In Grade 11 English class, we were shown this photo, without being told who the subject of the photo was. We had to imagine who he might have been, and write about him, relating his story to our interests in some way. This is who I made him.
It's certainly the best piece of fiction I've ever written, though of course that's not saying much since I tend to stick to non-fiction. Here it is, with a couple minor word changes:
By Jonathan Van Dusen
EDINBURGH, 1894.
Click, tap, clack, thwump. Click, tap, clack, thwump. Click, tap, clack, thwump.
It was a sound that grew monotonous, but Reynolds knew that the process took patience. He watched the gears turn, the steel output rods dancing up and down to the mechanical beat, and the stack of punch cards that the analytical engine swallowed one by one. He crinkled his nose as he watched the translucent puffs of steam fly out the window into the Victorian winter.
It had been two weeks since his consultation with the local Science Council. His analytical engine was the sort of phenomenon they had only heard about in their yearly conferences in London, when Charles Babbage had introduced his machine, and Ada Lovelace her visions for this invention. But Babbage had been dead for decades now, and his visions for these mechanical mathematical machines had never been truly realized.
This is where Ronald Reynolds came in. He had spent thirty years of his life teaching logic and mathematics, which led to an interest in these analytical engines. His machine was but his hobby, something that he worked on simultaneously with the garden behind his city house. He saw logic as another aspect of the beauty he experienced in this garden, and it was this rustic nature that him from shaving a beard that was turning increasingly grey, and kept him in the sort of unpretentious clothes one would not expect from someone in the Edinburgh city centre.
The Council had said they would send a carriage to transport him to their weekly lunchtime meeting. Noticing on his pocket watch that the time was growing nearer for his departure, Reynolds placed a piece of plywood in the machine’s gears to lock them, and left the house. The carriage arrived at exactly the specified time, and took him to the building the Council had been renting. He was escorted upstairs to their spacious boardroom, where twelve men, seated at a long oak table, were regarding him with a mix of curiosity and excitement.
“Good day, Mr. Reynolds,” came the greeting from a smiling, portly man at the head of the table. It was Higgins, their leader, who had taken an interest in Reynolds' work due to an acquaintance with Babbage himself. He motioned for Reynolds to sit across from him, at the other end.
“We have reviewed your application for a grant. We recognise the usefulness of your discoveries, the potential uses by the military. To this end” – Reynolds shifted nervously in his chair as Higgins began to smile – “we are prepared to invest £5000 in this project.”
Reynolds grinned. “My deepest thanks, gentlemen! I am convinced that this will be of benefit to us all.”
“As are we,” nodded Higgins, who then took a sip of his tea. “However, our grant comes with a condition. Mr. Burton?” He pointed to another seated man.
The young man named Burton stood and nodded towards Reynolds, smiling.
Higgins continued. “Mr. Burton’s current field of study is that of electricity. We assume you are familiar with, for instance, the current studies of Edison and Bell?”
Reynolds gave a small sigh and nodded. He was familiar with the field and found it intriguing, but he had always wondered if such applications would ever truly enter the mainstream. After all, no households owned telegraphs, did they?
“Our friend Mr. Burton is experimenting with such things, and is spending a particular amount of time on the concept for an electric version of your math machine.”
Reynolds raised his eyebrows as Burton, still standing, cleared his throat.
“My training lies in electricity, Mr. Reynolds, and yours in mathematics. We have seen many advances in electricity lately, and we have come to the decision that much of the coming century will involve further advances, possibly to the demise of the mechanical trades within the next few decades. But with electricity, the possibilities are endless. Imagine your logic, contained inside a box the size of a loaf of bread!”
Higgins regained control. “As such, we will give you the grant on the condition that you use your logic skills and experience to aid Mr. Burton with his research; a fusion of sorts between the two areas of study.”
Reynolds leaned back in the padded chair and took a slow drink of tea. It was an avenue he had never considered and didn’t know how to respond to. He would have been perfectly content, oh yes, to use a grant on his beloved apparatus, and then present it to interested clients. He frowned slightly, all eyes on him, as he wondered if it was possible to teach an old scholar new tricks.
He sat up slowly. “It if is possible, gentlemen, would you grant me some more time to consider this proposal?”
Higgins took a look around the table, his face showing both disappointment and irritation. “Very well. You have until our meeting next week to reach a decision.”
Reynolds stood up, put on his coat, and said thank-you. He used the carriage ride home as a chance to gather his thoughts. As they approached the house, however, he could identify the bitter smells of a steam engine, but a smell far stronger than he was accustomed to. Minutes passed, and he noticed the wafts of not just steam, but smoke rising from a corner of his house.
He realised his mistake at once: prior to leaving, he had locked the machine’s gears in place, but had never turned off the steam engine. The machine had overheated, and he entered the workshop to find a warped rack of steel, with gears fused together, and ashes for punch cards.
The fabled analytical machine, the object of Reynolds’ devotion, was no longer.
But its successor was needed, and as Ronald Reynolds sorted through his surviving notes on the fundamentals of logic, he realized that he was still the man for the job.
The Right Man For the Job by Jonathan Van Dusen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
