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"I'm a fairly visual thinker. In doing science, I think in terms of pictures of things happening, and then do the mathematics."
- Gregory Benford
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| Solidograph | ||
| Long distance projection of three-dimensional images. |
Today, we'd call it a hologram.
| I suppose it’s quite proper for me to tell you about the telesolidograph. It’s simple, really. The Hierarchy’s solidograph is a three-dimensional motion picture. The telesolidograph is the same sort of thing, except that the primary multiple-beam is invisible, long-range, and highly penetrating, only erupting into a visible, three-dimensional image when it reaches the focus. Slightly analogous to a needlepoint spray. So, for instance, if we want bare feet scampering around, or what not, we just fake a solidograph of them and feed the tapes into the projector. Phantoms to order! Vocal manifestations work in about the same way. “The instrument I used is a bit more complicated, of course. Two-way. Viewer and projector. So I’d have a miniature image of the general focal region to guide me in operating my lifesize phantoms and manipulating the remote controls of the house. |
| Technovelgy from Gather, Darkness!,
by Fritz Leiber. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1943 Additional resources -
|
James Matheson describes it this way in The Bureaucrat (1944):
Another early reference, often cited, appears in H. Beam Piper's Police Operation:
Compare to the solido from Chance of a Lifetime (1956) by Milton Lesser, the
solido projector from Dune by Frank Herbert and the solidograph from The Bureacrat (1944) by Malcom Jameson.
Compare this term to the idea of a stereoscopic television, or stereo tank, in Robert Heinlein's later story Stranger in a Strange Land.
Far down in the pit Benton could see a huge swirling ball of vapor, glittering with pinpoints of varicolored lights cast upon it by unseen projectors. That would be the ultra-secret Battle Integrator — the marvelous moving solidograph that resolved six dimensions into four.
In the middle of this appeared a small solidograph image of the interior of the conveyor, showing the desk, and the control board, and the figure of Verkan Vall seated at it. The little figure of the storm trooper appeared, pistol in hand.
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'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
