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"Real science opens windows for us to look through. We're right at the footsteps of the most interesting scientists around."
- Larry Niven

Probability Time Wave Tube  
  A device that allows the user to see every possible event.  

True genius is rare - but maybe it's better to have a great many minor tinkerers, than just one genius.

"They had the tube then. They called it the PTW tube - Probability Time Wave. They'd been trying to make a television set that would see through walls..."

"Their PTW tube caught and displayed every possibility that was ever to exist. And somewhere in that vast sweep of probability, every possible thing existed. Somewhere, the wildest dream of the wildest optimist was, and became fact."

Technovelgy from Elimination, by John W. Campbell.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936
Additional resources -

The short story Elimination appears in the collection Who Goes There, published in 1948. These stories were published under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart.

See also the infinite improbability drive from Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Elimination
  More Ideas and Technology by John W. Campbell
  Tech news articles related to Elimination
  Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell

Probability Time Wave Tube-related news articles:
  - LEXID Sees Through Walls To Next Apartment
  - See People Through Walls

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