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"I went [to the top of] Vehicle Assembly Building and looked down, and tears burst from my eyes. The size of this cathedral where the Rockets take off to go to the moon is so amazing."
- Ray Bradbury

Ideophore  
  A device that quickly and (almost?) painlessly transfers knowledge from one brain to another.  

KNOWLEDGE and memory, as Pat has proved, are really matters of bipolar moment and intramolecular potential, within the neurone cells. Her brain-ray pick-up scans that electrical pattern of knowledge, very much as the electron beam scans the photo-electric image in an iconoscope. The process, of course, is far more delicate and complex. But knowledge is converted, in essentially the same way, into electrical impulses.

“Those impulses can be transmitted through a special coaxial cable. They can be amplified, with special electron tubes. And, finally, through a phenomenon that Pat calls neuro-resonance, they can set up new bipolar moments and intra-molecular potentials, in another brain.

“The ideophore, that is, can pick up knowledge from one brain, and transfer it almost instantly to another. There is a delicate system of tuning, which, with the cooperation of the teacher, makes it possible to select the subject to be taught.”

...Reluctantly, Cartwright climbed into the massive chair. There were padded straps for his wrists and ankles. “For your own protection,” Pat said sweetly. “There is an involuntary spastic muscular reaction.”

The alarming helmet was lowered over his head. Captain Drumm stood behind the chair, with his head between two polished metal plates. Pat took her place at the intricate controls on the wheeled cabinet. Motor-converters hummed, and then a keen ominous whine stabbed into Cartwright’s brain.

“Ready,” said Pat. “Five seconds of mathematics, and the theory and practise of astrogation. Now!”


(Ideophore from 'The Fortress of Utopia' by Jack Williamson)

Cartwright heard the switch click — and then his world was shattered under an avalanche of agony. A million searing needles probed into his brain. Intolerable flame blinded him. Thunder bellowed in his ears.

He tried to count the eternal seconds. One. And two. But he felt as if the torture had already lasted minutes, hours. His awareness was flung away on a hurricane of flame. He was blanked out.

Then it was over. Galt helped lift the helmet, free his bruised, aching wrists and ankles. Sweat drenched him. He relaxed in the big chair, panting...

A few hours later, when he stood beside Captain Drumm at the curved control-board of the Pioneer, he was a little surprised to find that he knew the exact function of every dial and wheel and lever.

Technovelgy from The Fortress of Utopia, by Jack Williamson.
Published by Startling Stories in 1939
Additional resources -

Compare to the learning cap from The Knowledge Machine (1948) by Edmond Hamilton and accelerated schooling helmet from James Blish's 1957 novel Cities in Flight.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Fortress of Utopia
  More Ideas and Technology by Jack Williamson
  Tech news articles related to The Fortress of Utopia
  Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson

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