Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Etherometer | ||
| A device that looked at the 'ether' pervading space as a means of determining gravitation field strength. |
Knowing gravitational field gradients is extremely helpful when navigation around crowded parts of space, like planets and their moons.
| As the vessel roared through frozen space, Richard Greer gazed apprehensively at the rapidly expanding gravity lines in the etherometer at his elbow...
Commander Wormser returned his gaze to the etherometer and stared in tremulous horror at the swiftly widening gravity lines which were flickering across it's opalescent surface. |
| From Spawn of the Red Giants,
by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1937 Additional resources -
|
The theory that there must be an 'ether' needed to transmit electromagnetic radiation had many adherents well into the twentieth century. Shown below is a 1932 German apparatus intended to measure ether drift.
(Ether drift apparatus)
The device was described as follows:
It consists of four arms on a perpendicular axis, containing a series of mirrors, lenses, and reflecting plates. A ray of light enters at the top of the device and is bounced back and fourth thousands of times, finally emerging at the bottom, where its passing leaves a record on a photographic plate.
The experiment demonstrated that if there was any drift, it must be less than one and a half miles per second.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Spawn of the Red Giants
More Ideas
and Technology by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
Tech news articles related to Spawn of the Red Giants
Tech news articles related to works by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
| How Do You Put An Asteroid Into Earth Orbit? Carefully! |
| PD Aerospace Space Plane By 2023 |
| International Space Station Leak Plugged - With Finger |
| Space Drones - UK's Effective Space To Launch Rocket Tugs |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Negligible increase in weight increased material strength by hundreds of times.
'All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.'
The number of different ways to span a thread between a larger number of hooks is astronomical.
'This is all coming to you courtesy of the simstim unit wired into your deck, of course.'
What's it like for autonomous trams when they're turned off at night?
'Merton... placed the electrodes of the sleep-inducer on his forehead.'
'... we can descend and live down there at one of those year-round aquatic resorts.'
'...she would have to be coaxed by another series of pats into a circular orbit.'
'The sleek, tapered space shuttle lay immobile upon the private landing field...'
