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"I am first of all not a science fiction writer … I write, I suppose, what the Latin Americans call magic realism."
- Harlan Ellison

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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Science Fiction in the News

Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris
Preventing annoying space debris build-up.

Prufrock-MB2 Ready In Nashville
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'

DIY Robotic Content Farming
'The chief wheeled to the master machine and pressed a button.'

Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'

The Amazing Lightfoot Electric Scooter With Solar Assist
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'

Fully Electric, Fully Automated Vegetable‑growing Agribots
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'

Vero Robotic Dog With Vacuum Cleaner Feet
'Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted.'

AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'

US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'

Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'

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