by Jerry
As fast as the stock of the Consolidated Lighting Company of America went up their stock went down; while trusty scouts who were sent out returned with almost unquestionable reports of lamps which burned night and day and would continue to burn perpetually with the transmitted glory of the sun.
The cables carried the strange news to Europe, and there, too, the great interests assailed began to tremble and cast anxious eyes towards America.
While all these strange sayings were disturbing the commercial peace, the one and only little Perpetual Lamp continued to shed its undiminished lustre upon the Master of the Octopus.
The more he thought and the more he worked the better had he become satisfied that all his plans were well laid.
He had wanted time before the inventor came again to fix all his connections; and now that his patent lawyers and his best experts and his most skilful mechanics had all been taught their parts he began to look forward to the inventor’s visit with much anxiety.
Not even Waxham, with his ferret eyes and years of technical study, could offer the slightest idea as to how the vapor in the bulb generated. Eminent scientists called in, in consultation, knew no more than Waxham; they were amazed, and declared readily enough that the world was just beginning to learn the secret of the sun.
So the President waited for the inventor, but the inventor did not come. In the flush of the new enterprise, the President had hardly had time to think or consider that such silence and inattention upon the part of an inventor were most unusual.
But now when he was ready and eager for the visit, the passing hours seemed weeks and the days were like months.
As the days lengthened into weeks, and the weeks into months—still without an encouraging sign—the Master of the Octopus admitted that for once he had been beaten by an inventor.
The rumors about his failure to meet the enemy grew exasperating, until at last, to silence rasping tongues, he showed to a few select reporters for the press the perpetual lamp; and then the gas companies, the electrical concerns, and the oil magnates shook with fear and trembling again.
This widely published notice of the lamp, he thought, would certainly recall the Inventor to his own, if alive; nevertheless, another fortnight went by, and he did not come, and in bitterness of spirit the President gave him up as dead. Indeed, he wished that he himself were dead. These months of delay and torture had broken his spirit and injured his health. The regular business of the company was suffering as much; everything had been planned for a change to the perpetual lamps, and the continued postponement had harmed the company’s legitimate trade.
And now, when almost all hope had been given up, Morehurst came! At the same time in the afternoon, without prelude and without apology, he handed Masters his card and expressed a desire to see the President.
MASTERS FLEW up the wide stairs; he rushed into the office of die President without ceremony; he threw down the card, and his eager “He has come!” was heard by every person on the floor. Haler hastened to his chief, Waxham came down—a hundred curious eyes watched to see the inventor ascend the stairs.
Masters hurried below to invite him up—all were eager to see the features of the remarkable man who had startled the world with his stolen sunlight. PI is face was as calm, his manner as collected, as on the former occasion; but he Saw before him the wrecks of the men he had left on that eventful night.
The President stood up feebly to welcome him, Waxham looked at him with feverish eyes, and Haler shook so that he was obliged to be seated; Masters alone was active and exultant.
“Why, how is this,” said the invent or, “has a sickness swept your ranks?”
“Not actual sickness,” answered the President fretfully, “but mental sickness, delay, annoyance. Where have you been? We are ready and willing to buy your lamp; name your price.”
Morehurst sat down and looked at the men before him attentively.
“I wish to be honest,” he said; “I will explain the construction of the lamp, I will sell you the model, I will give up all right and title to it for just what the experiment has cost me, namely, 6,000 pounds.
“Masters,” said the President, “got to the safe and take out thirty bills of one thousand dollars each, and give them to Mr. Morehurst.”
The inventor put the money carefully away in his pocket.
“That little lamp,” said he, “cost a fortune. Pass it to me, and I will explain how it is made.”
Turning the lamp in his hand, the inventor thought for a moment.
“You will all recall,” said he, “when I mention it, the familiar experiment of the diamond inclosed in a cavity in a piece of soft iron, the orifice being stopped with a plug of the same metal; then the mass was embedded in a combination of sand and crucibles, and the whole exposed to intense heat; when examined, it was found that the diamond had disappeared and the iron had turned to steel.
“By this simple test it was ascertained that the ugly fragment of black coal and the magnificent diamond are twin carbon-brothers; and it is not too much to say that they both contain the stored-up energy of the sun. Am I right about this, Mr. Waxham?”
Waxham nodded; he could not speak. To his astute intellect, the generation of the luminous vapor in the drum and bulb of the little lamp began to assume a more definite hypothesis; but the President and Haler did not suspect what was passing in the mi d of the company’s expert. The first experimental cost of an invention they regarded as of small consequence when warranted by eventual results.
Before them they saw shining the modest little lamp, simple in construction, and yet more potent for light than die powerful dynamo running with lightning speed in the basement of their building.
If Morehurst had asserted that his outlay had been 20,000 pounds, that amount to them would have seemed a mere bagatelle.
“Then, so far,” said the inventor, “I have made my meaning dear.
