Heinlein

Started Heinlein's short story Waldo this week.

Waldo is a man who lives in a space station in freefall around the Earth. He lives in 0 G to overcome a congenital muscular disorder that makes him so weak he can hardly lift a fork with both hands. He has created several variations on mechanical ``hands'' (called Waldos by the Earth-bound public) that respond to feather-light pressure of his fingers inside gloves that work as remote controls. Even the subtlest movements of his fingers register with receivers on the robotic hands - some of which are enormous, some tiny - to allow him to build fabulously elegant inventions that would be impossible with normal human hands.

This story has a lot of links to practical uses. Similar technology was behind the workings of the tiny Doozers and the gigantic Gorgs in Jim Hensen's Fraggle Rock. Techno-wizard Faz Fazakas invented these little gloves that allow a puppeteer to manipulate a tiny or huge mouth puppet as though it were hand-sized. The puppeteer sticks her hands into a foam ``mouthpiece'' outfitted with servo motors, and this is connected by remote control to the actual puppet, which might be two inches tall. The movements of the puppeteers hand are sent to receivers linked to servos in the puppet, and it works and performs very close to a traditional mouth puppet like Kermit the Frog! Jim Hensen apparently saw the invention and said, ``Oh! It's a Waldo!'' It worked, and Hensen used them foreverafter. Learning this was what inspired me to pick the book up. It's in a small paperback with another short story of Heinlein's called Magic, Inc.

Apparently, gizmos called Waldos are also used in surgery. I'll be looking for other Waldos in the real world as I continue the story. If you know of any, please put them in the comments!