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"Science fiction is what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do."
- Greg Bear

Locatimeter  
  A method for a plane to know its location over the Earth.  

This is a handy idea; it reminds me of a bombsight.

ALLEN JENNINGS, American, in the employ of the International Secret Service, glanced at the instrument board of his hurtling stratoplane. The altimeter showed that he was 50,000 feet above sea level, and the crossed wires above the turning globe in his locatimeter, that he was less than a hundred miles from the site of ancient Thebes. He cut the rocket blasts, and the ship continued its forward progress, but now it was dipping Earthward in a long curve.
Technovelgy from The Iron World, by Otis Adelbert Kline.
Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1937
Additional resources -

Compare to the cartograph from The Cometeers (1936) by Jack Williamson and to auto-navigation from The Dream Master (He Who Shapes) (1966), by Roger Zelazny.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Iron World
  More Ideas and Technology by Otis Adelbert Kline
  Tech news articles related to The Iron World
  Tech news articles related to works by Otis Adelbert Kline

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