Jan. 9, 2023
The Knowledge Machine
We begin Season Two with a science fiction short story written in 1948 by Edmond Hamilton and appeared in the Science Fiction magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories.
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Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hi, everyone.
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And welcome to the second season of forward into the past.
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I'm JC.
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The day, your host and narrator.
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And I'd like to take a moment and reflect on what I've been able to accomplish so far.
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Since I began this project last year in June.
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I honestly have very little idea what I was doing.
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Over time, my recording skills and my performance skills improved.
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I think.
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I have a devoted little following now and it's growing larger with every episode.
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I have listeners all over the globe.
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All in all, it's been an amazing journey so far, and I can't wait to dive into this new season.
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So here we go.
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Early science fiction stories, especially those that were written around the time that I am focusing the podcast on we're mainly written for a juvenile audience, young kids with fanciful imaginations.
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They usually focused on mechanical men and traveling the globe in some sort of fantastic air machine that was kind of a contraption based on a dirigible or a hot air balloon.
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Unfortunately.
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Until around 1930.
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The real world technology had just not caught up with writers' imaginations.
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However in the mid to late thirties, Sci-Fi stories.
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As we now recognize them.
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Began to pop up in adventure magazines.
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By this time story papers were on their way out and weekly magazines became the new go-to format.
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Adventure and science fiction stories became more sophisticated and the magazines followed suit.
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Dedicated science fiction, magazines and other ones as well began using images of buxom damsels in distress, always shapely and often scantily clad.
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Because of the nature of these titillating covers and the fact that science fiction was still not considered proper literature, these magazines began to be nicknamed pulp magazines.
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If you remember one of my earlier podcasts from last season, pulp magazines were so named because they use the cheapest quality paper to provide entertainment.
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The name was revived in the 1930s to describe the perceived poor quality of the writing, as well as the lurid covers to entice male readers.
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Now today's story comes from a rather late entry.
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As far as public domain stories are concerned.
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June of 1948 from the science fiction magazine called thrilling wonder stories.
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Here is the short story.
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The knowledge machine written by Edmond Hamilton.
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The knowledge machine by Edmund Hamilton.
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I wish now I'd never heard of electro education.
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Sure it made me a multimillionaire, but what else did it do to me?
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What did it do to everybody?
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The trouble with me was that I was too ambitious.
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I had a nice wife and we were planning on a family.
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I wasn't satisfied with just being Pete birdie, the best electric repair man in New York.
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No.
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I wanted something bigger and better for my family.
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Oh, boy, did I get it?
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It began when I was called over to Gotham university to repair a motor generator that had gone sour.
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It was in the laboratory of Dr.
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Lewis Kindler, the big cycle physiologist research, man, there.
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Of course I did know then who he was.
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To me he was just a thin Haggard, old guy who looked like a nervous wreck, as he told me about the generator.
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It must be repaired immediately at once.
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He shrilled.
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We are just completing an epochal research Epochal.
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do you hear?
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I shrugged.
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Uh, I'll do the best I can, but this model's complicated.
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It'll take a week to rip her down and rewind the coils.
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A week he shrieked.
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Impossible.
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We can't wait that long.
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His colleague, a stocky bullet headed, young scientists named James Carter, tried to soothe the old boy down.
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Dr.
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Kitler you really must rest.
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You've been working too hard for months on these experiments.
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You know, now it's a success.
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Why not try to relax?
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Relax screamed the old scientist.
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And then all of a sudden he went clean off his head.
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He just collapsed raving about rays and neurons and a lot of other stuff.
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Young Carter called doctors and officials from the university quick.
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They took them away yelling at the top of his voice.
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Next morning as I was working in the laboratory on the generator.
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Carter came in, looking pretty blue.
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Dr.
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Kindler has had a complete mental breakdown from overwork.
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He told me.
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He's been removed to a Sanitarium and may remain there in a schizophrenic state for years.
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Schizophrenia.
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That's tough.
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I wondered what it meant.
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Well, I guess the old man was a pretty big shot in science, huh?
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We had just completed the greatest discovery in the history of psychology.
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Carter said he was tops in his field.
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I kept on working at the generator while young James Carter walked up and down the laboratory looking pretty moody.
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He kept staring at a big machine in the corner.
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It was nothing I could recognize for I'm a good electrician, but these crazy scientific hookups are way over my head.
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To me it looked something like a permanent wave machine with a metal cap, like the Dames put on over their heads.
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Carter spoke as though he was talking to himself, gritting his teeth, as he looked at that big machine.
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A discovery that means millions.
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Billions.
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If only I had enough money to develop and exploit it! I pricked up my years at that.
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Scientific discoveries don't interest me so much, but millions.
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Wow.
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They interest anybody.
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What is the thing I asked.
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Some new kind of rig for atomic power.
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No, no, it's nothing like that.
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Carter muttered.
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It deals with the mind.
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I could revolutionize the world with this thing.
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If I had money enough to develop improved apparatus.
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Well, won't the university put up the dough for the stuff you need.
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I asked him.
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He laughed kind of sour.
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Of course they would, but they would also then appropriate all title to it.
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Whereas if I could develop it myself, it would make me the richest man in history.
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That interested me a lot.
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Here was I Pete Purdy with ambitions for Helen and the family we planned to have.
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Maybe I stumbled on a chance to get in on the ground floor of something big.
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I got up and went over to Carter and looked at the machine with them.
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How much dough would you need for a new apparatus?
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I asked.
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And what is this discovery anyway?
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Carter looked at me, his eyes narrowing a little as though he saw me for the first time.
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You mean that you might be interested in investing in it birdie?
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Purdy.
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I said, and I hedged a little then.
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Ah, I don't know.
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I've saved some money and also my wife's uncle Dimblewitt left her a legacy last year.
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We got 30,000 and I was figuring to open up my own electric repair shop when I got a little more.
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Carter bit his lip.
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30,000.
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He muttered.
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Well, it might be done with that.
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It just might.
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Hold on.
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Don't spend my dough so fast.
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I told him.
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First, what is this gadget?
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He got all eager and excited as he explained.
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It's a new method of education.
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Oh, I said, and I guess my voice was plenty flat.
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Well, that's fine, but I don't think there'd be much profit in that.
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You don't know what you're talking about.
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Carter blazed.
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This method of education is new.
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It's something entirely undreamed of until now.
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He asked me.
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When you learn something, when you learn that the earth is round, for example, how does your brain do it?
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I don't know.
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I said, how does it.
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Well, the nerve cells of your brain, the neurons already contain the ideas of earth and round.
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He explained.
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Constant repetition of earth is round establishes a connection between the two neuron groups by gradually lowering the resistance at the synapsis of neuron contacts.
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Thus when in the future, you think of.
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Earth, the thought impulse flashes along that low resistance path to the specific neurons containing round.
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Being an electrician.
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I could dimly understand that.
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So that's how it's done.
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I said, And that's why you have to study things so long to learn them.
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Carter nodded quickly.
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Long study and repetition establishes the neural paths necessary for remembering.
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But suppose by applying a tiny electronic impulse from outside, you could.
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Artificially establish a low resistance path between these two neuron groups.
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I got that too.
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Well, then I'd know that the earth is round without having to bother learning it.
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That's the idea.
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Carter said, and that's what Dr.
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Kindler has been working on for years.
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I worked with him of course, he added hastily.
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The discovery is as much mine as his.
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You see, he went on.
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We invented a scanner that can change the labyrinth, the neural connections of the brain by tiny electronic impulses.
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Just as you can rewire that generators coils.
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With it, we can set up any desired neural paths in an instant by applying just the right electronic impulses at the right points of the network.
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Any ordinary set of facts requires thousands of new neural paths in the brain.
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To learn a subject like Sanskrit, for instance requires tens of thousands.
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The scanner can put these new neural connections in your brain in a flash by projecting a predetermined pattern of electronic impulses.
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Can it be done?
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I asked him.
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We've proved it can be done.
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Carter told me, Dr.
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Kindler knew French and I didn't.
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The scanner first scan his neural patterns, isolated, those having to do with word meanings and recorded them on a moving tape.
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Then we ran the tape back, reversing the scatter.
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So it would repeat that pattern of electronic impulses on my own brain.
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It took 10 minutes.
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At the end of that time, I knew French perfectly.
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That was a little hard to swallow.
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You mean, you didn't have to study it or anything.
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You just knew it all of a sudden.
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Exactly! said carter.
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I see you look incredulous.
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I can soon prove the thing by running the same tape through on you.
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He grabbed that big metal cap that was connected to the machine by a lot of cables and jammed it down on my head.
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I began to protest.
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I didn't like the idea of anybody fooling around with my mind.
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But Carter switched on the machine before I could stop him.
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There was a humming.
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And a tape started unwinding inside the machine.
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I didn't feel anything except a queer tingling in my head.
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In a few minutes, the humming stopped.
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and the tingling stopped too.
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Carter took the metal cap off me and looked at me.
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Well, I don't feel any different.
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I told him.
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he shot at me.
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Oui, parfaitment.
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I shot right back at him, mais.
