possible! A machine can't possibly think—or have judgment!"
Doctor Hakeensaw chuckled. "It would seem so, Pep," said he, "but I assure you I am perfectly serious when I say the machine will do what I claim for it. It seems impossible, but as in the case of the translating machine this is only one of many 'impossible' things made possible."
"But how does it work?"
"I'll tell you, for the basic principle is extremely simple. I have had a great deal of experience in the courts and I have noticed that the man who is in the wrong always secures the best lawyer. The man who knows he is right will be satisfied with a poor lawyer, trusting to the justice of his cause to persuade the jury. His opponent, however, knows his only hope is to secure a better lawyer than his adversary, and will spare no pains or expense to secure it. Consequently, if I were a judge, I would let both lawyers talk five minutes each, and then decide the case in favor of the poorer lawyer."
"But in that case, why do you need a machine?"
"The machine is useful as an aid to tell which lawyer is really the cleverer. It registers their brain capacity, their intelligence, their energy, etc."
"But," objected Pep, "It seems to me that people would soon learn your system and then both sides would try to engage the poorest lawyers they could find."
"Precisely! To avoid that, I must keep my method secret. My machine does the real judging. But I should hire cheap men to listen quietly to the cases, and at the end they would secretly draw a slip from the machine which would tell them what verdict to give. And, as I said, I would guarantee the judgment to be equitable in 999 cases out of a thousand."
"What's that little instrument that looks like a match?" asked Pop.
"That's a gynaionometer. It's an instrument for measuring a woman's age."
"A gynaionometer!"
"Yes, that's Greek, and means 'The measure of a woman's age.'"
"Great Scott! How does it work?"
"I got the idea from an author who wrote under the pen name of Diogenes Tubb, who some forty years ago wrote the story of an inventor (Mr. P. Q. Jones) of an instrument for ascertaining a woman's age. At that time, about 1885, the ladies all wore long skirts. Well, this Mr. P. Q. Jones was a philosopher. He had often stood on a street corner on a muddy day, and he noticed that the ladies, in crossing, always raised their skirts a little, in order to keep them out of the mud."
"Well, there's nothing very extraordinary in that."
"No, but Mr. Jones noticed the remarkable fact that the extent to which the skirt was raised, varied with the age of the woman—in fact he found that the amount of stocking displayed was directly proportional to the woman's age—the older the woman, the higher she raised her skirts. It was another instance of the law of compensation—making up in quantity for what was lacking in quality.
"Mr. P. Q. Jones used this fact as the basis for an instrument which he called a 'gynaionometer' and which he used for measuring the ages of the ladies he met. In this match-like instrument on the table you see an improvement of mine on Mr. Jones' idea—a very simple means for ascertaining the age of your mother-in-law or any other of your female friends.
"As you see, my device was simplicity itself. It consisted merely of a dial on which was a fixed needle and a movable needle. On a muddy day you could stand exactly ten feet away from the curb and place the instrument so the fixed needle is perfectly horizontal three feet from the ground. Then you wait for the lady to come along, and when she raises her skirt you move the movable needle until it points directly at the highest visible portion of her stocking and you could at once read her exact age on the dial in years, months and days."
"Good heavens! But the thing wouldn't work nowadays when we all wear short skirts!"
"No, the fashions changed and I was obliged to modify my instrument. As a person's arteries harden with age, I tried to make one that would work according to the degree of hardness of the artery, but I failed. When the audion was invented however, I succeeded by making a gynaionometer that worked by electricity. Every human being is an electrical machine—continually generating electrical currents. Careful study showed me that these currents vary with age. By the use of an audion I could amplify these currents and I constructed the rather complicated machine you see here which enables me to tell a lady's exact age in an instant.
"I expected to make a fortune from my device, but would you believe it, the thing has brought me nothing but trouble and vexation. Like Mr. Jones, I have lost all my lady friends and have become estranged from my female relatives because I claimed to know their ages better than they did themselves.
"No, Pep, there are some things it doesn't pay to monkey with. One of them is the buzz-saw. Another is a woman's age!"
THE END
