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"I can remember when the first pulsars were discovered. I was able to go and sit down and listen to graduate students talking about what their theories, to explain what pulsars really were."
- Vernor Vinge

Schrieber Analyzer  
  Superior automatic air testing - for the discriminating space traveler.  

Whenever Wayne Hillder, space scout extraordinaire, sets down on a new planet, he has to perform a few tests. Chief among them is testing the quality of the planet's atmosphere.

Pre-exit rule number one is that air must be tested. What suited that crowd outside would not necessarily agree with him. Anyway, he'd have checked air even if his own mother had been smoking a cigar in the front rank of the audience.

The Schrieber analyzer required four minutes in which to suck a sample through the pilot-tube, take it apart, sneer at the bits, make a bacteria count and say whether its lord and master would condescend to breathe the stuff.

Technovelgy from Diabologic, by Eric Frank Russell.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1955
Additional resources -

The sarcastic tone of this story makes it a lot of fun to read.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Diabologic
  More Ideas and Technology by Eric Frank Russell
  Tech news articles related to Diabologic
  Tech news articles related to works by Eric Frank Russell

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