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I broke off and goggled, holy cats it worked.
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I do know French, just like that.
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And I did too.
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I could speak it as easy as English and I'd never known a word of it my life before.
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That thing floored me.
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Now do you believe.
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Carter asked.
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And how I managed to say, but I still don't see how there's millions to be made from it.
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Think man.
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He said.
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It takes a student four years and several thousand dollars to get a university education.
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Suppose he can go in and get it off tapes for a few hundred dollars.
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The possibilities of it hit me just like that.
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We'll say there'd be millions of students for prospect every year.
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And college students are only a small part of the market.
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Carter pointed out.
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Everybody would like to know more than they do.
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Everybody would like to know higher mathematics or Latin or architecture or a hundred other subjects.
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They don't learn them because it takes too much time and work to study them.
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But if they can just buy them.
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Why there's no limit to the market.
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I said, How many different subjects could you pour into a guy's brain with that thing?
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Carter explained that there was a limit to that.
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The potential neural paths in each brain are limited in number.
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We found that the average person has a neural index that will allow him to absorb the equivalent of a PhD education from the tapes.
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But not much more.
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He added quickly.
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Ah, but that'd be a chance for repeat business even so.
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The scanner can erase this new found knowledge from the brain by using a neutralizing electronic impulse, then the student can learn entirely new subjects Right then and there, I saw my big opportunity and grabbed it.
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Oh, you can count me in.
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I told him.
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But mind if I put up the dough for the apparatus, I get one third interest.
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One third.
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Said Carter kind of puzzled.
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Sure.
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One third for me, a third for you.
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And a third for doc Kindler.
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I reminded him Oh, certainly.
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Yes.
00:13:19.126 --> 00:13:19.876
I'll put Dr.
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Kindler, share in trust for him.
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But you understand, we better not use his name at all in developing this.
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It would prejudice people if they learned that the co-inventor of the method is now a mental wreck.
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Next day without telling Helen.
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I drew out our 30,000 and Carter and I signed the partnership papers.
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He kept dot Candler's name out, as he said.
00:13:42.336 --> 00:13:46.716
And he decided to call our firm, the electro education company.
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Carter rented a small business up in the Bronx.
00:13:50.136 --> 00:13:53.376
And there we put up the apparatus that he assembled from the stuff I bought.
00:13:53.876 --> 00:13:54.956
How about those learning tapes?
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Carter.
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I asked him at the end of the week.
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We've got to be able to sell people more than just French.
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He grinned at me.
00:14:02.407 --> 00:14:05.167
I've got a lot of tapes on every subject already.
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You see some of the best scientists and scholars in the world are on Gotham universities, faculty.
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Under pretext of x-raying their brains.
00:14:14.346 --> 00:14:17.437
I used the scanner to make tapes of everything they know.
00:14:17.947 --> 00:14:19.297
That kind of shocked me.
00:14:19.927 --> 00:14:20.287
Wait.
00:14:20.826 --> 00:14:23.706
That sounds like stealing their knowledge without them suspecting it.
00:14:24.157 --> 00:14:25.746
I don't want anything like that.
00:14:26.267 --> 00:14:26.866
Stealing.
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Carter answered quickly.
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Why?
00:14:28.787 --> 00:14:29.537
Of course not.
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We'll pay them a fat royalty.
00:14:31.697 --> 00:14:33.537
Every time we use the tapes of course.
00:14:34.086 --> 00:14:35.677
We tried the tapes out on each other.
00:14:36.216 --> 00:14:37.086
They worked fine.
00:14:37.657 --> 00:14:41.167
I went home that night bursting with a dozen professors knowledge.
00:14:41.667 --> 00:14:44.876
Helen had her brother Harry and his wife for dinner that night.
00:14:45.476 --> 00:14:51.506
Harry has always snooted me on account of I'm an electrician, while, he went to college and works in an office.
00:14:52.047 --> 00:14:52.586
Tonight.
00:14:52.917 --> 00:14:54.356
I was loaded for bear.
00:14:54.537 --> 00:14:57.687
When he started making one of his high brow cracks to show off.
00:14:58.197 --> 00:14:59.756
It was a crack about astronomy.
00:15:00.927 --> 00:15:03.447
Harry you're a million miles off base.
00:15:03.506 --> 00:15:04.017
I told him.
00:15:04.736 --> 00:15:07.947
The Romanian conception of space you're talking about as a dead pigeon.
00:15:08.336 --> 00:15:09.897
It's been proved mathematically.
00:15:10.647 --> 00:15:12.476
And here I went into the equations.
00:15:13.167 --> 00:15:15.886
Helen and Harry and his wife all looked at me bug eyed.
00:15:16.466 --> 00:15:18.897
I kind of enjoyed it and I carried on from there.
00:15:19.466 --> 00:15:30.596
I delved into ancient history, gave some chatty remarks on modern biophysical theory and then compared a Sanskrit drama with an old Greek tragedy by quoting yards of each in the original.
00:15:31.096 --> 00:15:34.317
Where in the name of all that's holy, did you pick up all that Pete?
00:15:34.476 --> 00:15:35.297
gasped Harry.
00:15:35.787 --> 00:15:36.986
I just laughed lightly.
00:15:37.226 --> 00:15:39.836
Oh, I'm not one to brag about my learning.
00:15:40.346 --> 00:15:42.897
I kinda like to keep my lamp hit underneath the bushel.
00:15:43.326 --> 00:15:45.937
I noticed that your grammar is still hidden under a bushel.
00:15:46.386 --> 00:15:48.216
Helen like a wife does put in.
00:15:49.086 --> 00:15:50.616
Well that dashed me a little.
00:15:51.067 --> 00:15:53.437
I had forgotten that my grammer still wasn't so hot.
00:15:53.917 --> 00:15:57.096
We hadn't had any tape on elementary English grammar yet.
00:15:58.236 --> 00:16:06.216
That night after the others went home, I told Helen the whole story and how our money was now invested in the electro education company.
00:16:06.756 --> 00:16:09.157
Oh, she hit the sky.
00:16:09.277 --> 00:16:10.687
I've been trapped by a swindler.
00:16:10.746 --> 00:16:13.687
I was an idiot and we were going to die in the poor house.
00:16:14.226 --> 00:16:14.917
Next morning.
00:16:14.917 --> 00:16:18.486
She went with me to give Carter what for and demand our money back.
00:16:19.177 --> 00:16:21.216
Carter handled her beautifully.
00:16:21.667 --> 00:16:28.206
He inveigled her to put on the learning gap and then shot French music, art, and a lot of other stuff into her.
00:16:28.716 --> 00:16:31.537
From then on Helen was enthusiastic.
00:16:31.866 --> 00:16:35.917
So next week we hung out a sign and advertised in the newspapers.
00:16:36.576 --> 00:16:38.947
Carter had written the ad and it was a good one.
00:16:39.486 --> 00:16:40.687
Do you want to know more?
00:16:40.866 --> 00:16:47.917
It asked, do you yearn to learn, but are you repelled by the dreary prospect of months and years of study?
00:16:48.397 --> 00:16:50.197
Electro education is the answer.
00:16:50.586 --> 00:16:52.057
Study classrooms.
00:16:52.116 --> 00:16:54.336
Schools are now obsolete.
00:16:54.787 --> 00:16:57.726
We guaranteed to be still on you in a few hours.
00:16:57.907 --> 00:17:02.856
Enough higher education to pass any university's graduation examinations.
00:17:03.366 --> 00:17:08.876
Next morning, we found a half dozen prospects waiting to get into our electro education shop.
00:17:09.146 --> 00:17:10.257
Only it turned out.
00:17:10.257 --> 00:17:13.676
They were all reporters would come to write funny pieces on our project.
00:17:14.176 --> 00:17:15.317
Carter was smart though.
00:17:15.707 --> 00:17:16.817
He didn't get mad.
00:17:16.997 --> 00:17:20.297
He just kidded them along and got one of them to try a sample course.
00:17:20.777 --> 00:17:23.626
Then he shot a full course of higher accounting into that chap.
00:17:24.646 --> 00:17:28.426
It seems that the reporter was a guy who had never been able to add two and two.
00:17:28.606 --> 00:17:30.707
He had such a blind spot for arithmetic.
00:17:31.517 --> 00:17:35.086
When he got up and realized how much he knew, he let out a yell.
00:17:35.676 --> 00:17:37.987
The other news Hawks accused him of faking at first.
00:17:38.277 --> 00:17:40.707
But the argument induced some of the others to try it.
00:17:41.307 --> 00:17:44.967
Carter gave them Chinese nuclear physics, anything they asked.
00:17:45.517 --> 00:17:50.136
That night electro education hit the front pages of the newspapers with a bang.
00:17:50.826 --> 00:17:52.957
Some of the articles still claimed it was a fake.
00:17:53.166 --> 00:17:55.027
But a lot of the writers swore it worked.
00:17:55.626 --> 00:17:59.287
The result was that we had a crowd around our E shop next day.
00:17:59.817 --> 00:18:08.336
Most of them were just curious, but there were a few with money enough and curiosity enough to try a few tapes when they went out and told the crowd about it.
