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"Evolutionary success ... is going to absolutely require mobility on, at a minimum, an interplanetary scale. We either go or we die out."
- Richard Morgan
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| Automatic Pilot | ||
| A device to control the movement of aircraft using computer components. |
Marketing is everything in this classic novel from the 1950's. Although Pohl certainly did not invent the automatic pilot, he is one of the first to use a non-mechanical method to make it work.
| A team of designers went to work on an automatic pilot. When it was done it worked pretty well. And weighed four and a half tons in spite of printed circuits and relays constructed under a microscope. |
| Technovelgy from The Space Merchants,
by Frederik Pohl (w/CM Kornbluth). Published by St. Martin's Press in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Elmer A. Sperry built the first automatic pilot for aircraft using gyroscopes in 1910.
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'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
