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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.

Spy-Eyes  
  Tiny robotic surveillance devices fly using propellers.  

...he was perhaps unduly annoyed when two tiny spy-eyes flew down from the hills to hover above his caravan on whirring little propellors. He tried to glance up pleasantly while their lenses televised pictures to their base, but he feared that his smile was strained.

The spy-eyes retired after a few minutes. Robert's vehicle, at his voiced order, turned onto a road leading between two forested hills.

Technovelgy from Manners of the Age, by H.B. Fyfe.
Published by Galaxy in 1952
Additional resources -

Compare to the raytron apparatus from Beyond the Stars (1928) by Ray Cummings, the scarab robot flying insect from The Scarab (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the artificial eye drone from Glimpse (1938) by Manly Wade Wellman, the Ultraminiature Spy-Circuit from The Unknown (1972) by Christopher Anvil, copseyes from Cloak of Anarchy (1972) by Larry Niven, the sky ball from A Day For Damnation (1985) by David Gerrold, the drone floater camera from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton, the aerostat monitor from The Diamond Age (1995) by Neal Stephenson, the loiter drone from The Algebraist (2004) by Iain Banks and the bee cam from City of Pearl (2004) by Karen Traviss.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Manners of the Age
  More Ideas and Technology by H.B. Fyfe
  Tech news articles related to Manners of the Age
  Tech news articles related to works by H.B. Fyfe

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