# Who predicted integrated circuits in science fiction? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 3, 2011, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990 "2011-04-03T00:31:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/21 "2011-04-03T13:56:35Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > Indeed. Asimov also describe portable calculators, like the one used by Hary Seldom. However, he never describe what is inside those gadgets. And just who, pray tell, is Hary Seldom? See my UID. Asimov, in one of his stories, predicted a world computer or something like it. If you wanted to use it, you had to go down to your corner Internet Cafe (of course, he didn’t call it that) and, using a TV-like terminal, pose your questions. What no one ever predicted was a computer (or a half-dozen of them) in every house. Even in something like 1979, Ken Olsen, the founder of DEC, could not imagine why anyone would want a computer in their home. This was after many hobbyists already had one. Asimov did predict, in one of the Foundation stories, a home word processor. A girl named Arkady had one. She was nagging her father to spend the extra money to buy her a gadget that would give the output in a cursive font. Funny because fonts are so cheap nowadays. But this was not a general purpose computer. And I don’t know what it would have taken in the heyday of the word dedicated processor (I’m not sure of the dates; it might have been as short as 1975-80) to change fonts. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/22 "2011-04-03T14:04:29Z")
Arthur C. Clarke also predicted something like the net in _Imperial Earth_. The protagonist uses it n his hotel room, at a built-in terminal. The search function is called the Yellow Pages for some reason lost in the mists of time. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/23 "2011-04-03T14:07:18Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > And I don’t know what it would have taken in the heyday of the word dedicated processor (I’m not sure of the dates; it might have been as short as 1975-80) to change fonts. On our office Wang, you just put a different daisy wheel on the printer. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/24 "2011-04-03T14:57:14Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > Jerry Pournelle, in _King David’s Spaceship_, originally published in magazines Dec 1971 - Feb 1972, has Imperial officers equipped with a communicator/calculator device that seems to function quite similar to current smartphones. In Pournelle’s and Niven’s _The Mote in God’s Eye_ (1974), both Imperial military personnel and civilians have them. I remember references to their PDA-like calendar and data-retrieval functions. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/25 "2011-04-03T15:00:19Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Arthur C. Clarke also predicted something like the net in _Imperial Earth_. The protagonist uses it n his hotel room, at a built-in terminal. The search function is called the Yellow Pages for some reason lost in the mists of time. At the time he wrote that, the idea of a giant interconnected computer was part of the basic furniture of science fiction. As mentioned, “A Logic Called Joe” is quite accurate in its prediction of the Intenet (including porn), and Asimov wrote his Multivac stories from the mid-50s. (His assumption was slightly different – one giant supercomputer that could be accessed remotely anywhere – but the effect is similar to the Internet). By 1976, when **Imperial Earth** was published, the idea was in hundreds of SF stories. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/26 "2011-04-03T15:32:23Z")
Perhaps the writer that came closer to a prediction of microelectronics was Chester Gould, who created Dick Tracy in 1931. This is from Wiki: On January 13, 1946 , Gould changed Dick Tracy forever with the introduction of the **2-Way Wrist Radio** , having drawn inspiration from a visit to inventor **Al Gross**. This seminal communications device, worn as a wristwatch by Tracy and members of the police force, became one of the strip’s most immediately recognizable icons, and can be thought of as a precursor to later technological developments, such as cellular phones. So, Al Gross already had a clue the future was in miniaturization of electronics. [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Dt2wrr.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Dt2wrr.jpg) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred\_J.\_Gross](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_J._Gross) ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/27 "2011-04-03T15:41:02Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > Just help me to find \*\*ANY \*\*of those stories about crystals, electricity and memories that certainly may have been writen in the begginings of the twentieth century, during the Gersback years. Not science fiction, but in the September, 1924 _Radio News_ Hugo Gernsback wrote of [A Sensational Radio Invention](http://earlyradiohistory.us/1924sens.htm) where crystals were poised to replace vacuum-tubes in radio receivers. The same issue provided more detail in [The Crystodyne Principle](http://earlyradiohistory.us/1924cry.htm). ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/28 "2011-04-03T15:56:18Z")
Extraordinary find! Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/29 "2011-04-03T16:28:35Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > My dad built and repaired vacuum tube radios. He was a fanatic of electronics, like many people around the world at that time. We listened to short wave radio and also transmitted. One of the things I remember was his fascination with “magic eyes” (light emitting diodes) and solid state devices, or crystals. I’m talking about crystals in the age before IC and before mass production of transistors. > > So, I am sure crystals were part of the imagination of man before solid state physics was introduced.. I am certain there were science fiction stories about diodes and crystals at the time, because we can see the echo of those old stories in movies like Superman II crystal memories… > > Just help me to find \*\*ANY \*\*of those stories about crystals, electricity and memories that certainly may have been writen in the begginings of the twentieth century, during the Gersback years. Crystals were useful in radios, sure. The first radio I built was a crystal set. I remain mystified why you put crystals and computers together the way you do. I can’t make the connection. Diodes and solid state devices are not crystals and don’t use them. But if