00:18:08.576 --> 00:18:09.896
Others started coming in.
00:18:10.446 --> 00:18:12.067
Being near Gotham university.
00:18:12.277 --> 00:18:15.186
In two days, we were handling a crowd of students.
00:18:15.186 --> 00:18:15.757
So big.
00:18:15.906 --> 00:18:17.376
They lined up for blocks.
00:18:17.856 --> 00:18:20.497
They came in with their money clutched in their hot little hands.
00:18:20.826 --> 00:18:24.757
And they went out crammed with every bit of knowledge, their own professors had.
00:18:25.477 --> 00:18:32.436
Then after three days, the better business bureau, the district attorney's office and the police all came down on us.
00:18:33.017 --> 00:18:35.567
This thing is a bare face swindle of some kind.
00:18:35.777 --> 00:18:38.356
And I shall see that these two men get prison for it.
00:18:38.717 --> 00:18:39.707
The da announced.
00:18:40.217 --> 00:18:45.557
Carter had been expecting just that and had a lawyer already when the preliminary hearing was held.
00:18:46.247 --> 00:18:52.696
He brought in our witnesses, joyful college students who had quit going to classes all together because they were dead sure of passing.
00:18:52.727 --> 00:18:53.146
Anyway.
00:18:53.646 --> 00:18:55.686
Then Carter sprung his clincher.
00:18:56.166 --> 00:18:56.686
Your Honor.
00:18:57.037 --> 00:18:57.906
He said to the judge.
00:18:58.356 --> 00:19:03.817
The courtroom janitor has agreed for a consideration to let me demonstrate electro education on him.
00:19:04.326 --> 00:19:05.406
Is the court agreeable.
00:19:05.916 --> 00:19:07.477
Well, the court was agreeable.
00:19:07.896 --> 00:19:13.267
So right there in the courtroom, Carter set up R E apparatus and used it on the janitor.
00:19:13.737 --> 00:19:16.346
This janitor was a big fat headed old guy.
00:19:16.346 --> 00:19:16.826
They called.
00:19:17.277 --> 00:19:20.936
Puddinghead on account, everyone around court knew how dumb he was.
00:19:21.386 --> 00:19:24.596
Well, Carter shot all our law courses into him.
00:19:24.987 --> 00:19:30.297
He gave him not only civil law, criminal law corporation, law, and theory of jurisprudence.
00:19:30.656 --> 00:19:37.767
He also gave him graduate courses in such fancy stuff as the Justinian code and medieval ecclesiastical law.
00:19:38.666 --> 00:19:41.426
When it was over and it took a little more than an hour.
00:19:41.876 --> 00:19:43.977
Old Puddinghead got up and talked.
00:19:44.576 --> 00:19:47.727
He not only proved that he knew everything now about the law.
00:19:48.267 --> 00:19:52.136
He proved that the judge himself was woefully ignorant about a lot of it.
00:19:52.686 --> 00:19:55.784
Electro education is obviously all it claims to be.
00:19:55.943 --> 00:19:58.423
said the judge quickly to stop this painful expose.
00:19:58.874 --> 00:19:59.864
Case dismissed.
00:20:00.374 --> 00:20:02.173
The courtroom exploded with excitement.
00:20:02.173 --> 00:20:04.753
Uh, reporters crowded wildly around Carter.
00:20:05.384 --> 00:20:07.453
I found the judge himself plucking my arm.
00:20:08.864 --> 00:20:09.614
Uh, Mr.
00:20:09.614 --> 00:20:10.933
Purdy in confidence.
00:20:11.653 --> 00:20:13.844
Could you give me those courses too?
00:20:14.173 --> 00:20:15.433
The judge asked timidly.
00:20:15.953 --> 00:20:19.584
Overnight electro education became the sensation of the country.
00:20:19.943 --> 00:20:21.413
It was like a bomb going off.
00:20:22.193 --> 00:20:23.753
I'll admit that it's sort of floored me.
00:20:24.294 --> 00:20:33.334
I'm a modest kind of guy I'd figured on profits on maybe even a chain of education shop someday, but I hadn't figured on what he rapidly became.
00:20:34.054 --> 00:20:35.134
It didn't grow.
00:20:35.314 --> 00:20:36.604
It exploded.
00:20:37.084 --> 00:20:42.483
Within a month Carter had branches started or underway in every big city in the country.
00:20:42.903 --> 00:20:45.993
He'd bought up a factory to turn out the EEG apparatus.
00:20:46.324 --> 00:20:47.913
We trained our own operators.
00:20:48.183 --> 00:20:51.273
Yeah, it was simple since we just ran an E tape to teach them.
00:20:51.933 --> 00:20:59.163
Our advertising plastered, the newspapers, the billboards, the radio we made the whole country E conscious overnight.
00:20:59.673 --> 00:21:01.144
One of our best ads was.
00:21:01.683 --> 00:21:05.733
Why go to college for knowledge, would you drive a horse and buggy to work?
00:21:05.733 --> 00:21:07.953
I get smart the modern way.
00:21:08.763 --> 00:21:13.773
And there was a big billboard picture that showed a guy sitting with one of our E caps on his head.
00:21:14.193 --> 00:21:15.034
It advised.
00:21:15.753 --> 00:21:18.814
Don't be dumb chum, put on your learning cap today.
00:21:19.324 --> 00:21:27.483
For the classier trade, the advertising men had worked out displays that showed a dumb cluck cringing in the middle of a lot of brilliant looking conversationalists.
00:21:28.003 --> 00:21:30.973
Do you envy your friends when they discuss, learned subjects?
00:21:31.153 --> 00:21:32.054
The ad asked.
00:21:32.503 --> 00:21:33.584
Why be inferior?
00:21:33.913 --> 00:21:36.374
He will make a new man of you mentally.
00:21:36.903 --> 00:21:39.124
They poured into our III shops.
00:21:39.273 --> 00:21:43.354
They came in such droves that the police had to establish lines at every shop.
00:21:44.104 --> 00:21:48.124
Carter and I had big offices down in the Monarch state building by now.
00:21:48.713 --> 00:21:49.923
My work wasn't hard.
00:21:50.284 --> 00:21:55.144
I arrived at 11 each morning, smoked a cigar and then went to lunch for a few hours.
00:21:55.773 --> 00:21:58.084
The afternoon was not quite so tough.
00:21:58.743 --> 00:22:00.334
But Carter really worked.
00:22:00.693 --> 00:22:02.913
I never saw a guy with so much ambition.
00:22:03.453 --> 00:22:05.403
It kind of scared me the way he kept.
00:22:05.433 --> 00:22:08.104
He mushrooming out bigger and bigger each day.
00:22:09.034 --> 00:22:11.344
The universities and colleges had gone nuts.
00:22:11.794 --> 00:22:23.253
They tried first to suppress us, but they couldn't, they forebade their professors to sell us knowledge tapes, but we offered such big money that the professors did let us put their stuff on tapes on the sly.
00:22:24.064 --> 00:22:29.403
So the universities just gave up and closed their doors all except a few bitter enters.
00:22:30.003 --> 00:22:32.913
Then it was the turn of the high schools and the public schools.
00:22:33.544 --> 00:22:37.983
Senators got up in the state legislatures and demanded a new educational system.
00:22:38.544 --> 00:22:47.334
Why should we support a vast, expensive outmoded school system when he can give every child better schooling at a fraction of the cost they asked.
00:22:48.173 --> 00:22:55.013
The teachers, of course all fought that, but what chance did they have the taxpayers didn't want to keep up the schools?
00:22:55.344 --> 00:22:59.324
The parents didn't want to, when their kids could learn it also easy by IE.
00:22:59.743 --> 00:23:00.794
And the kids themselves.
00:23:00.794 --> 00:23:01.034
Sure.
00:23:01.034 --> 00:23:03.344
We're wholeheartedly for III from the start.
00:23:03.844 --> 00:23:06.874
The result was that the state set up instead of schools.
00:23:07.263 --> 00:23:11.523
E dispensary's in which our own operators gave the kids their stuff.
00:23:12.213 --> 00:23:15.364
Every kid had to go to school one hour a year.
00:23:15.814 --> 00:23:18.663
He got his years' work shot into him by tape.
00:23:18.903 --> 00:23:19.743
And that was that.
00:23:20.374 --> 00:23:23.284
And the state paid us a set fee for every pupil.
00:23:23.973 --> 00:23:24.513
Money.
00:23:24.604 --> 00:23:36.153
Well, it came in by tons, by carloads all over the country, all over most of the world, he was replacing the schools and colleges and still Carter wasn't satisfied.
00:23:36.653 --> 00:23:39.173
What we have got to avoid this saturation of the market.
00:23:39.173 --> 00:23:39.473
Pete.
00:23:39.804 --> 00:23:40.463
He told me.
00:23:41.034 --> 00:23:44.394
As soon as everyone is full of knowledge, they will quit buying education.
00:23:44.834 --> 00:23:48.193
Well, there will still be the new generation of students each year.
00:23:48.243 --> 00:23:50.163
And that brings in a big, steady profit.
