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"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Domed City | ||
| A vast city covered entirely by a vast covering of glass. |
As far as I know, the first reference to this idea.
The reader is introduced to the amazing city of Vitrea, so-called because it was entirely covered by glass.
| On looking upwards, in order to behold what in other towns would have been the open space of the firmament - and which, in ancient London, would have been mysteriously veiled over by a dense and awful canopy of eternal smoke, - an airy and elliptical dome of glass, fashioned and pointed like the cupola of a Moorish temple, reared itself to an immeasurable height.
So transparent was every pane which composed it, that you could see those delicate rose-coloured clouds, which are so frequent in an arctic climate, sailing through the clear blue sky: - so vast was the space it bestrode, so immense the body of air it enclosed, that there seemed ample room to make a balloon excursion within its mighty circuit. The architect, as if in sport, had here and there inserted single squares of coloured glass, at distant though regular intervals; and as the sun gleamed through the translucent patches, its rays, tinged with their various hues, formed over-head a sort of coloured net-work. The pillars which supported this crystal cupola rose lightly from a massive circumscribing wall: they were really of solid iron, but they were gilded, and wreathed round with light fantastic ornaments of vermilion: the ribs and framework of the cupola were also finished off, and burnished in the same fanciful style. In short, no effort of man has ever surpassed this model of mechanical skill, either in grace or in magnitude; and the spectator's most permanent impression was, that it seemed the work of Nature herself, that it was a created thing, and coeval with the mountains around it, and not the slow and laboured production of a race of such despicable and yet such wondrous pigmies as ourselves. |
| Technovelgy from Mrs. Maberly: Or, The World as it Will be,
by Anonymous Author . Published by John Macrone in 1836 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the glass dome from A Modern Utopia (1905) by HG Wells and the glassite moon dome from Brigands of the Moon (1930) by Ray Cummings.
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Domed City-related
news articles:
- Domed Cities - For Earth?
- Glass Dome Cities On Mars, Dreamed By Elon Musk
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'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
