Literature Rudyard Kipling's As Easy as A.B.C. (1912) made use of the "flying loop", generated by one of the airships of the Aerial Board of Control, when a woman tried, as a political statement, to publicly kill herself. The loop pulled the knife from her hand and, instead of drawing it toward the airship, flung it fifty yards away; it also continued to hold her arm rigid for a second or so afterward. John Brunner, in the foreword to a collection of Kipling's science fiction, said this may be the first depiction of a tractor beam. E. E. Smith coined the term "tractor beam" (an update of his earlier "attractor-beam") in his novel Spacehounds of IPC, originally serialized in Amazing Stories magazine in 1931. The hero of his Skylark of Space books (1929 onwards) had invented "attractor beams" and "repellor beams". Repellors can also be emitted isotropically as a defensive force field against material projectiles. The device also appears in Smith's Lensman books. In Philip Francis Nowlan's Buck Rogers novel Armageddon 2419 A.D. (1928), the enemy airships used "repellor beams" for support and propulsion,Nowlan, P. F. (1962). Armageddon 2419 A. D. [pp. 37–41]. New York, NY: Ace Books, Inc. similar to the "eighth ray" beams used for support and propulsion of Martian airships in the Barsoom/John Carter of Mars series (first published 1912–1943) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tom Swift – In the Tom Swift Jr. book Tom Swift and The Deep-Sea Hydrodome (1958), Tom invents the "repellatron". The device can be set to repel specific chemical elements. It was used to create a bubble habitat on the ocean floor, and as the propulsion system for his spacecraft Challenger. The Sector General books by James White: The 1963 novel Star Surgeon is the source of the combined tractor/pressor beam weapon called the Rattler. The weapon attracts then repels the target (an entire ship or a segment of the ship's hull) at 80 gs, several times a minute. The novel also featured a type of force field called a "repulsion screen". The Trigger by Arthur C. Clarke involves the development of tractor beams in the early part of the novel. Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein describes tractor/pressor beams as a product of the physics of a "newly-discovered magneto-gravitic or electro-gravitic spectra" featured in the novel.
Literature Rudyard Kipling's As Easy as A.B.C. (1912) made use of the "flying loop", generated by one of the airships of the Aerial Board of Control, when a woman tried, as a political statement, to publicly kill herself. The loop pulled the knife from her hand and, instead of drawing it toward the airship, flung it fifty yards away; it also continued to hold her arm rigid for a second or so afterward. John Brunner, in the foreword to a collection of Kipling's science fiction, said this may be the first depiction of a tractor beam. E. E. Smith coined the term "tractor beam" (an update of his earlier "attractor-beam") in his novel Spacehounds of IPC, originally serialized in Amazing Stories magazine in 1931. The hero of his Skylark of Space books (1929 onwards) had invented "attractor beams" and "repellor beams". Repellors can also be emitted isotropically as a defensive force field against material projectiles. The device also appears in Smith's Lensman books. In Philip Francis Nowlan's Buck Rogers novel Armageddon 2419 A.D. (1928), the enemy airships used "repellor beams" for support and propulsion,Nowlan, P. F. (1962). Armageddon 2419 A. D. [pp. 37–41]. New York, NY: Ace Books, Inc. similar to the "eighth ray" beams used for support and propulsion of Martian airships in the Barsoom/John Carter of Mars series (first published 1912–1943) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tom Swift – In the Tom Swift Jr. book Tom Swift and The Deep-Sea Hydrodome (1958), Tom invents the "repellatron". The device can be set to repel specific chemical elements. It was used to create a bubble habitat on the ocean floor, and as the propulsion system for his spacecraft Challenger. The Sector General books by James White: The 1963 novel Star Surgeon is the source of the combined tractor/pressor beam weapon called the Rattler. The weapon attracts then repels the target (an entire ship or a segment of the ship's hull) at 80 gs, several times a minute. The novel also featured a type of force field called a "repulsion screen". The Trigger by Arthur C. Clarke involves the development of tractor beams in the early part of the novel. Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein describes tractor/pressor beams as a product of the physics of a "newly-discovered magneto-gravitic or electro-gravitic spectra" featured in the novel.