00:23:50.253 --> 00:23:50.733
I said.
00:23:51.314 --> 00:23:52.334
That's not enough.
00:23:52.513 --> 00:23:53.953
He said in his determined way.
00:23:54.614 --> 00:23:56.084
What we need is repeat business.
00:23:56.084 --> 00:23:57.523
Like the movie industry gets.
00:23:58.044 --> 00:23:59.023
I'll work on that.
00:23:59.834 --> 00:24:01.183
And boy, he did.
00:24:01.604 --> 00:24:07.874
He got big new advertising campaigns planned that kept the public needled by successive waves of advertising.
00:24:08.394 --> 00:24:10.193
For awhile, we plugged science.
00:24:10.574 --> 00:24:13.523
A man, couldn't understand the world unless he was full of science.
00:24:13.913 --> 00:24:16.284
A woman should be ashamed to meet her bridge club.
00:24:16.314 --> 00:24:19.854
If she couldn't discuss higher physics or colloid chemistry.
00:24:20.544 --> 00:24:21.624
It wore people down.
00:24:21.624 --> 00:24:22.104
All right.
00:24:22.523 --> 00:24:26.933
A lot of them came in and had us erase other stuff and fill them chock full of science.
00:24:27.624 --> 00:24:31.794
When a man reached his neural capacity, we had to erase to put new knowledge.
00:24:31.794 --> 00:24:39.443
In of course we had a few sad experiences with guys who wanted to know absolutely everything and who went badly from too much.
00:24:39.473 --> 00:24:40.044
IE.
00:24:40.854 --> 00:24:42.384
To avoid trouble with the law.
00:24:42.683 --> 00:24:44.634
Our operators were strict on that now.
00:24:45.534 --> 00:24:51.084
When our sale of science subjects began to fall off, we switched our advertising to concentrate on art.
00:24:51.564 --> 00:24:54.384
We made expert knowledge of art, all the rage.
00:24:54.743 --> 00:24:55.403
Sure enough.
00:24:55.824 --> 00:25:01.374
People came in by thousands to have their science knowledge erased so they could take on our cargo of art.
00:25:02.124 --> 00:25:06.384
Carter had worked out advertising that made young people good repeat customers to.
00:25:07.134 --> 00:25:09.263
If they didn't feel satisfied in their professions.
00:25:09.534 --> 00:25:10.733
Why not try a new one.
00:25:11.453 --> 00:25:14.034
Lots of young lawyers for instance, would decide.
00:25:14.034 --> 00:25:19.253
They'd rather be doctors they'd simply come in and have their legal knowledge erased.
00:25:19.554 --> 00:25:22.973
Take on a full course of medical subjects and then hang out a shingle.
00:25:23.574 --> 00:25:27.294
Maybe two weeks later, they'd be back wanting now to try engineering.
00:25:28.013 --> 00:25:28.403
Me.
00:25:28.884 --> 00:25:30.354
I was on top of the world.
00:25:30.384 --> 00:25:41.423
Literally, I lived in the highest and biggest penthouse in town and Helen was in the clouds mainly on account of our new baby boy who had been born a year after we started E.
00:25:41.753 --> 00:25:43.943
And who was now Husky and thriving.
00:25:44.443 --> 00:25:47.923
And little Percival is going to be proud of his father when he attains maturity.
00:25:48.193 --> 00:25:58.544
I told Helen not only because of my wealth, but because of my erudition, I really talk like that by then for Helen had insisted on me taking a full course in English grammar.
00:25:58.544 --> 00:26:00.253
Soon after we started the business.
00:26:01.003 --> 00:26:03.614
I had also taken all the other advanced E courses.
00:26:03.644 --> 00:26:08.864
My brain would hold so that in those days there were few wiser guys than me in the world.
00:26:09.364 --> 00:26:10.084
Yes, dear.
00:26:10.173 --> 00:26:11.104
It is wonderful.
00:26:11.104 --> 00:26:13.864
Know that Percival can be proud of his parents when he grows up.
00:26:14.223 --> 00:26:15.394
Helen said happily.
00:26:15.953 --> 00:26:18.413
Well, that's all you ever know about the future.
00:26:18.913 --> 00:26:22.044
For it was the very next morning that the whole thing busted.
00:26:22.824 --> 00:26:29.784
It busted when an old guy who looked vaguely professorial came crowding into my office in spite of my four secretaries.
00:26:30.284 --> 00:26:31.554
Are you Peter Purdy?
00:26:31.574 --> 00:26:34.124
The vice-president of the electro education company.
00:26:34.394 --> 00:26:35.084
He asked me.
00:26:36.163 --> 00:26:36.493
Yes.
00:26:36.493 --> 00:26:36.794
Yes.
00:26:36.794 --> 00:26:41.203
But if you have a knowledge record to sell, you should take it to our knowledge purchasing agent.
00:26:41.413 --> 00:26:41.953
I told him.
00:26:42.344 --> 00:26:44.084
I do not handle details like that.
00:26:45.284 --> 00:26:46.963
He just stood and stared at me.
00:26:47.144 --> 00:26:49.574
And then all of a sudden he let out a yell.
00:26:51.044 --> 00:26:54.584
The electrician, he yelled pointing at me wildly.
00:26:55.544 --> 00:27:00.763
Suddenly I recognized the old boy and I got my feet down off the desk and got out of my chair.
00:27:01.574 --> 00:27:02.023
Dr.
00:27:02.023 --> 00:27:02.713
Kindler.
00:27:03.013 --> 00:27:04.334
I said all surprised.
00:27:04.963 --> 00:27:05.894
It was him all right.
00:27:06.223 --> 00:27:10.394
Carter's colleague that had been in a Sanitarium all this time, being a schizophrenia.
00:27:11.084 --> 00:27:13.693
But he did not look out of his head now at all.
00:27:13.874 --> 00:27:15.344
He just looked mad.
00:27:15.844 --> 00:27:17.673
Doctor I'm overjoyed to see you.
00:27:17.794 --> 00:27:19.743
I said, and so will Carter be.
00:27:19.923 --> 00:27:21.753
We had no idea you were cured.
00:27:22.453 --> 00:27:27.243
Doc Kindler interrupted me by shouting at me every dirty name a scientists could think of.
00:27:27.693 --> 00:27:32.253
You blind fools to turn my discovery loose on the world without knowing more about it.
00:27:32.614 --> 00:27:34.683
You don't even know what you may have done.
00:27:35.493 --> 00:27:36.874
Then he shouted even louder.
00:27:37.263 --> 00:27:38.013
Police.
00:27:38.463 --> 00:27:39.874
I hate to tell what followed.
00:27:40.294 --> 00:27:47.403
When Carter came in and saw the old doc, he turned a sickly color and started the scram, but the police were already arriving.
00:27:47.763 --> 00:27:50.253
And then the whole thing busted wide open.
00:27:50.753 --> 00:27:52.644
No need to give you the whole bitter story.
00:27:52.743 --> 00:27:56.374
It's had publicity enough and enough people have called me a dope.
00:27:57.324 --> 00:28:00.723
I suppose at that that it's better than being convicted of theft, like Carter.
00:28:01.263 --> 00:28:01.713
Yeah.
00:28:02.074 --> 00:28:07.023
Carter had just deliberately stolen the old doc's invention and hadn't helped invented at all.
00:28:07.023 --> 00:28:11.614
Like he told me he'd figured doc Kindler was away in the Sanitarium for life.
00:28:11.794 --> 00:28:16.503
Not guessing that shock therapy would finally succeed in restoring the old doc's mind.
00:28:17.094 --> 00:28:23.874
I don't blame the old dock for blowing up the way he did when he came back and found out nor for the names he called me in court.
00:28:24.713 --> 00:28:28.074
I'd rather be called a stupid stooge than a thief any day.
00:28:28.584 --> 00:28:29.153
Sure.
00:28:29.153 --> 00:28:32.784
They took the penthouse and the big bank account and everything else away from me.
00:28:33.354 --> 00:28:36.263
I was lucky that they gave me back my original 30,000.
00:28:36.923 --> 00:28:48.114
Doc Kindler had relented enough to me to stipulate that when he turned all rights in he over to the government you know what the first thing was that I did when I got out of court that day.
00:28:48.743 --> 00:28:53.753
I went to the nearest E shop and had them erase every course I had, even my grammar.
00:28:54.294 --> 00:28:56.003
And I did it because I was worried.
00:28:56.483 --> 00:28:59.723
I was worried about what doc Kindler had said that day in the courtroom.
00:29:00.223 --> 00:29:07.034
My crooked assistant and this dolt, Purdy whom he deceived, didn't realize all they were doing when they exploited my discovery.
00:29:07.574 --> 00:29:08.233
Kindler said.
00:29:08.653 --> 00:29:12.913
When I collapsed my experiments with electro education were not yet complete.
00:29:13.544 --> 00:29:24.344
I had discovered the minute electronic impulses used in electoral education have a permanent effect on the germplasm as well as the Soma, but hadn't yet found out what the effect is.
