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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
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| Icon Thumbsized Image | ||
| A very early reference to a screen icon. |
This clear reference to what we call icons or "thumb" images comes very early; do you know an earlier reference?
| When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.
Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination. |
| Technovelgy from 2001: A Space Odyssey ,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Del Rey in 1968 Additional resources -
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This reference precedes the 1970 introduction of the Desktop metaphor by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC by several years.
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More Ideas
and Technology from 2001: A Space Odyssey
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
Tech news articles related to 2001: A Space Odyssey
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke
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'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
