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"I was involved in a cloning project. .. to send me into outer space along with a lot of other people. Not the whole me - just a hair from my head, while I still had some. I would thus pop up in another galaxy in the distant future."
- Arthur C. Clarke

Disinto  
  A disintegrating ray.  

Robot AL-76 was created to take on one job - running a Disinto on the moon. The farmers of Hannaford County, Virginia were surprised to meet him.

There exists no adequate description of what occurred afterwards, in spite of the presence of seventy witnesses...

...AL-76 pulled a switch. The Disinto worked, and seventy-five trees, two barns, three cows and the top three quarters of Duckbill Mountain whiffed into rarefied atmosphere...

Technovelgy from Robot AL-76 Goes Astray, by Isaac Asimov.
Published by Ziff-Davis in 1941
Additional resources -

This story is a lot of fun to read; you can find it in The Complete Robot.

For a similar device, see the Wunderland Treatymaker from Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven.

(Thanks to Randy for pointing this one out.)

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Additional resources:
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  More Ideas and Technology by Isaac Asimov
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