First and Last (Belloc)/The Inventor

I had a day free between two lectures in the south-west of England, and I spent it stopping at a town in which there was a large and very comfortable old posting-house or coaching-inn. I had meant to stay some few hours there and to take the last train out in the evening, and I had meant to spend those hours alone and resting; but this was not permitted me, for just as I had taken up the local paper, which was a humble, reasonable thing, empty of any passion and violence and very reposeful to read, a man came up and touched my left elbow sharply: a gesture not at all to my taste nor, I think, to that of anyone who is trying to read his paper.

I looked up and saw a man who must have been quite sixty years of age. He had on a soft, felt slouch hat, a very old and greenish black coat; he stooped and shuffled; he was clean-shaven, with long grey hair, and his eyes were astonishingly bright and piercing and set close together.

He said, "I beg your pardon."

I said, "Eh, what?"

He said again "I beg your pardon" in the tones of a man who almost commands, and having said this he put his hat on the table, dragged a chair quite close to mine, and pulled a folded bunch of foolscap sheets out of his pocket. His manner was that of a man who engages your attention and has a right to engage it. There were no preliminaries and there was no introduction. This was apparently his manner, and I submitted.

"I have here," he said, fixing me with his intense eyes, "the plans for a speedometer."

"Oh!" said I.

"You know what a speedometer is?" he asked suspiciously.

I said yes. I said it was a machine for measuring the speed of vehicles, and that it was compounded of two (or more) Greek words.

He nodded; he was pleased that I knew so much, and could therefore listen to his tale and understand it. He pulled his grey baggy trousers up over the knee, settled himself, sitting forward, and opened his document. He cleared his throat, still fixing me with those eyes of his, and said -

"Every speedometer up to now has depended upon the same principle as a Watt's governor; that is, there are two little balls attached to each by a limb to a central shaft: they rise and fall according to their speed of rotation, and this movement is indicated upon a dial."

I nodded.

He cleared his throat again. "Of course, that is unsatisfactory."

"Damnably!" said I, but this reply did not check him.

"It works tolerably well at high speeds; at low speeds it is useless; and then again there is a very rapid fluctuation, and the instrument is of only approximate precision."

"Not it!" said I to encourage him.

"There is one exception," he continued, "to this principle, and that is a speedometer which depends upon the introduction of resistance into a current generated by a small magneto. The faster the magneto turns the stronger the current generated, and the change is indicated upon a dial."

"Yes," said I sadly, "as in the former case so in this; the change of speed is indicated upon a dial." And I sighed.

"But this method also," he went on tenaciously, "has its defects."

"You may lay to that," I interrupted.

"It has the defect that at high speeds its readings are not quite correct, and at very low speeds still less so. Moreover, it is said that it slightly deteriorates with the passage of time."

"Now that," I broke in emphatically, "is a defect I have discovered in -"

But he put up his hand to stop me. "It slightly deteriorates, I say, with the passage of time." He paused a moment impressively. "No one has hitherto discovered any system which will accurately record the speed of a vehicle or of any rotary movement and register it at the lowest as at the highest speeds." He paused again for a still longer period in order to give still greater emphasis to what he had to say. He concluded in a new note of sober triumph: "I have solved the problem!"

I thought this was the end of him, and I got up and beamed a congratulation at him and asked if he would drink anything, but he only said, "Please sit down again and I will explain."

There is no way of combating this sort of thing, and so I sat down, and he went on:

"It is perfectly simple...." He passed his hand over his forehead. "It is so simple that one would say it must have been thought of before; but that is what is always said of a great invention.... Now I have here" (and he opened out his foolscap) "the full details. But I will not read them to you; I will summarize them briefly."

"Have you a plan or anything I could watch?" said I a little anxiously.

"No," he answered sharply, "I have not, but if you like I will draw a rough sketch as I go along upon the margin of your newspaper."

"Thank you," I said.

He drew the newspaper towards him and put it on his knee. He pulled out a pencil; he held the foolscap up before his eye, and he began to describe.

"The general principle upon which my speedometer reposes," he said solemnly, "is the coordination of the cylinder and the cone upon an angle which will have to be determined in practice, and will probably vary for different types. But it will never fall below 15 nor rise over 43."

"I should have thought -" I began, but he told me I could not yet have grasped it, and that he wished to be more explicit.

"On a king bolt," he said, occasionally consulting his notes, "runs a pivot in bevel which is kept in place by a small hair-spring, which spring fits loosely on the Conkling Shaft."

"Exactly," said I, "I see what is coming."

But he wouldn't let me off so easily.

"Yes, of course you are going to say that the whole will be keyed together, and that the T-pattern nuts on a movable shank will be my method of attachment to the fixed portion next to the cam? Eh? So it is, but" (and here his eye brightened), "anyone could have arranged that. My particularity is that I have a freedom of movement even at the lowest speeds, and an accuracy of notation even at the highest, which is secured in a wholly novel manner ... and yet so simply. What do you think it is?"

