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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

Thigh Grips  
  Special chair feature for space ships undergoing accelerations.  

As far as I know, this is the first use of this phrase and idea.

...the vast gravitationless room. Two hundred feet by two hundred feet by six hundred, was the size of the general observatory... And all the walls were floors, and the chairs had thigh-grips in them to hold a man down when he sat, lest he float away from the force of an incautious gesture.
Technovelgy from The Power Planet, by Murray Leinster.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1931
Additional resources -

Leinster also uses this in his 1953 story Space Tug:

Brown sat in a fastened-down chair with thigh grips holding him in place. He was writing. On Joe's entry, he carefully put the pen down on a magnetized plate that would hold it until he wanted it again. Otherwise it could have floated anywhere about the room.

Didn't I see thigh grips on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation? I'm pretty sure I did, in Star Trek III Search for Spock (1984):

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Power Planet
  More Ideas and Technology by Murray Leinster
  Tech news articles related to The Power Planet
  Tech news articles related to works by Murray Leinster

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