Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the history of science, the clockwork universe compares the universe to a mechanical clock. It continues ticking along, as a perfect machine, with its gears governed by the laws of physics , making every aspect of the machine predictable.
A time slip is a plot device in fantasy and science fiction in which a person, or group of people, seem to travel through time by unknown means. [12] [13] The idea of a time slip has been used in 19th century fantasy, an early example being Washington Irving's 1819 Rip Van Winkle, where the mechanism of time travel is an extraordinarily long sleep. [14]
One of the earliest of these large clocks was the Strasbourg astronomical clock, built in the 14th century which takes up the entire side of a cathedral wall. It contained an astronomical calendar, automata depicting animals, saints and the life of Christ. The mechanical rooster of Strasbourg clock was active from 1352 to 1789.
Film noir meets science fiction when a woman shoots her husband on New Year's Eve, 1946, then wishes that she could live the year all over again. 1949 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: Tay Garnett: Very loosely based on Mark Twain's story in which a mechanic (Bing Crosby) is knocked out and wakes up in the land of King Arthur. 1951
The weight-driven mechanical clock controlled by the action of a verge and foliot was a synthesis of earlier ideas from European and Islamic science. Mechanical clocks were a major breakthrough, one notably designed and built by Henry de Vick in c. 1360, which established basic clock
Tik-Tok is a fictional "mechanical man" from the Oz books by American author L. Frank Baum. [1] He has been termed "the prototype robot", [2] and is widely considered to be one of the first robots to appear in modern literature, [3] though the term "Robot" was not used until the 1920s, in the play R.U.R.
Keys of various sizes for winding up mainsprings on clocks Mechanism of a Wall Clock, Ansonia Co. 1904. The stored amounts of energy used by a given piece during its operation is often housed within it; this frequently happens via a winding device that applies mechanical stress to an energy-storage mechanism such as a mainspring, thus involving some form of escapement.
The Mechanical Brain from Edgar Rice Burroughs's Swords of Mars (1934). The ship's navigation computer in "Misfit", a short story by Robert A. Heinlein (1939) The Games Machine, a vastly powerful computer that plays a major role in A. E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A (serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1945)