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"To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer."
- Robert Heinlein

Levitator Pack  
  Handy anti-gravity when you need it.  

“I’ll be back here as soon as I can, Evelyn,” he said.

Before she could protest his intrusion into that black abyss before them, alone, he had leaped over its brink. He had pressed a button on the levitator pack strapped to his shoulders. The powerful electric batteries there, much lighter in weight than any small atomic-generator unit could ever have been, fed current to a series of complicated coils that fought gravity. Thus, his rate of descent was completely under his control. His flashlight showed him where he was going.

Almost two hours later, he returned to the brink of the abyss, lifted there by his levitator.

Technovelgy from Gears for Nemesis, by Raymond Z. Gallun.
Published by Startling Stories in 1942
Additional resources -

Compare to the gravity web from Whipping Star (1969) by Frank Herbert and to anti-gravity belt from Armageddon: 2419 A.D. (1929) by Philip Frances Nowlan.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Gears for Nemesis
  More Ideas and Technology by Raymond Z. Gallun
  Tech news articles related to Gears for Nemesis
  Tech news articles related to works by Raymond Z. Gallun

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