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"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Voice-Clock | ||
| A clock that could state the time out loud. |
I included this item because I thought that it might be an early use of this idea.
| In the living room the voice-clock, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time get up, seven o'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would.
Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes. Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! |
| From The Martian Chronicles,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Various in 1950 Additional resources -
|
This item comes from the story There Will Come Soft Rains, published in 1950.
I was surprised to find that the talking clock was one of the earliest proposed uses of the Edison 'talking machine', also known as the phonograph. Thomas Edison signed a contract with the Ansonia Clock Company on January 7, 1878 to develop a talking clock using the phonograph.
It turns out that one of the original lead cylinders survives from 1878, and is probably the world's oldest playable recording. Read a bit more at early talking machines.
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'A worker replaced by a nubot... had to be compensated.'
'... forcing the energy transfer which allowed him to regrow his lost fingers.'
'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
