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"In my mind I have gone all over the universe, which may make it less important for me to make piddling little trips... I did enjoy seeing Stonehenge. It looked exactly the way I thought it would look."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Escalladder | ||
| A ladder that you don't have to climb to get to the top. |
I have no idea how this could be made to work. But as a person who has worked on ladders, I can't tell you how handy it would be to just rise to the top without a lot of unwieldy climbing with your hands full of tools.
I don't think this is like a fireman's extending ladder; it's more like the steps just cycle upward when you want them to.
| We rode an escalladder into the nose. |
| Technovelgy from Crashlander,
by Larry Niven. Published by Del Rey in 1994 Additional resources -
|
The creation of this word follows in the tradition of the word escalator, which is a combination of escalade and elevator. Escalade is itself a word meaning "to scale a wall using a ladder."
From the story Neutron Star, collected in the volume Crashlander. Just for the record, the first escalator was installed in 1897 as an amusement park ride in Coney Island. Even today, you can see small children who are excited to "ride the escalator."
We're lucky they don't charge us.
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'This robot is a creature... It is a manlike being. Therefore, like any other talking, thinking man, he is entitled to a court trial!'
'...small electric motors at the principal joints worked the prosthetic framework by means of steel cables...'
'Living protoplasm incorporated into the Ampek F-a2 recording system...'