you really want, you can search through [Science-fiction: the Gernsback years : a complete coverage of the genre … By Everett Franklin Bleiler, Richard Bleiler](http://books.google.com/books?id=PbMdeizaCNcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=science+fiction:+the+gernsback+years&hl=en&ei=VZmYTfuMF4ydgQf51LzSCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) on Google Books. It’s an insanely complete coverage of 2000 or so stories pre-Campbell. (Which he covers in [Science Fiction: The Early Years](http://books.google.com/books?id=KEZxhkG5eikC&printsec=frontcover&dq=everett+bleiler&hl=en&ei=ep-YTdG_M4GdgQe_kLDTCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false).) The preview is limited but still pretty extensive. The index has lots of entries for crystals and lots of entries for “computer equivalents”. How about David E. Keller’s “The Threat of the Robot,” _Science Wonder Stories_, June 1929. A college football game is played by robots controlled by 11 men at keyboards. Radio, computers, and robots. Plus a prediction that American life would be lessened because people would stay home and watch sports on television instead of attending! You can also try [The Gernsback Days By Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes](http://books.google.com/books?id=dn3OixmZI6wC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+gernsback+years&hl=en&ei=R5qYTcy_BsnPgAeB-f3SCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20gernsback%20years&f=false). Ashley talks generally about the Gernsback magazines, though mentions scores of stories, and Lowndes provides story-by-story analysis. But I have to say, again, that these are not predictions. They are extrapolations, which are very different. It’s like a thousand people buying lottery tickets. Their numbers aren’t truly predictions. None may win. After one does win, though, we ignore all the others. But the winner isn’t anything special, just lucky. That’s just as true for “A Logic Named Joe.” David Langford called it “one of the all-time luckiest guesses in science fiction,” which is exactly right. We know it was an extrapolation rather than a prediction. How? Because it’s just a one-time throw-off of a story while the things that people were predicting, like robots and space travel, were as common as dirt in the stories. There’s even a term for this, apparently coined by James Gunn, the “consensus future.” That’s also the future that includes flying cars and jetpacks. What’s really interesting about the consensus future is that it is wrong in almost every detail. Just like lottery tickets. Odd, unusual, almost irrelevant bits of extrapolation now appear to us to have been correct, even remarkably so. But that’s sheer luck. Like everybody else, the predictive ability of sf writers is, rounded off, 0%. Their postdictive rating is far higher, obviously. That is, they were good as taking things that already existed and inserting them into stories, and occasionally making extrapolations that go beneath the surface. I know that people in sf have been trying to upgrade the image of the field for many, many decades, by trying to claim predictive powers for stories. Those people may have good intentions, but they’re not historians and they’re not right. (Full disclosure. I am a professional in the sf field and I am a historian. That’s why this is a pet peeve.) The adage is simple and true. All science fiction is about the present. Remember that when reading any story, of any era. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/30 "2011-04-03T18:14:59Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I can’t make the connection. Diodes and solid state devices are not crystals and don’t use them. Utterly false. Large-scale integration would not be possible were it not for [perfect, single crystals](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_%28electronics%29) of silicon. Virtually all common semiconductors are crystals. ---
**Author:** ![thelabdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@thelabdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelabdude)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/31 "2011-04-03T18:25:58Z")
It is interesting. In the late 60’s the first computer support we technical types got was a dial up terminal time share. A clattering Selectric connected to a modem. We wrote simple programs in Quicktran for reaction rates of acrylics. Later on another job, I was doing MRP on a hand me down TI programable calculator and a printer dock. At home I had a RS color computer with 16 K and cassette storage. It really blew my mind when I paid $5 for a 4 gig USB stick about 1/4’’ x 1/2’’ x 1’’. Now we are moving back to the cloud. Our apps and data somewhere on a huge server farm. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/32 "2011-04-03T18:34:03Z")
Sounds like the term crystal is getting used in different ways here. The crystal in a crystal radio is functioning as a diode. Many electronic devices use crystals to produce a stable frequency through a feedback piezoelectric effect. Silicon semiconductors are formed on silicon crystals for reasons others could explain better than I. Before the development of practical silicon semiconductors, crystals may have been seen as a miracle device for reasons unrelated to modern electronics. Crystals also have [other applications in electronics](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12533806&postcount=152)due to their magical powers :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![FatBaldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/33 "2011-04-03T18:37:40Z")
Going the other direction from the OP, I remember reading the Skylark SF series written by E.E. “Doc” Smith in the 1940s, where the flight engineers on the space ships used a slide rule for their calculations. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/34 "2011-04-03T18:41:47Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Utterly false. Large-scale integration would not be possible were it not for [perfect, single crystals](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_%28electronics%29) of silicon. Virtually all common semiconductors are crystals. Today, yes. After the first few years of use, crystal diodes were replaced by the thermionic diode. Writers in the early years of sf from Gernsback to the 50s would not have thought of crystals as a future device. They were the past. Nobody saw the modern era of semiconductors coming. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/35 "2011-04-03T19:04:07Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Today, yes. After the first few years of use, crystal diodes were replaced by the thermionic diode. Writers in the early years of sf from Gernsback to the 50s would not have thought of crystals as a future device. They were the past. Nobody saw the modern era of semiconductors coming. Fine; I was just disputing the claim that diodes and solid-state devices don’t use crystals. I’m certainly not as well read in early sci-fi as you, but it would surprise me if no one got a lucky guess in anticipating the return of crystal diodes. Thermionic diodes replaced Cat’s Whisker devices because the latter were unreliable and required something of a black art to maintain. But the former were bulky, hot, and required large batteries. Surely someone predicted that crystal technology might one day be perfected and bring the advantages of both. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/36 "2011-04-03T20:29:58Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > In Pournelle’s and Niven’s _The Mote in God’s Eye_ (1974), both Imperial military personnel and civilians have them. I remember references to their PDA-like calendar and data-retrieval functions. I wonder if actually mentioned PDAs in the original magazine story or if he added them when the novel was published? I still have those issues of Analog, but I always read the book version that was published. I know Jerry Pournelle mentions Mote when he talks about the iPhone. > [@](#): > > This activation sucks dead bunnies. I suppose I ought to learn patience. I am after a miracle – at least in my youth the notion that I could have something like an iPhone would have been a miracle, and when I described the pocket computer in Mote in God’s Eye I was reaching far and now I have the potential to have one – so I suppose I should be patient. [http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view508.html](http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view508.html) That was March 2008. He has an iPhone 4 now. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/37 "2011-04-03T22:08:53Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Fine; I was just disputing the claim that diodes and solid-state devices don’t use crystals. After I posted it I thought, damn, someone’s going to call me on it. Too blanket a claim. > [@](#): > > I’m certainly not as well read in early sci-fi as you, but it would surprise me if no one got a lucky guess in anticipating the return of crystal diodes. Thermionic diodes replaced Cat’s Whisker devices because the latter were unreliable and required something of a black art to maintain. But the former were bulky, hot, and required large batteries. Surely someone predicted that crystal technology might one day be perfected and bring the advantages of both. The Bleiler cite I gave earlier does mention a number of crystal stories. See p. 632. I haven’t taken the time to go through them but from other reading, crystals were mostly used as handwaving. By the time of the second volume, crystals barely rate a mention in the index. Probably because they would seem old-fashioned even if a case could be made for their return. Remember, they were writing for contemporary audiences. You always use the latest buzzwords. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/38 "2011-04-03T22:40:30Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Crystals were useful in radios, sure. The first radio I built was a crystal set. I remain mystified why you put crystals and computers together the way you do. I can’t make the connection. Diodes and solid state devices are not crystals and don’t use them. > > (…) > Ashley talks generally about the Gernsback magazines, though mentions scores of stories, and Lowndes provides story-by-story analysis. Thanks very much for the clues. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > But I have to say, again, that these are not predictions. They are extrapolations, which are very different. It’s like a thousand people buying lottery tickets. Their numbers aren’t truly predictions. None may win. After one does win, though, we ignore all the others. But the winner isn’t anything special, just lucky. That’s just as true for “A Logic Named Joe.” David Langford called it “one of the all-time luckiest guesses in science fiction,” which is exactly right. > > We know it was an extrapolation rather than a prediction. How? Because it’s just a one-time throw-off of a story while the things that people were predicting, like robots and space travel, were as common as dirt in the stories. There’s even a term for this, apparently coined by James Gunn, the “consensus future.” That’s also the future that includes flying cars and jetpacks.. I preffer to think there are some extraordinary predictors, but most of the rest are very mediocre visionaries. Murray Leinster was an extraordinary science fiction writer and inventor, and it was not casuality he was able to see beyond his blind colleagues. Besides, all predictions are excersises of extrapolation, from Da Vinci’s flying machines and Verne’s spaceships, and Hale satellites, they always start from what it is known in the present and extrapolate to the last consecuences. Some are good in that but most aren’t. As simple as that. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/39 "2011-04-03T22:50:18Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > I preffer to think there are some extraordinary predictors, but most of the rest are very mediocre visionaries. > > …Some are good in that but most aren’t. As simple as that. I’m sorry you believe this. I understand that it’s a common belief, mostly because people want it to be true. But it’s not. I hope that maybe I dented the notion in others’ minds, though. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990/40 "2011-04-03T23:03:16Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I’m sorry you believe this. I understand that it’s a common belief, mostly because people want it to be true. But it’s not. I hope that maybe I dented the notion in others’ minds, though. Nope. It is not just a common belief, but something that you conclude when you see the predictions of the truly visionaries. If you study the works of Tsiolkowsky, for example, you find there all the developments of in space of the last century, including the near future: space capsules, multi-stage rockets, solar power, rotating habitats, the space elevator :eek:.., etc. How many of the contemporary of Tsiolkowsky had that skills for predicting the future? Or better, to propose the future? Not many. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-predicted-integrated-circuits-in-science-fiction/576990.md?page=3)