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"[Science fiction is] anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out."
- Gregory Benford

Gravity Centrifuge  
  Used in low gravity environments to build up muscle for visits to Earth, or other high gravity worlds.  

An early reference to this idea in science fiction.

Pete hesitated. "As a matter of fact, I feel as if I were wading in quicksand up to my neck. Every move is an effort."

"Gee, that's too bad! Just what is the surface gravity on Ganymede? About one-third V isn't it?"

"Thirty-two per cent. Or from my point of view, everything here weighs three times as much as it ought to. Including me."

Matt nodded. "As if two other guys were riding on you, one on your shoulders, and one on your back."

"That's about it. The worst of it is, my feet hurt all the time. I'll get over it-" "Sure you will!

"-since. I'm of Earth ancestry and potentially just as strong as my grandfather was. Back home, I'd been working out in the centrifuge the last couple of earth-years. I'm a lot stronger than I used to be. There's Oscar." Matt greeted Oscar, then hurried to his room to phone his father in private.

Technovelgy from Space Cadet, by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Scribner's Sons in 1948
Additional resources -

Compare to the Gravity-Simulator Harness from Murray Leinster's 1953 novel Space Tug.

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  More Ideas and Technology from Space Cadet
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Heinlein
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