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"[Science fiction is] nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Raytron Apparatus | ||
| A device for aerial surveillance; the image was transmitted back to the user. |
As far as I know, the first instance of aerial military surveillance resulting in improved firing accuracy of distant weapons occured on September 24, 1861. A military balloon ascended to more than 1,000 feet near Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, and began telegraphing intelligence on the Confederate troops located at Falls Church, Virginia, three miles away. Union guns were thus aimed and fired accurately at the Confederate troops without actually being able to see them.
But there must be a better way.
| Then Sonya prepared an image-finder. She connected the batteries, the projector, and the grid of glowing wires.
Alice and Dolores held the grid between them. Sonya fired the small projectile. It sailed off, a whirling pink ball. It was in reality a small, flat disk with a lenslike eye and a whirling, pink, glowing armature on top. Over a radius of several miles Sonya's raytron apparatus could direct its flight, and back over the invisible connecting ray came an image of all that the lens eye saw. The pink ball of light sailed ahead and soon was lost to view. The gird of wires which Alice and Dolores held glowed pink... Upon it, etched in black, was a moving scene: mountains, crags, valleys, moving in slow panorama, valleys all pale and empty in the starlight. Alice cried, "Sonya... lights! We see them now!" Sonya's apparatus marked the position of the pink ball. |
| From Beyond the Stars,
by Ray Cummings. Published by Ace in 1928 Additional resources -
|
Even more interesting, it appears that the device also allowed the user to pinpoint the position on the grid, as well as showing the surveillance video.
Compare this to the copseyes from Larry Niven's 1972 story Cloak of Anarchy.
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