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"...if you want to know what your future looks like, don't waste your time on Analog; read Time magazine. We are already saturated in the future. "
- Peter Watts
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| Joystick Controls w/Remote Display | ||
| A fire-by-wire remote-controlled weapon system. |
This remarkable prediction contains several interesting elements. The rifles are aimed by what amounts to a joystick controller; the rifleman is protected from enemy fire, observing the field of fire with a remote display.
| The riflemen [in the ironclad, armored infantry vehicle] each occupied a small cabin of peculiar construction. Their rifles, however, were very different pieces of apparatus from the simple mechanisms in the hands of their adversaries. These were in the first place automatic [weapons, reloaded] from a magazine each time they fired... and they had the most remarkable sights imaginable, sights which threw a bright little camera-obscura picture into the light-tight box in which the rifleman sat below. This ... picture was marked with two crossed lines, and whatever was covered by the intersection of these two lines, the rifle hit. [The rifleman's one hand] held the [control like a draftsman's dividers] for judging distance, and the other grasped a big knob like a door handle. As he pushed this knob about the rifle above swung to correspond ... and then [he] pressed a finger upon a little push like an electric bell-push, conveniently placed in the centre of the knob. Then the [target] was shot. |
| Technovelgy from The Land Ironclads,
by H.G. Wells. Published by Unknown in 1903 Additional resources -
|
I found a cool-looking model of the Ironclads from the story here at H.G. Wells' Land Ironclad. Thanks to S. Jones for contributing this item and a quote.
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'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'...support the interior human structure against Jupiter’s pull.'
'Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray...'
'The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form...'
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