00:29:24.644 --> 00:29:27.253
Will you state your meaning in less technical terms, doctor?
00:29:27.733 --> 00:29:28.513
The judge asked.
00:29:29.354 --> 00:29:30.644
Kindler voice was grave.
00:29:31.483 --> 00:29:40.604
I mean that the E impulses have a powerful mutational effect on the genes that control the brain development of the unborn child.
00:29:41.104 --> 00:29:41.943
I got worried.
00:29:42.903 --> 00:29:46.203
Is my little boy going to be dotty because Helen and I took a lot of E.
00:29:46.294 --> 00:29:47.344
Before he was born.
00:29:48.334 --> 00:29:51.574
Um, Well that I can't say yet.
00:29:51.683 --> 00:29:52.763
Said Kindler grimly.
00:29:53.364 --> 00:29:56.453
I was trying to determine the nature of that effect when I collapsed.
00:29:56.723 --> 00:29:59.604
And you let Carter talk you into appropriating my work.
00:30:00.983 --> 00:30:06.773
That was what scared me into having all my E erased before I went home that night.
00:30:07.284 --> 00:30:09.443
And Helen threw a fit when she heard about it.
00:30:10.344 --> 00:30:11.753
Now don't get hysterical.
00:30:11.784 --> 00:30:12.354
I begged.
00:30:12.773 --> 00:30:15.683
The doc said he don't know what the effect on Percival would be.
00:30:16.104 --> 00:30:17.453
It might not be so bad.
00:30:18.653 --> 00:30:26.213
But you and I were almost the first people to take E and whatever's going to happen to people's babies because of it will happen first to Percival.
00:30:26.483 --> 00:30:27.233
She sobbed.
00:30:27.844 --> 00:30:29.644
We went in and hung over his crib.
00:30:30.483 --> 00:30:32.104
I couldn't see a thing wrong with him.
00:30:32.104 --> 00:30:32.943
And I said, so.
00:30:33.364 --> 00:30:39.094
He was as fat, healthy looking a year old baby, as you'd want to see as he lay there looking up at us.
00:30:40.384 --> 00:30:43.263
Yes, but what about his mind Helen sobbed?
00:30:43.594 --> 00:30:46.503
He should be trying to talk by now but he hasn't said a word.
00:30:47.003 --> 00:30:48.953
Well, maybe I could get them to talk.
00:30:49.134 --> 00:30:50.423
If I worked hard enough with them.
00:30:50.569 --> 00:30:51.619
I said desperately.
00:30:52.339 --> 00:30:53.990
I chucked Percival under the chin.
00:30:54.500 --> 00:30:58.099
Say mama Percival, coochie, coochie, say mama.
00:30:59.569 --> 00:31:01.609
Percival opened his mouth and spoke.
00:31:02.150 --> 00:31:04.829
He spoken a rather wobbly and shrill, little voice.
00:31:05.400 --> 00:31:06.789
I presume father.
00:31:06.930 --> 00:31:15.150
He said that the encouraging sounds that you are directing at me are onomotopoeic in origin and are designed to stimulate the faculty of imitation.
00:31:15.809 --> 00:31:19.589
Nevertheless, I must beg you not to continue making such utterances.
00:31:20.109 --> 00:31:21.700
Helen and I gaped at each other.
00:31:22.839 --> 00:31:26.769
He talked, I choked out, he talked like a professor.
00:31:26.769 --> 00:31:27.430
You heard him.
00:31:27.910 --> 00:31:32.890
Helen stared wide-eyed but he never said a word before, not a word.
00:31:33.390 --> 00:31:35.009
Percival appear to be bored.
00:31:35.730 --> 00:31:41.700
Really you could hardly expect me to join in the sort of unintelligent conversation that goes on in this house.
00:31:43.079 --> 00:31:43.470
Yeah.
00:31:43.920 --> 00:31:47.609
That was the effect of he is electronic impulses on the unborn.
00:31:48.180 --> 00:31:54.299
Every E course that Helen and I had ever taken was in Percival's brain when he was born.
00:31:55.079 --> 00:31:59.849
The fact that we'd had our own knowledge erased, hadn't affected him in the least.
00:32:00.599 --> 00:32:03.599
And I was going to have a son that would look up to me.
00:32:04.319 --> 00:32:05.400
That is a laugh.
00:32:05.970 --> 00:32:12.509
Our personal loves his parents, but we will never see the day when we know half as much as he did when he was born.
00:32:13.170 --> 00:32:16.430
It was the same with all the other kids born after he, of course.
00:32:17.029 --> 00:32:22.039
Every last one of them came into the world equipped with a full cargo of knowledge.
00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:24.680
You know how it's changed things.
00:32:25.099 --> 00:32:27.680
They had to cut the voting and office holding age to zero.
00:32:27.710 --> 00:32:28.250
Of course.
00:32:28.670 --> 00:32:33.259
We couldn't restrict office to adults when our own kids were 10 times smarter than we were.
00:32:34.009 --> 00:32:36.589
Half of Congress is under 10 years old these days.
00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:39.950
And the big offices are mostly filled with kid geniuses.
00:32:40.549 --> 00:32:44.630
I hear there's a 12 year old out in California that they're grooming for president.
00:32:45.160 --> 00:32:47.049
What gets me though, is this.
00:32:47.769 --> 00:32:54.160
These kids of ours still keep piling new knowledge into their brains with E now.
00:32:54.490 --> 00:32:56.259
20 or 30 years from now.
00:32:56.529 --> 00:33:02.289
What are their kids going to be like, oh, I do some wondering about that.
00:33:04.829 --> 00:33:07.680
Well gang, that's it for the first story of the new season.
00:33:08.220 --> 00:33:09.269
I hope you enjoy it.
00:33:09.420 --> 00:33:12.180
And I look forward to providing additional interesting stories.
00:33:12.180 --> 00:33:14.759
I will hail from all different kinds of themes this year.
00:33:15.210 --> 00:33:16.619
Now don't worry.
00:33:16.619 --> 00:33:17.460
Faithful listeners.
00:33:17.700 --> 00:33:20.400
Nick Carter will indeed be back this year.
00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:22.500
I just don't have an exact date.
00:33:22.950 --> 00:33:27.390
Yet, but rest assuredly, he will return to the podcast.
00:33:28.140 --> 00:33:34.319
I'd like to remind you all to visit the website for links to past episodes, upcoming information for the podcast.
00:33:34.559 --> 00:33:36.539
Subscriber links to our newsletter.
00:33:36.930 --> 00:33:44.160
And of course my buy me a coffee page where you can donate to support the show or become a regular subscriber.
00:33:44.849 --> 00:33:51.420
And there may be some exciting upcoming news about what I'd like to do to expand the format of the show.
00:33:51.900 --> 00:33:53.940
So please stay tuned for that.
00:33:54.750 --> 00:33:55.289
Oh, gosh.
00:33:55.740 --> 00:33:57.990
Well, it looks like I've rambled long enough again.
00:33:58.650 --> 00:33:59.640
As always friends.
00:34:00.029 --> 00:34:01.230
Thanks for listening.
00:34:01.500 --> 00:34:03.059
Keep sharing the stories.
00:34:03.390 --> 00:34:05.700
And be a good human.
00:34:06.839 --> 00:34:07.920
Bye for now.
00:00:01.864 --> 00:00:02.524
Hi, everyone.
00:00:03.033 --> 00:00:06.814
And welcome to the second season of forward into the past.
00:00:07.413 --> 00:00:08.073
I'm JC.
00:00:08.163 --> 00:00:09.843
The day, your host and narrator.
00:00:10.384 --> 00:00:14.433
And I'd like to take a moment and reflect on what I've been able to accomplish so far.
00:00:15.124 --> 00:00:17.314
Since I began this project last year in June.
00:00:17.824 --> 00:00:20.463
I honestly have very little idea what I was doing.
00:00:21.184 --> 00:00:24.243
Over time, my recording skills and my performance skills improved.
00:00:24.603 --> 00:00:25.204
I think.
00:00:25.923 --> 00:00:29.553
I have a devoted little following now and it's growing larger with every episode.
00:00:29.884 --> 00:00:31.923
I have listeners all over the globe.
00:00:32.524 --> 00:00:39.033
All in all, it's been an amazing journey so far, and I can't wait to dive into this new season.
00:00:39.423 --> 00:00:40.923
So here we go.
00:00:42.103 --> 00:00:53.564
Early science fiction stories, especially those that were written around the time that I am focusing the podcast on we're mainly written for a juvenile audience, young kids with fanciful imaginations.
00:00:54.253 --> 00:01:04.843
They usually focused on mechanical men and traveling the globe in some sort of fantastic air machine that was kind of a contraption based on a dirigible or a hot air balloon.
00:01:05.593 --> 00:01:06.433
Unfortunately.
00:01:06.853 --> 00:01:08.293
Until around 1930.
00:01:08.804 --> 00:01:13.483
The real world technology had just not caught up with writers' imaginations.
00:01:14.084 --> 00:01:18.134
However in the mid to late thirties, Sci-Fi stories.
00:01:18.403 --> 00:01:19.873
As we now recognize them.
