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"I took the Minnesota multiphasic profile test once, and I tested out as paranoid, cyclothymic, neurotic, and schizophrenic. But I also tested out as an incorrigible liar!"
- Philip K. Dick
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Bipedomobile |
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A two-legged vehicle. |
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| As he completed the plans for various sections of the bipedomobile, as he had decided to call it, he gave the plans to Dinakki. Dinakki in turn took them to a foundry. But the plans for the time-machinery itself, which would be installed in the bipedomobile, he kept himself; he sent for the parts and put the machinery together himself...
The parts for the fantastic bipedomobile grew. The legs, the rounded body, the instrument board, the motor, the gasoline tanks, the plexiglass cupola which would fit onto the body, hermetically sealing him in from any dangers he might meet when he landed in the far distant time where Jamie was a prisoner...

('Warrior Queen of Lolarth' (1943) by Ross Rocklynne)
He wheeled the wheel chair toward the open door of the bipedomobile. He laboriously dragged himself in, drew the machine gun in with him. In the next half-hour, the machine gun was bolted solidly to its emplacements, and Burke was looking through the sighter and swinging the long wicked barrel on imaginary enemies.
Done! The machine was done, finished, ready for its journey into the future. Burke felt a dizzy thrill of elation as he threw in the gasoline motor, heard it chugging away beneath his feet. The gyroscope, which would keep the two-legged machine balanced, just like the delicate bones in the human inner ear, hummed smoothly upward to its maximum speed.
Burke depressed the lever which drew the balancing rod away from the floor and into the bipedomobile. The bipedomobile was now standing on its own two feet.
And a second later, Burke threw the motor into low.
The machine started to walk, great, tip-toeing steps, oiled knees bending, rounded body remaining perfectly erect — like an incredible metal robot. It walked smoothly, un jarringly back and forth between the walls of the laboratory. And the man inside, handling the wonderfully smooth controls, bit at his lip and tried to keep the tears of joy from streaming down his face.
Captain Burke Donlevy, retired, could walk again.
Feverishly hoping, Burke put the bipedomobile into low, then into second, high, and fourth. He thrilled to the incredible, swift running pace. Sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour the metal monstrosity ran across the soft humus of that lost time, broad metal feet effortlessly hurling the whole machine for thirty foot steps. Donlevy laughed joyously. No speed laws, no thirty-five mile limit — he had legs again! |
Technovelgy from Warrior Queen of Lolarth,
by Ross Rocklynne.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1943
Additional resources -
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Compare to the walking balloon from In the Deep of Time (1897) by George Parsons Lathrop, the martian perambulator from Between Planets (1951) by Robert Heinlein and the riding robot from The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970) by Harry Harrison.
Also, thanks to an ancient comment from Yossi, consider this Orz space marine in combat gear from Star Control 2:
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