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"I went back to science fiction to try a few experiments …and my first experiment was a disaster…"
- Alfred Bester
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| Finger Watch | ||
| A ring that contains a working timepiece and a display. |
This is one of my favorite pieces of technovelgy; why can't I buy one of these? The idea is simple enough; a ring that contains a small read-out of the current time.
| Crayn glanced at his finger watch as his aide fastened the cloak he had brought hurriedly after him. It was three-forty-seven, Galactic Time. |
| Technovelgy from Key Decision,
by H.B. Fyfe. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Robert Heinlein mentioned the same idea in his 1951 novel The Puppet Masters; however, Fyfe published his story in May of 1951, but Heinlein's story wasn't serialized in Galaxy until September-November of 1951.
Keith Laumer used it in Placement Test (1964):
Now, wouldn't that be handy? I'm a person who does not like to wear watches or other jewelry. I could have a little timepiece built into my wedding ring; that's all I'd need.
There have been various versions of an actual finger watch reported; it appears as though Fila has introduced a version for runners:
"Seventeen hours" - The Old Man glanced at his finger watch and added - "and twenty-three minutes ago an unidentified space ship landed near Grinnell, Iowa."
Dean Wormwell’s eyes, blurry behind thick contact lenses, strayed to his fingerwatch.
(Fila Fingerwatch)
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Key Decision
More Ideas
and Technology by H.B. Fyfe
Tech news articles related to Key Decision
Tech news articles related to works by H.B. Fyfe
Finger Watch-related
news articles:
- Calendar Ring
- Remember Ring From Goldsmith's
- Apple Ring: Finally, Engineers Want To Make My Finger Watch
- Samsung's Smart Ring
- The Ring Clock IS Heinlein's Finger Watch
| Amazon Blimp Parent Drone Concept |
| Tortoise Mobile Smart Stores |
| Sony Pocket Air Conditioner Is Phil Dick's Idea! |
| ROAM Robotics Skiing Exoskeleton |
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
