Editing Tractor beam (section)

===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 (novelist)|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 [[isotropy|isotropically]] as a defensive [[Force field (fiction)|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,<ref>Nowlan, P. F. (1962). ''Armageddon 2419 A. D.'' [pp. 37–41]. New York, NY: Ace Books, Inc.</ref> 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 (author)|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 ''[[g-force|g]]''s, several times a minute. The novel also featured a type of [[Force field (science fiction)|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.