00:01:20.444 --> 00:01:22.634
Began to pop up in adventure magazines.
00:01:23.114 --> 00:01:29.653
By this time story papers were on their way out and weekly magazines became the new go-to format.
00:01:30.433 --> 00:01:35.353
Adventure and science fiction stories became more sophisticated and the magazines followed suit.
00:01:36.073 --> 00:01:46.873
Dedicated science fiction, magazines and other ones as well began using images of buxom damsels in distress, always shapely and often scantily clad.
00:01:47.683 --> 00:01:57.614
Because of the nature of these titillating covers and the fact that science fiction was still not considered proper literature, these magazines began to be nicknamed pulp magazines.
00:01:58.334 --> 00:02:08.593
If you remember one of my earlier podcasts from last season, pulp magazines were so named because they use the cheapest quality paper to provide entertainment.
00:02:09.463 --> 00:02:19.693
The name was revived in the 1930s to describe the perceived poor quality of the writing, as well as the lurid covers to entice male readers.
00:02:20.653 --> 00:02:24.223
Now today's story comes from a rather late entry.
00:02:24.283 --> 00:02:26.593
As far as public domain stories are concerned.
00:02:27.104 --> 00:02:33.343
June of 1948 from the science fiction magazine called thrilling wonder stories.
00:02:34.274 --> 00:02:36.074
Here is the short story.
00:02:36.433 --> 00:02:40.183
The knowledge machine written by Edmond Hamilton.
00:02:42.683 --> 00:02:44.843
The knowledge machine by Edmund Hamilton.
00:02:47.753 --> 00:02:50.213
I wish now I'd never heard of electro education.
00:02:50.723 --> 00:02:54.563
Sure it made me a multimillionaire, but what else did it do to me?
00:02:54.743 --> 00:02:56.304
What did it do to everybody?
00:02:57.324 --> 00:02:59.633
The trouble with me was that I was too ambitious.
00:02:59.993 --> 00:03:02.813
I had a nice wife and we were planning on a family.
00:03:03.383 --> 00:03:08.274
I wasn't satisfied with just being Pete birdie, the best electric repair man in New York.
00:03:08.723 --> 00:03:09.114
No.
00:03:09.713 --> 00:03:12.864
I wanted something bigger and better for my family.
00:03:12.864 --> 00:03:14.663
Oh, boy, did I get it?
00:03:15.804 --> 00:03:21.084
It began when I was called over to Gotham university to repair a motor generator that had gone sour.
00:03:21.834 --> 00:03:23.484
It was in the laboratory of Dr.
00:03:23.484 --> 00:03:27.623
Lewis Kindler, the big cycle physiologist research, man, there.
00:03:28.223 --> 00:03:30.894
Of course I did know then who he was.
00:03:31.163 --> 00:03:37.433
To me he was just a thin Haggard, old guy who looked like a nervous wreck, as he told me about the generator.
00:03:38.014 --> 00:03:40.503
It must be repaired immediately at once.
00:03:40.743 --> 00:03:41.403
He shrilled.
00:03:41.734 --> 00:03:44.713
We are just completing an epochal research Epochal.
00:03:44.864 --> 00:03:45.443
do you hear?
00:03:45.973 --> 00:03:46.574
I shrugged.
00:03:47.234 --> 00:03:50.354
Uh, I'll do the best I can, but this model's complicated.
00:03:50.593 --> 00:03:53.383
It'll take a week to rip her down and rewind the coils.
00:03:53.913 --> 00:03:55.413
A week he shrieked.
00:03:55.593 --> 00:03:56.463
Impossible.
00:03:56.463 --> 00:03:57.813
We can't wait that long.
00:03:58.313 --> 00:04:03.834
His colleague, a stocky bullet headed, young scientists named James Carter, tried to soothe the old boy down.
00:04:04.354 --> 00:04:04.713
Dr.
00:04:04.713 --> 00:04:06.334
Kitler you really must rest.
00:04:06.663 --> 00:04:09.364
You've been working too hard for months on these experiments.
00:04:09.903 --> 00:04:11.283
You know, now it's a success.
00:04:11.433 --> 00:04:12.753
Why not try to relax?
00:04:12.854 --> 00:04:15.313
Relax screamed the old scientist.
00:04:15.584 --> 00:04:18.673
And then all of a sudden he went clean off his head.
00:04:19.033 --> 00:04:24.163
He just collapsed raving about rays and neurons and a lot of other stuff.
00:04:24.704 --> 00:04:27.973
Young Carter called doctors and officials from the university quick.
00:04:28.363 --> 00:04:30.853
They took them away yelling at the top of his voice.
00:04:31.334 --> 00:04:34.454
Next morning as I was working in the laboratory on the generator.
00:04:34.723 --> 00:04:36.524
Carter came in, looking pretty blue.
00:04:37.074 --> 00:04:37.403
Dr.
00:04:37.403 --> 00:04:40.343
Kindler has had a complete mental breakdown from overwork.
00:04:40.793 --> 00:04:41.423
He told me.
00:04:42.053 --> 00:04:46.494
He's been removed to a Sanitarium and may remain there in a schizophrenic state for years.
00:04:47.024 --> 00:04:47.803
Schizophrenia.
00:04:48.494 --> 00:04:49.274
That's tough.
00:04:49.634 --> 00:04:50.713
I wondered what it meant.
00:04:51.644 --> 00:04:54.884
Well, I guess the old man was a pretty big shot in science, huh?
00:04:55.343 --> 00:04:58.853
We had just completed the greatest discovery in the history of psychology.
00:04:59.184 --> 00:05:01.733
Carter said he was tops in his field.
00:05:02.283 --> 00:05:07.894
I kept on working at the generator while young James Carter walked up and down the laboratory looking pretty moody.
00:05:08.584 --> 00:05:11.343
He kept staring at a big machine in the corner.
00:05:12.033 --> 00:05:18.843
It was nothing I could recognize for I'm a good electrician, but these crazy scientific hookups are way over my head.
00:05:19.384 --> 00:05:25.593
To me it looked something like a permanent wave machine with a metal cap, like the Dames put on over their heads.
00:05:26.103 --> 00:05:31.024
Carter spoke as though he was talking to himself, gritting his teeth, as he looked at that big machine.
00:05:31.488 --> 00:05:33.494
A discovery that means millions.
00:05:33.824 --> 00:05:34.394
Billions.
00:05:34.723 --> 00:05:39.903
If only I had enough money to develop and exploit it! I pricked up my years at that.
00:05:40.233 --> 00:05:43.653
Scientific discoveries don't interest me so much, but millions.
00:05:43.923 --> 00:05:44.223
Wow.
00:05:44.374 --> 00:05:45.483
They interest anybody.
00:05:46.184 --> 00:05:47.593
What is the thing I asked.
00:05:48.103 --> 00:05:50.353
Some new kind of rig for atomic power.
00:05:50.684 --> 00:05:52.184
No, no, it's nothing like that.
00:05:52.543 --> 00:05:53.233
Carter muttered.
00:05:53.713 --> 00:05:55.033
It deals with the mind.
00:05:55.574 --> 00:05:57.884
I could revolutionize the world with this thing.
00:05:57.884 --> 00:06:01.184
If I had money enough to develop improved apparatus.
00:06:01.783 --> 00:06:04.994
Well, won't the university put up the dough for the stuff you need.
00:06:05.264 --> 00:06:05.863
I asked him.
00:06:06.334 --> 00:06:07.413
He laughed kind of sour.
00:06:07.764 --> 00:06:12.144
Of course they would, but they would also then appropriate all title to it.
00:06:12.593 --> 00:06:17.543
Whereas if I could develop it myself, it would make me the richest man in history.
00:06:18.053 --> 00:06:19.913
That interested me a lot.
00:06:20.603 --> 00:06:24.983
Here was I Pete Purdy with ambitions for Helen and the family we planned to have.
00:06:25.343 --> 00:06:28.913
Maybe I stumbled on a chance to get in on the ground floor of something big.
00:06:29.403 --> 00:06:32.103
I got up and went over to Carter and looked at the machine with them.
00:06:32.634 --> 00:06:34.913
How much dough would you need for a new apparatus?
00:06:35.084 --> 00:06:35.533
I asked.
00:06:35.843 --> 00:06:37.463
And what is this discovery anyway?
00:06:37.983 --> 00:06:42.744
Carter looked at me, his eyes narrowing a little as though he saw me for the first time.
00:06:43.244 --> 00:06:46.423
You mean that you might be interested in investing in it birdie?
00:06:47.353 --> 00:06:47.803
Purdy.
00:06:48.163 --> 00:06:50.144
I said, and I hedged a little then.
00:06:50.774 --> 00:06:51.944
Ah, I don't know.
00:06:52.244 --> 00:06:56.803
I've saved some money and also my wife's uncle Dimblewitt left her a legacy last year.
00:06:57.434 --> 00:07:02.983
We got 30,000 and I was figuring to open up my own electric repair shop when I got a little more.
00:07:03.543 --> 00:07:04.593
Carter bit his lip.