“Well, to proceed, we also know that if a diamond be placed in a glass vessel containing oxygen gas, and then subjected to the intense heat of a large convex lens, or burning glass, the diamond disappears, and there remains in the vessel carbonic acid instead of oxygen.
“Now, while this lest proves, as did the first one, that the diamond, like charcoal, is pure carbon, it also proves that the gem may be vaporized.
“All my experiments were made with the purpose of vaporizing the diamond by a new method, for I believed that the vapor so obtained would have the illuminating nature of the sun.
“To be brief (for the rest is merely a matter of written specifications), I succeeded in my endeavor, and the proof of my success is this perpetual lamp.”
Morehurst paused impressively, handled the lamp with evident affection and regard, and then passed it over to the President with a sigh of sorrowful regret.
“It is entirely your property now,” he said, “but you must pardon some show of feeling upon my part when I say that.”
The President smiled uneasily as he accepted the lamp; he began to see the issue of the affair.
“Mr. Morehurst,” said he decisively, “let us come to a conclusion. What was. the cost of that lamp, and what would one or more like it cost?”
Mr. Morehurst reflected. He seemed to be making a very careful, mental computation.
“The cost of that lamp,” he answered very deliberately, “may be figured in this way. The mere drum, bulb and case are not worth mentioning, but to generate the vapor in the lamp required four fine diamonds of the first water, and for them I paid 1,500 pounds apiece. One or more lamps of the same power would cost per lamp, fully as much!”
FOR A MINUTE there was not a sound in the room, save the ticking of the clock above the mammoth safe.
Even Masters, who, with boyish carelessness, had not figured out the drift of the matter, now understood the case.
The silence was oppressive. Over the President’s desk swung a magnificent electric lamp, noted the world over for its superb light.
As if to r
elieve the other, Mr. Morehurst spoke again, with his eyes fixed upon this lamp.
As he spoke, the men who listened saw a change pass over his face. A cold gleam flashed from his eye, and on his handsome lip was a curve of triumph.
“By the way, Mr. President,” Morehurst said, “that grand lamp over your desk (the sole property, I believe, of your company) was the invention of my sister’s husband. He never received a penny for it, and they both died in poverty. Please remember that fact when you gaze upon the light of your innumerable perpetual lamps.”
With these words, reaching out for his hat and gloves, the inventor bowed to the assembled gentlemen and quickly left the office.
For fully five minutes not a word was said.
The President’s face was pallid; Waxham and Haler—who knew all about the stolen invention—felt exquisite twinges of remorse, and no one care to speak.
Near the President’s elbow stood the little perpetual lamp, shining like a jewel.
Its new owner made a nervous motion with his hand, and by so doing brushed (he fragile object from the desk.
It fell to the floor with a crash, and its beautiful light went out forever! The President of the Consolidated Lighting Company of America barely noticed.
“Masters,” he said, rising to his feet,” you may go home with me tonight; I’m not feeling well. Waxham and Haler, you’ll have to run affairs for a few days, until I am able to attend business as usual.”
1900s
THE LADY AUTOMATON
E.E. Kellett
“YES,” said Arthur, “I feel very much inclined to try it.” The speaker, Arthur Moore, was a man whom I was proud to call my friend. Early in life he had distinguished himself by many wonderful inventions. When a boy he had adorned his bedroom with, all sorts of curious mechanical contrivances; pulleys for lifting unheard-of weights; rat-traps which, by cunning devices, provided the captured animal with a silent and painless end; locomotives-which, when once wound up, would run for a day; and numberless other treasures, which, if hardly useful or even ornamental, had yet the effect of inspiring the housemaid who made the bed with a mortal, terror of everything in the room.
As he grew older he lost none of his skill. At the age of fifteen he had successfully emulated most of the feats of Yaucanson; his mechanical ducks gobbled and digested their food so naturally that even the famous scientist, the Rev. Henry Forest, was for a moment taken in. He had been to College, but, after a year of University life, he had wearied of the dull routine, and had begged his father to let him start life on his own account.
His father need have had no fear for the result. Within a year young Moore’s automatic chess player, that had played a draw with Steinitz himself, had attracted the awe-struck attention of the civilised world by the simplicity and daring of its mechanism.
The chess player was followed in two years by a whist player, still more simply and boldly conceived; and after that time scarcely a year passed without being signalised by the appearance of new wonders from Moore’s fertile brain and dexterous hand.
His last achievement had been a phonograph so perfectly constructed that people began to think that even Edison must soon begin to look to his laurels, or he would be eclipsed by the rising fame of this young man of thirty.
I had known him since he was a boy; and had kept my acquaintance with him in spite of the ever-widening difference between our paths and our beliefs. I had chosen the medical profession, and was already a fashionable doctor, pretty well known by the public.
It was just after the new phonograph had appeared that I had with Arthur the memorable and unfortunate conversation which I shall regret to the very end of my life.
“Well,” I said, “a new and great success again. You will be one of the greatest benefactors of the century in a few years.”