I affected to look puzzled, and thought for a moment. "I cannot imagine," said I, "unless - "

"No," he interrupted, "do not try to guess it, for you never will. I turn the flange inward on a Wilkinson lathe and give it a parabolic section so that the axes are always parallel to each other and to the shaft.... There!"

I had no idea the man could be so moved: there was jubilation in his voice.

"There!" he said again, as though some effort of the brain had exhausted him. "It can't be touched, mind you," he added suspiciously; "I've taken out the provisional patents. There's one man I know wants to fight it in the courts as an infringement on Wilkinson's own patent, but it can't be touched!" He shook his head decisively. "No! my lawyer's certain of that - and so'm I!"

Here there was a break in his communications, so to speak, and he had apparently run out. It was not for me to wind him up again. I watched him with a sombre relief as he stood up again to full height, leaned his head back, and sighed profoundly with satisfaction and with completion. He folded up his specification and put it in his pocket again. He tore off the incomprehensible sketch he had made with his pencil while he was speaking, and put it by me on the mantelshelf. "You might like to keep it," he said pathetically; "it's a document, that is; it will be famous some day." He looked at it lovingly, almost as though he was going to take it back again: but he thought better of it.

I was waiting, I will not say itching, for him to take his leave, when a god or demon, that same perhaps which had treated the poor fellow as a jest for a whole lifetime, inspired him to take a very false step indeed. He had already taken up his hat and was turning as though to go to the door, when the unfortunate thought struck him.

"What would you do?" he said.

"How do you mean?" I answered.

"Why, what would you do to try and get it taken up and talked about?"

Then it was my turn, and I let him have it.

"You must get the Press and the Government to work together," I said rapidly, "and particularly in connection with the new Government Service of Camion's Fettle-Trains and Cursory Circuits."

He nodded like one who thoroughly understands and desires to hear more.

"Speed," I added nonchalantly, "and the measure of it are of course essentials in their case."

He nodded again.

"And they have never really settled the problem ... especially about Fettle-Trains."

"No," said he ponderously, "so I understand."

"Well now," I went on, full of the chase, "you will naturally ask me who are you to go to?" I scratched my nose. "You know the Fusionary Office, as we call it? It is really, of course, a part of the Stannaries. But the Chief Permanent Secretary likes to have it called the Fusionary Office; it's his vanity."

"Yes," said he eagerly, "yes, go on!"

"They always have the same hours," I said, "four to eleven."

"Four to what?" he asked, looking up.

"To eleven," I repeated sharply; "but you'd much better call round about three."

He looked bewildered.

"Don't interrupt," I said, seeing him open his lips, "or I shall lose the thread. It's rather complicated. You call at three by the little door in Whitehall on the Embankment side towards the Horse Guards looking south, and don't ring the bell."

"Why not?" he asked. I thought for the moment he might begin to cry.

"Oh, well," I said testily, "you mustn't ask those questions. All these institutions are very old institutions with habits and prejudices of their own. You mustn't ring the bell, that's all; they don't like it; you must just wait until they open; and then, if you take my advice, don't write a note or ask to interview the First Analyist. Don't do any of the usual things, but just fill up one of the regular Treasury forms and state that you have come with regard to the Perception and Mensuration advertisements."

His face was pained and wrinkled as he heard me, but he said, "I beg your pardon ... but shall I have it all explained to me at the office?"

"Certainly not!" I said, aghast; "it's just because you might have so much difficulty there that I'm explaining everything to you."

"Yes, I know," he said doubtfully; "thank you."

"I hope you'll try and follow what I say," I continued a little wearily; "I have special opportunities for knowing.... Political, you know."

"Certainly," he said, "certainly; but about those forms?"

"Well," I said, "you didn't suppose they supplied them, did you?"

"I almost did," he ventured.

"Oh, you did," said I, with a loud laugh, "well, you're wrong there. However, I dare say I've got one on me." He looked up eagerly as I felt in my pockets. I brought out a telegraph blank, two letters, and a tobacco pouch. I looked at them for a moment. "No," said I, "I haven't got one; it's a pity, but I'll tell you who will give you one; you know the place opposite, where the bills are drafted?"

"I'm afraid I don't," he said, admitting ignorance for the first time in this conversation and perhaps in his life.

"Well," said I impatiently, "never mind, anyone will show you. Go there, and if they don't give you a form they'll show you a copy of Paper B, which is much the same thing."

"Thank you," said he humbly, and he got up to move out. He was going a little groggily, his eyes were dull and sodden. He presented all the aspect of a man under a heavy strain.

"You've got it all clear, I hope?" I asked cheerfully as he neared the door.

"Oh, yes!" he said. "Thank you; yes!"

"Anything else?" I shouted as he passed out into the courtyard. "Anything else I can do? You'll always find me in the room over the office, Room H, down the little iron staircase," I nodded genially to him as he disappeared.

In this way did we exchange, the Inventor and I, those expert confidences and mutual aids in either's technical skill which are too rarely discovered in modern travel.