00:07:04.973 --> 00:07:06.113
30,000.
00:07:06.384 --> 00:07:06.863
He muttered.
00:07:07.793 --> 00:07:09.653
Well, it might be done with that.
00:07:09.834 --> 00:07:10.733
It just might.
00:07:11.423 --> 00:07:12.204
Hold on.
00:07:12.444 --> 00:07:14.004
Don't spend my dough so fast.
00:07:14.124 --> 00:07:14.723
I told him.
00:07:14.994 --> 00:07:16.973
First, what is this gadget?
00:07:17.814 --> 00:07:20.033
He got all eager and excited as he explained.
00:07:20.543 --> 00:07:22.223
It's a new method of education.
00:07:23.423 --> 00:07:27.084
Oh, I said, and I guess my voice was plenty flat.
00:07:27.574 --> 00:07:31.863
Well, that's fine, but I don't think there'd be much profit in that.
00:07:32.384 --> 00:07:34.483
You don't know what you're talking about.
00:07:34.514 --> 00:07:35.413
Carter blazed.
00:07:36.074 --> 00:07:38.233
This method of education is new.
00:07:38.353 --> 00:07:41.533
It's something entirely undreamed of until now.
00:07:41.934 --> 00:07:42.533
He asked me.
00:07:42.774 --> 00:07:48.593
When you learn something, when you learn that the earth is round, for example, how does your brain do it?
00:07:49.093 --> 00:07:49.874
I don't know.
00:07:50.053 --> 00:07:51.283
I said, how does it.
00:07:51.783 --> 00:07:57.843
Well, the nerve cells of your brain, the neurons already contain the ideas of earth and round.
00:07:57.963 --> 00:07:58.713
He explained.
00:07:59.184 --> 00:08:09.983
Constant repetition of earth is round establishes a connection between the two neuron groups by gradually lowering the resistance at the synapsis of neuron contacts.
00:08:10.613 --> 00:08:12.624
Thus when in the future, you think of.
00:08:12.803 --> 00:08:19.163
Earth, the thought impulse flashes along that low resistance path to the specific neurons containing round.
00:08:19.634 --> 00:08:20.653
Being an electrician.
00:08:20.923 --> 00:08:22.663
I could dimly understand that.
00:08:22.983 --> 00:08:24.543
So that's how it's done.
00:08:24.843 --> 00:08:28.803
I said, And that's why you have to study things so long to learn them.
00:08:29.343 --> 00:08:30.574
Carter nodded quickly.
00:08:31.293 --> 00:08:35.793
Long study and repetition establishes the neural paths necessary for remembering.
00:08:36.244 --> 00:08:42.063
But suppose by applying a tiny electronic impulse from outside, you could.
00:08:42.543 --> 00:08:47.703
Artificially establish a low resistance path between these two neuron groups.
00:08:48.193 --> 00:08:49.183
I got that too.
00:08:49.813 --> 00:08:54.464
Well, then I'd know that the earth is round without having to bother learning it.
00:08:55.474 --> 00:08:56.464
That's the idea.
00:08:56.823 --> 00:08:59.043
Carter said, and that's what Dr.
00:08:59.043 --> 00:09:00.874
Kindler has been working on for years.
00:09:01.293 --> 00:09:03.874
I worked with him of course, he added hastily.
00:09:04.354 --> 00:09:06.683
The discovery is as much mine as his.
00:09:07.014 --> 00:09:08.394
You see, he went on.
00:09:08.724 --> 00:09:15.533
We invented a scanner that can change the labyrinth, the neural connections of the brain by tiny electronic impulses.
00:09:15.894 --> 00:09:18.894
Just as you can rewire that generators coils.
00:09:19.403 --> 00:09:27.984
With it, we can set up any desired neural paths in an instant by applying just the right electronic impulses at the right points of the network.
00:09:28.854 --> 00:09:33.264
Any ordinary set of facts requires thousands of new neural paths in the brain.
00:09:33.714 --> 00:09:38.514
To learn a subject like Sanskrit, for instance requires tens of thousands.
00:09:38.964 --> 00:09:47.364
The scanner can put these new neural connections in your brain in a flash by projecting a predetermined pattern of electronic impulses.
00:09:47.864 --> 00:09:48.764
Can it be done?
00:09:48.984 --> 00:09:49.673
I asked him.
00:09:50.224 --> 00:09:51.994
We've proved it can be done.
00:09:52.283 --> 00:09:53.874
Carter told me, Dr.
00:09:53.874 --> 00:09:56.274
Kindler knew French and I didn't.
00:09:56.754 --> 00:10:04.583
The scanner first scan his neural patterns, isolated, those having to do with word meanings and recorded them on a moving tape.
00:10:05.244 --> 00:10:07.994
Then we ran the tape back, reversing the scatter.
00:10:08.203 --> 00:10:12.254
So it would repeat that pattern of electronic impulses on my own brain.
00:10:12.703 --> 00:10:14.234
It took 10 minutes.
00:10:14.803 --> 00:10:17.894
At the end of that time, I knew French perfectly.
00:10:18.374 --> 00:10:20.173
That was a little hard to swallow.
00:10:20.833 --> 00:10:23.144
You mean, you didn't have to study it or anything.
00:10:23.594 --> 00:10:25.193
You just knew it all of a sudden.
00:10:26.063 --> 00:10:27.833
Exactly! said carter.
00:10:28.323 --> 00:10:29.774
I see you look incredulous.
00:10:30.014 --> 00:10:33.583
I can soon prove the thing by running the same tape through on you.
00:10:34.053 --> 00:10:39.933
He grabbed that big metal cap that was connected to the machine by a lot of cables and jammed it down on my head.
00:10:40.384 --> 00:10:41.494
I began to protest.
00:10:41.943 --> 00:10:44.673
I didn't like the idea of anybody fooling around with my mind.
00:10:45.033 --> 00:10:48.063
But Carter switched on the machine before I could stop him.
00:10:48.403 --> 00:10:49.153
There was a humming.
00:10:49.543 --> 00:10:52.153
And a tape started unwinding inside the machine.
00:10:52.813 --> 00:10:55.903
I didn't feel anything except a queer tingling in my head.
00:10:56.563 --> 00:10:58.094
In a few minutes, the humming stopped.
00:10:58.094 --> 00:10:59.354
and the tingling stopped too.
00:10:59.703 --> 00:11:02.014
Carter took the metal cap off me and looked at me.
00:11:02.533 --> 00:11:04.423
Well, I don't feel any different.
00:11:04.543 --> 00:11:05.114
I told him.
00:11:07.287 --> 00:11:07.947
he shot at me.
00:11:08.687 --> 00:11:09.736
Oui, parfaitment.
00:11:10.076 --> 00:11:11.856
I shot right back at him, mais.
00:11:12.417 --> 00:11:15.817
I broke off and goggled, holy cats it worked.
00:11:16.197 --> 00:11:18.116
I do know French, just like that.
00:11:18.657 --> 00:11:19.616
And I did too.
00:11:19.886 --> 00:11:24.236
I could speak it as easy as English and I'd never known a word of it my life before.
00:11:24.567 --> 00:11:25.947
That thing floored me.
00:11:26.397 --> 00:11:27.297
Now do you believe.
00:11:27.557 --> 00:11:28.307
Carter asked.
00:11:28.547 --> 00:11:34.096
And how I managed to say, but I still don't see how there's millions to be made from it.
00:11:34.576 --> 00:11:35.417
Think man.
00:11:35.657 --> 00:11:36.106
He said.
00:11:36.496 --> 00:11:41.956
It takes a student four years and several thousand dollars to get a university education.
00:11:42.466 --> 00:11:46.907
Suppose he can go in and get it off tapes for a few hundred dollars.
00:11:47.397 --> 00:11:49.917
The possibilities of it hit me just like that.
00:11:50.966 --> 00:11:54.807
We'll say there'd be millions of students for prospect every year.
00:11:55.206 --> 00:11:57.996
And college students are only a small part of the market.
00:11:58.136 --> 00:11:58.976
Carter pointed out.
00:11:59.336 --> 00:12:01.437
Everybody would like to know more than they do.
00:12:01.886 --> 00:12:08.307
Everybody would like to know higher mathematics or Latin or architecture or a hundred other subjects.
00:12:08.846 --> 00:12:12.807
They don't learn them because it takes too much time and work to study them.
00:12:13.226 --> 00:12:15.687
But if they can just buy them.
00:12:15.937 --> 00:12:18.037
Why there's no limit to the market.
00:12:18.246 --> 00:12:22.777
I said, How many different subjects could you pour into a guy's brain with that thing?
00:12:23.307 --> 00:12:25.226
Carter explained that there was a limit to that.
00:12:26.216 --> 00:12:29.636
The potential neural paths in each brain are limited in number.
00:12:30.147 --> 00:12:36.956
We found that the average person has a neural index that will allow him to absorb the equivalent of a PhD education from the tapes.
00:12:37.496 --> 00:12:38.606
But not much more.
00:12:38.986 --> 00:12:39.856
He added quickly.
00:12:40.187 --> 00:12:43.486
Ah, but that'd be a chance for repeat business even so.
