chronoscope n.
a device for viewing events in the past or future
SF Encyclopedia
Time Travel
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1936
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John W. Campbell, Jr.
bibliography
I shouldn’t have told the police about my chronoscope. But I put the apparatus in, and I think I got it in right, and John, it makes the near-future images better, but what do you think—it cuts out some of the long-range tracks.
Elimination in Astounding Stories May 57/1 -
1938
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Jack Williamson
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Mere probability is all that is left. And my first actual invention was a geodesic tracer, designed for its analysis. It was a semi-mathematical instrument, essentially a refinement of the old harmonic analyzer. Tracing the possible world-lines of material particles through Time, it opened a window to futurity…Here is the chronoscope…The latest development of the instrument. Scansion depends upon a special curved field, through which a sub-etheric radiation is bent into the time-axis, projected forward, and reflected from electronic fields back to the instrument. A stereoscopic image is obtained within the crystal screen, through selective fluorescence to the beat frequencies of the interfering carrier waves projected at right angles from below.
Legion of Time in Astounding Science-Fiction May 22/2 -
1940 Astounding Science-Fiction Aug. 6
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John W. Campbell, Jr.
Wanted: a chronoscope. Such a time viewer would be darned handy in many ways, but at the moment—and this moment in which I am writing is so long gone as to be difficult to recall from its point of history by the time this is read—one would be useful in devising this page.
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1948
Arthur H. Rapp
Chronoscope.
Flaming Fans in Chronoscope Autumn 1 (title) -
1956
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Isaac Asimov
bibliography
You must realize, Dr. Potterley, that chronoscopy, or time-viewing, if you prefer, is a difficult process…And there is a long waiting line for the chronoscope and an even longer waiting line for the use of Multivac which guides us in our use of the controls.
Dead Past in Astounding Science Fiction Apr. 8/1 -
1958
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John W. Campbell, Jr.
The editorial chronoscope, whereby we precog the future, developed a fault, somehow, when we were making up the July issue.
in Astounding Science Fiction Aug. 106 -
1987
If the chronoscope (as I named it) fell into the wrong hands, the consequences did not bear contemplation.
Only One in J. Clute et al. Interzone: 3rd Anthology (1988) 58 -
2002
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John L. Byrne
‘It’s a chronoscope, Grandfather. A time-viewer!’ ‘How’s that again??’ ‘This artifact of my lost homeworld allows a viewer to look backwards and forwards through time.’
2019: Father to the Man in Superman & Batman: Generations 2 (#4) Jan. 172
Research requirements
any evidence 1936
Earliest cite
'Don A. Stuart', 'Elimination'
Research History
Mike Christie submitted a 1940 cite from an editorial by John Campbell in Astounding.Alistair Durie submitted a 1948 cite from the title of Red Boggs' fanzine of the same name.
Fred Galvin submitted a cite from a 1959 reprint of Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past", which Mike Christie verified in its 1956 first publication.
Fred Galvin submitted a cite from a 1976 reprint of John W. Campbell's "Elimination": Mike Christie verified this in its first publication (Astounding Stories, May, 1936, as by Don A. Stuart)
Ralf Brown located a cite in an etext of Jack Williamson's "The Man from Somewhere": we would like to verify this from the print publication (Asimov's Science Fiction, October/November 2003.)
Malcolm Farmer submitted cites from a 1977 reprint of Jack Williamson's "the Legion of Time" which Mike Christie verified in its first publication (serial in Astounding Science Fiction May-June 1938)
Ben Ostrowsky submitted a 2002 comics cite from John Byrne.
The OED has a non-sf usage, as a device for measuring or observing time, but not the SF sense.
Last modified 2021-10-03 14:48:43
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.