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"I wrote many novels which … contained the element of the projected collective unconscious, which made them simply incomprehensible to anyone who read them, because they required the reader to accept my premise that each of us lives in a unique world."
- Philip K. Dick

Universal Dictionary  
  A machine that provided references to anything known.  

Whenever Mr. Kiku wanted to know something, he'd just check the universal dictionary terminal on his desk.

The universal dictionary in the British Museum was not more knowledgeable than the one in the Under Secretary's office; its working parts occupied an entire building in another part of the Capital, and its staff of cyberneticists, semanticians and encyclopedists endlessly fed its hunger for facts.
Technovelgy from The Star Beast, by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1954
Additional resources -

This entry gives a very clear picture of what a massive computer installation looked like in the 1950's; it was very large and required a large staff to keep it running. Here's an example of a mid-1950's computer - the IBM 704:

The IBM 704 was considered the world's first super-computer and the first machine to incorporate floating-point hardware. The 704 used magnetic core memory that was faster and more reliable than the magnetic drum storage found in the 701.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Star Beast
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Heinlein
  Tech news articles related to The Star Beast
  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein

Universal Dictionary-related news articles:
  - Encyclopedia Googleactica - Google To Put All Human Knowledge Online
  - WolframAlpha Is Not A Search Engine

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Science Fiction in the News

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'... an artificial intelligence equal to the human.'

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'Rayno folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.'

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'Nemourlon armor of reasonable weight resists penetration by most fragments and any bullet that is not both reasonably heavy and fairly high-velocity.'

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As predicted by science fiction thirty-five years ago!

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'Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement.'

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Transparent 4K OLED Wireless TV From LG
You will note that HG Wells also figured out the aspect ratio of the future!

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'As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped...'

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'At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels.'

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