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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Double-Pane Vacuum Window | ||
| Double-pane glass separated by vacuum. |
This is an early reference to this idea in science fiction. Although the double pane idea had been around since the 1860's, the technology for making a glazed double pane window wasn't really perfected until around 1915 and even then the "filler" was usually some sort of inert gas.
Here's a window onto Mercury from an observatory.
| The old astronomer rose
to his feet, and walking with a peculiar
rolling gait led the way to a window,
fitted with double panes of darkened
glass, with a vacuum in between.
Briggs pointed beyond the window, without saying anything further. Southern peered out across the heat-blasted plain... |
| Technovelgy from The Achilles Heel,
by Raymond Z. Gallun. Published by Amazing Stories in 1940 Additional resources -
|
As far as I know, double pane windows separated by true vacuum are still being worked on, because air pressure causes them to collapse. Most seem to involve the use of transparent spacers.
The vacuum between two surfaces is the Dewar flask idea.
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'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
'those suits they wear -- call them 'stillsuits' -- that reclaim the body's own water...'
'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...'
'Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics...'
'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'
