# Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction which..



## matt-browne-sfw (Aug 1, 2007)

... were not invented or not possible at the time the science fiction novel (or film) was written, but which actually emerged in real life much later?

Here's my list

1) Travel to the moon
2) Fast computers
3) Electroencephalography
4) Cell phones
5) Minimally invasive procedure in surgery
6) Artificial Organs
 7) Tricoder (at least for some sensors) 

8) Cars that can talk to you (navigation systems)
9) Cloning


----------



## Moonbat (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

Surely almost every scientific achievement has been written about before it has been fully produced. Becuase on the way to producing it someone reports on it in a scientific magazine which a writer reads and is inspired by. Was cloning honestly written about before some scientist had theorised that it might one day be possible?


----------



## Foxbat (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

I  believe the communications satellite was written about by Arthur C. Clarke before it became a reality.



> Surely almost every scientific achievement has been written about before it has been fully produced. Becuase on the way to producing it someone reports on it in a scientific magazine which a writer reads and is inspired by. Was cloning honestly written about before some scientist had theorised that it might one day be possible?


 
Many early SF writers were also scientists (Asimov was, I believe, a Bio-Chemist) and, in some cases, were inspired by their own scientific work so I think this thread has some validity.


----------



## manephelien (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

Yeah. Robert A. Heinlein came up with the concept of a personal portable phone (including the concept of base stations set in a grid and that it wouldn't work properly from orbit) in Space Cadet, published in 1939, i. e. nearly 30 years before Trek's communicators.

Jules Verne invented the submarine in 20,000 leagues under the sea, published in 1870. The first viable craft were used in WWI, over 40 years later.


----------



## PTeppic (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

Going to disagree with the submarine observation: they've been under development since the 17th century and later used during the American War of Independence / Revolutionary War... By the time of the American Civil War they managed to sink other ships (deliberately), rather than just themselves (which perhaps does justify your "viable" observation!).


----------



## Naryaló S dú (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

teleportation
warp engine
phaser
so many star trek things...


----------



## Who's Wee Dug (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

Vidiphones and hacking in T.A Waters The Probability Pad 1970


----------



## tangaloomababe (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

Not yet but I am waiting for HG Well's Time machine!!!!


----------



## manephelien (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



Naryaló S dú said:


> teleportation
> warp engine
> phaser
> so many star trek things...



They aren't here yet...


----------



## chrispenycate (Aug 1, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

From Heinlein, Waldos (teleoperational manipulators) and apparently the waterbed.
Frank Herbert in "Dragon in the sea" invented a submersible petrolium container, a sort of neutral buoyancy balloon, that has since been built.
But there are dozens of examples of SF stories about things that very nearly existed, or existed in prototype form, but were brought to public knowledge in stories; the "Voder" in (Heinlein again) "Between planets" would seem to be an ancestor of the device Stephen Hawking uses to communicate; but actually research was already underway at the time.
By pure serendipity, while checking dates on this I came up with a site:-
Inventions and Ideas from Science Fiction Books and Movies at Technovelgy.com which seems to specialise in these (although I get the impression noz all it's examples have been built yet)(and, reading them, I'm not sure they always got the earliest examples, either) 
Almost more interesting; the technologies that were obviously coming (like TV and smaller computers) that no science fiction story spotted the significance of in advance.


----------



## matt-browne-sfw (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



Naryaló S dú said:


> teleportation
> warp engine
> phaser
> so many star trek things...



Do you mean teleportation of quantum states / quantum entanglement ?
And were is the warp engine?


----------



## Talysia (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

I found this whilst browsing the net, and I'm not sure where it would fit in in a serious discussion about concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

Flying Saucers Go Into Production |Sky News|House Ads


----------



## Briareus Delta (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

I can't think of any example to back this up but I feel sure the microwave oven must have appeared in sci-fi before it was actually invented.

I still find them endlessly fascinating. If anyone had said to someone living in the 1950's "I've invented this box - you put food in and then it will batter it with invisible rays for a couple of minutes and then it will come out hot", I'm sure they'd have been locked up!


----------



## Foxbat (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



> Do you mean teleportation of quantum states / quantum entanglement ?


 
Unfortunately I think we can forget about teleportation devices until somebody invents the Heisenberg Compensator


----------



## Vladd67 (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

For Yesterdays Tomorrow Today check out this link
Modern Mechanix


----------



## chrispenycate (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



Briareus Delta said:


> I can't think of any example to back this up but I feel sure the microwave oven must have appeared in sci-fi before it was actually invented.
> 
> I still find them endlessly fascinating. If anyone had said to someone living in the 1950's "I've invented this box - you put food in and then it will batter it with invisible rays for a couple of minutes and then it will come out hot", I'm sure they'd have been locked up!