“Yes,” he answered, for he had no false modesty. “I believe the phonograph is about as perfect as I can make it. Suppose we listen to it now.”
He produced the instrument, and I had the pleasure of listening to a speech of Lord Rosebery with the familiar tones and inflections of the great orator reproduced to the life. I could have believed I saw the President before me.
“Wonderful,” I said. “It is indeed perfect. What a strange and almost uncanny thing it is! We shall soon have to be very careful what we say; for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. Fancy what a preventive of crime a phonograph fastened on every lamp-post would be! It would be a kind of Magic Flute, forcing people to tell the truth whether they would or no. Jones might say, I said this,’ but the phonograph would say ‘You said that.’ Mere human fallible creatures, will soon be banished from the witness-box; judges and juries will content themselves with taking the evidence of unerring, unlying phonographs.”
“Heaven save us,” Moore replied; “all of us say many things that will hardly bear repeating; and if they are all to be recorded how dreadful it would be.”
“Yes, you see you are after all but a doubtful benefactor of the human race; it is not everybody, who, like Job, can wish that his words were now written.”
“Nor Job himself at all times,” he answered; “perhaps he would hardly have wished to have recorded the words he used when he cursed his day.”
“In fact,” I said, “what is a phonograph after all but a tattling old woman, repeating whatever it hears without discrimination or tact?”
“Exactly,” he said; “but with this difference; that the phonograph repeats what it hears without alteration or addition, whereas the old woman repeats it just as it suits her.” At this moment the fatal idea struck me, which now I would give worlds to have forgotten or suppressed before it came to the birth. Alas, we know not the result of our least words.
“Why,” I said, “don’t you try to make a kind of complement of a phonograph?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, this. Your phonograph only repeats what it hears. Why not make an instrument which should not repeat words, but speak out the suitable answer to them? If, for instance, I were to say to it ‘Good morning; have you used So-and-so’s Soap?’ then why should it not answer ‘No, I use somebody else’s,’ instead of merely reiterating my words? At present your machine is nothing but an echo; glorious, I grant; a triumph of civilisation; but what an achievement it would be to contrive a sort of anti-phonograph, that should give the appropriate answer to each question I like to put!”
“Why, a thing that could do that would be nothing less than man.”
“Well,” I said, “what is man but a bundle of sensations—a machine that answers pretty accurately to the questions daily put to it?” For I was, or pretended to be, a full-blown materialist.
“It may be so,” he answered, “yet it seems to me that he is a very complex machine for all that. He has taken thousands of years to evolve, if what Darwin says is true; you ask me to make him in at most a year or two.”
“Listen to me,” I said, half in irony, half in earnest. “When you made your whist player, what did you do but calculate on a certain number of actions, all theoretically possible, and arrange that the machine should give the proper answer to them?”
“True.”
“And with your chess player, was it not the same?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, then, the general principle is granted.
Are there not practically infinite varieties of hands at whist? Yet your automaton never made a mistake. Are there not infinite varieties of number? Yet did that puzzle Babbage’s calculating machine?”
“You may be right,
Phillips,” he said, smiling at my earnestness. “I will think of it.”
I took my leave, little dreaming that I had set in motion a mighty force which would bring misery to more than a few. Indeed, I completely forgot the whole conversation. It was not till several months later that, happening to meet Moore in the street, I was suddenly startled by hearing the words I have already mentioned.
“Yes, I feel very much inclined to try it.”
“To try what?” I said, completely bewildered.
“Why, the thing we were talking of some months ago. Listen. Words are nothing but air-vibrations, are they?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
“Well, then, it follows that words, if put in the proper positions, can generate motion.”
“I follow you; a molecular windmill.”
“Well,” he said, “this is the idea of my machine. Words are spoken into the ear of my automaton. Passing through the ear they enter a machine you would call an anti-phonograph, and set in motion various processes which in a very short time produce the words constituting the proper answer.”
“Wonderful,” I said, “if true.”
“Come and see then,” he rejoined, “if you will be so sceptical.”
I followed him to his workshop, and saw a small instrument, in its main external details exactly like a phonograph.
“This,” said Moore, “is the centre of my automaton. Try it yourself. Ask it a question—anything you like.”
Wondering, I did as he suggested. There was a tube on each side of the instrument, communicating with its centre, which I supposed would form the “ear” of the automaton when finished. I was at a loss how to begin the conversation, so called the weather to my aid.
“A very cold day,” I remarked.
A sweet and beautifully modulated feminine voice answered.
“Yes; but hardly so cold as yesterday.”
I started, as though I had seen a ghost. Had I not been a doctor, old as I was, I should have precipitately fled. But it takes a good deal to shake the nerves of a physician. In an instant I recovered myself.
“Moore,” I said, “you can’t play with me. You are ventriloquising.”
He was very indignant.
“What do you think of me?” he said. “I to go playing the tricks of a strolling mountebank!
“Try it again. I will not open my mouth.”