which we have a free hand. We can do any damn thing we please."
- Alfred Bester

Automatics  
  Machinery capable of running some aspect of a space ship's operation on its own.  

As far as I know, this is the first use of this handy expression.

Snap and I were in control of the ship. For temporary periods the automatics would handle the gravity-shifters. I could operate them here from the turret. We had a downward velocity toward the Moon; five hundred miles below us, no more, was the base of that diabolical gravity ray which was so swiftly pulling the twenty-five Grantline ships to their destruction!
Technovelgy from Wandl, The Invader, by Ray Cummings.
Published by Astounding Stories in 1932
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