I believe - although I haven't looked it up, and it might be apocryphal - that the first case of microwave cooking was a technician setting up a radar system , back when radar was brand new and top secret. He took the entire output of a reflex klystron through the abdomen, this cooking a number of his  more important organs without killing him outright (though he won't have lasted long; I don't think they could save him now, and I'll bet he was longing for death when it came). 
Even now, occasional birds get cooked when they fly too close to radar installations, and they're not tuned to water frequency (otherwise they wouldn't work in rain; useful, that) 
So, microwave cooking could have been introduced in the forties, when the secrecy on radar was dropped.


----------



## Tielhard (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

The USA, back in the middle ages before the Americas had even been discovered the great man of letters Roger Bacon wrote a tract in which he correctly predicted the founding of the USA on the other side of the Atlantic.  He got the name wrong however, he called the place Bognor Regis.


----------



## mosaix (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

Analog SF magazine got a visit from the secret services in the mid forties. They had run an article on how a nuclear fission bomb might work (this was while the Manhattan project was still top-secret). They were questioned over who had given them the leaked material.


----------



## HardScienceFan (Aug 2, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

i have read somewhere the cleve cartmill anecdote was an exaggeration,Mo


----------



## matt-browne-sfw (Aug 3, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



Foxbat said:


> Unfortunately I think we can forget about teleportation devices until somebody invents the Heisenberg Compensator



Well, I think some Austrian scientists compare quantum entanglement with teleportation of the spin...


----------



## Soggyfox (Aug 3, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



matt-browne-sfw said:


> Well, I think some Austrian scientists compare quantum entanglement with teleportation of the spin...


 
i can't remember where i read it but didn't a couple of scientist claim to have teleported light.

as an aside i remeber being stood with my grandfather (87) at an ATM machine and he laughed and looked across at me and said " if i'd told my father that one day i'd be able to walk to a hole in the wall and use a square of plastic and get money back, he'd have beaten me black and blue and sent me to the nuthouse".


----------



## Foxbat (Aug 3, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



Soggyfox said:


> i can't remember where i read it but didn't a couple of scientist claim to have teleported light.


 
Is this not related to the pair production of photons and them instantaneously appearing some distances apart? Because they are identical, it is deemed teleportation (although there are _two _of them) and that information could be similarly transmitted instantaneously. 

I'm also sure that it is somehow linked to the act of Observation which, in Quantum Theory, directly affects the outcome of the event. I can't quite remember how it is linked though.

I'll stop now because my head is beginning to hurt


----------



## matt-browne-sfw (Aug 12, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

The trouble with teleporting people is the amount of information needed to represent a human being as a stream of bits and bytes. Not to mention having to reassemble this at the target site...

Yet teleporting light or quantum spins seems doable.


----------



## Bant Warick (Aug 12, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



PTeppic said:


> Going to disagree with the submarine observation: they've been under development since the 17th century and later used during the American War of Independence / Revolutionary War... By the time of the American Civil War they managed to sink other ships (deliberately), rather than just themselves (which perhaps does justify your "viable" observation!).


 
Going to disagree with you as well. The submarine was first imagined by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 15th century.


----------



## Curt Chiarelli (Aug 12, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

One of my favourites (and by now is considered a shopworn cliche) is the quintessential rocketship countdown which was invented by scenarist Thea von Harbou for the 1929 Fritz Lang film, _Der Frau im Monde_. What would NASA do without it?


----------



## PTeppic (Aug 12, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*



Bant Warick said:


> Going to disagree with you as well. The submarine was first imagined by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 15th century.



Thought they were - couldn't find a positive reference in the 10 seconds I spent looking...


----------



## Dave (Aug 12, 2007)

*Re: Can you name concepts, devices and other things introduced by science fiction whi*

Isn't there a bit of both going on? I mean that as well as "necessity" being the mother of invention, there is also a little synchronicity between the dreamers and the inventors. If no one dreamed that something might be possible, then no one would bother to strive to make it possible. But no one would dream that something was possible unless there was already some inkling that it could be achieved some day.

Arthur C Clarke also wrote a short story called _Silence Please_ about devices that could eliminate sound. You can now actually buy these.

Leonardo da Vinci also drew plans for helicopters.

The _Star Trek_ Hypospray injection system is now a reality, and the Holodeck is well on the way as a virtual reality simulator.

Personal Cloaking Devices are becoming a reality as combat camouflage suits.

Larry Niven wrote about Organlegging, now practically a reality.

I've already started threads on most of theses things already, though they are so old you will have to search hard for them. It is the kind of science fiction that interests me most myself.

In an interview for the BBC, Arthur C Clarke said 





> Almost every good scientist I know has read science fiction and some of the best have even written it. The main thing is to let your imagination go, but it must be controlled imagination. There are some terrible examples in the past of distinguished scientists who simply lacked imagination. For example the Astronomer Royal Hon. Woolley, once was quoted saying, "Space flight is utter bilge", that was quoted against the poor chap for the rest of his life.



Edit: And as for Flying Saucers:
Ananova - Flying saucers go into production
Flying Saucers go into production


----------