00:12:44.027 --> 00:12:58.346
The scanner can erase this new found knowledge from the brain by using a neutralizing electronic impulse, then the student can learn entirely new subjects Right then and there, I saw my big opportunity and grabbed it.
00:12:58.826 --> 00:13:00.537
Oh, you can count me in.
00:13:00.777 --> 00:13:01.376
I told him.
00:13:01.856 --> 00:13:06.567
But mind if I put up the dough for the apparatus, I get one third interest.
00:13:06.966 --> 00:13:07.687
One third.
00:13:07.756 --> 00:13:09.047
Said Carter kind of puzzled.
00:13:09.527 --> 00:13:09.976
Sure.
00:13:10.246 --> 00:13:12.346
One third for me, a third for you.
00:13:12.496 --> 00:13:14.297
And a third for doc Kindler.
00:13:14.657 --> 00:13:18.017
I reminded him Oh, certainly.
00:13:18.017 --> 00:13:18.346
Yes.
00:13:19.126 --> 00:13:19.876
I'll put Dr.
00:13:19.876 --> 00:13:21.287
Kindler, share in trust for him.
00:13:21.616 --> 00:13:26.147
But you understand, we better not use his name at all in developing this.
00:13:26.476 --> 00:13:31.996
It would prejudice people if they learned that the co-inventor of the method is now a mental wreck.
00:13:32.496 --> 00:13:34.326
Next day without telling Helen.
00:13:34.657 --> 00:13:39.126
I drew out our 30,000 and Carter and I signed the partnership papers.
00:13:39.697 --> 00:13:41.947
He kept dot Candler's name out, as he said.
00:13:42.336 --> 00:13:46.716
And he decided to call our firm, the electro education company.
00:13:47.586 --> 00:13:49.866
Carter rented a small business up in the Bronx.
00:13:50.136 --> 00:13:53.376
And there we put up the apparatus that he assembled from the stuff I bought.
00:13:53.876 --> 00:13:54.956
How about those learning tapes?
00:13:54.956 --> 00:13:55.376
Carter.
00:13:55.616 --> 00:13:56.966
I asked him at the end of the week.
00:13:57.657 --> 00:14:00.057
We've got to be able to sell people more than just French.
00:14:00.517 --> 00:14:01.297
He grinned at me.
00:14:02.407 --> 00:14:05.167
I've got a lot of tapes on every subject already.
00:14:05.677 --> 00:14:11.017
You see some of the best scientists and scholars in the world are on Gotham universities, faculty.
00:14:11.527 --> 00:14:13.986
Under pretext of x-raying their brains.
00:14:14.346 --> 00:14:17.437
I used the scanner to make tapes of everything they know.
00:14:17.947 --> 00:14:19.297
That kind of shocked me.
00:14:19.927 --> 00:14:20.287
Wait.
00:14:20.826 --> 00:14:23.706
That sounds like stealing their knowledge without them suspecting it.
00:14:24.157 --> 00:14:25.746
I don't want anything like that.
00:14:26.267 --> 00:14:26.866
Stealing.
00:14:27.037 --> 00:14:28.126
Carter answered quickly.
00:14:28.547 --> 00:14:28.787
Why?
00:14:28.787 --> 00:14:29.537
Of course not.
00:14:29.897 --> 00:14:31.636
We'll pay them a fat royalty.
00:14:31.697 --> 00:14:33.537
Every time we use the tapes of course.
00:14:34.086 --> 00:14:35.677
We tried the tapes out on each other.
00:14:36.216 --> 00:14:37.086
They worked fine.
00:14:37.657 --> 00:14:41.167
I went home that night bursting with a dozen professors knowledge.
00:14:41.667 --> 00:14:44.876
Helen had her brother Harry and his wife for dinner that night.
00:14:45.476 --> 00:14:51.506
Harry has always snooted me on account of I'm an electrician, while, he went to college and works in an office.
00:14:52.047 --> 00:14:52.586
Tonight.
00:14:52.917 --> 00:14:54.356
I was loaded for bear.
00:14:54.537 --> 00:14:57.687
When he started making one of his high brow cracks to show off.
00:14:58.197 --> 00:14:59.756
It was a crack about astronomy.
00:15:00.927 --> 00:15:03.447
Harry you're a million miles off base.
00:15:03.506 --> 00:15:04.017
I told him.
00:15:04.736 --> 00:15:07.947
The Romanian conception of space you're talking about as a dead pigeon.
00:15:08.336 --> 00:15:09.897
It's been proved mathematically.
00:15:10.647 --> 00:15:12.476
And here I went into the equations.
00:15:13.167 --> 00:15:15.886
Helen and Harry and his wife all looked at me bug eyed.
00:15:16.466 --> 00:15:18.897
I kind of enjoyed it and I carried on from there.
00:15:19.466 --> 00:15:30.596
I delved into ancient history, gave some chatty remarks on modern biophysical theory and then compared a Sanskrit drama with an old Greek tragedy by quoting yards of each in the original.
00:15:31.096 --> 00:15:34.317
Where in the name of all that's holy, did you pick up all that Pete?
00:15:34.476 --> 00:15:35.297
gasped Harry.
00:15:35.787 --> 00:15:36.986
I just laughed lightly.
00:15:37.226 --> 00:15:39.836
Oh, I'm not one to brag about my learning.
00:15:40.346 --> 00:15:42.897
I kinda like to keep my lamp hit underneath the bushel.
00:15:43.326 --> 00:15:45.937
I noticed that your grammar is still hidden under a bushel.
00:15:46.386 --> 00:15:48.216
Helen like a wife does put in.
00:15:49.086 --> 00:15:50.616
Well that dashed me a little.
00:15:51.067 --> 00:15:53.437
I had forgotten that my grammer still wasn't so hot.
00:15:53.917 --> 00:15:57.096
We hadn't had any tape on elementary English grammar yet.
00:15:58.236 --> 00:16:06.216
That night after the others went home, I told Helen the whole story and how our money was now invested in the electro education company.
00:16:06.756 --> 00:16:09.157
Oh, she hit the sky.
00:16:09.277 --> 00:16:10.687
I've been trapped by a swindler.
00:16:10.746 --> 00:16:13.687
I was an idiot and we were going to die in the poor house.
00:16:14.226 --> 00:16:14.917
Next morning.
00:16:14.917 --> 00:16:18.486
She went with me to give Carter what for and demand our money back.
00:16:19.177 --> 00:16:21.216
Carter handled her beautifully.
00:16:21.667 --> 00:16:28.206
He inveigled her to put on the learning gap and then shot French music, art, and a lot of other stuff into her.
00:16:28.716 --> 00:16:31.537
From then on Helen was enthusiastic.
00:16:31.866 --> 00:16:35.917
So next week we hung out a sign and advertised in the newspapers.
00:16:36.576 --> 00:16:38.947
Carter had written the ad and it was a good one.
00:16:39.486 --> 00:16:40.687
Do you want to know more?
00:16:40.866 --> 00:16:47.917
It asked, do you yearn to learn, but are you repelled by the dreary prospect of months and years of study?
00:16:48.397 --> 00:16:50.197
Electro education is the answer.
00:16:50.586 --> 00:16:52.057
Study classrooms.
00:16:52.116 --> 00:16:54.336
Schools are now obsolete.
00:16:54.787 --> 00:16:57.726
We guaranteed to be still on you in a few hours.
00:16:57.907 --> 00:17:02.856
Enough higher education to pass any university's graduation examinations.
00:17:03.366 --> 00:17:08.876
Next morning, we found a half dozen prospects waiting to get into our electro education shop.
00:17:09.146 --> 00:17:10.257
Only it turned out.
00:17:10.257 --> 00:17:13.676
They were all reporters would come to write funny pieces on our project.
00:17:14.176 --> 00:17:15.317
Carter was smart though.
00:17:15.707 --> 00:17:16.817
He didn't get mad.
00:17:16.997 --> 00:17:20.297
He just kidded them along and got one of them to try a sample course.
00:17:20.777 --> 00:17:23.626
Then he shot a full course of higher accounting into that chap.
00:17:24.646 --> 00:17:28.426
It seems that the reporter was a guy who had never been able to add two and two.
00:17:28.606 --> 00:17:30.707
He had such a blind spot for arithmetic.
00:17:31.517 --> 00:17:35.086
When he got up and realized how much he knew, he let out a yell.
00:17:35.676 --> 00:17:37.987
The other news Hawks accused him of faking at first.
00:17:38.277 --> 00:17:40.707
But the argument induced some of the others to try it.
00:17:41.307 --> 00:17:44.967
Carter gave them Chinese nuclear physics, anything they asked.
00:17:45.517 --> 00:17:50.136
That night electro education hit the front pages of the newspapers with a bang.
00:17:50.826 --> 00:17:52.957
Some of the articles still claimed it was a fake.
00:17:53.166 --> 00:17:55.027
But a lot of the writers swore it worked.
00:17:55.626 --> 00:17:59.287
The result was that we had a crowd around our E shop next day.
00:17:59.817 --> 00:18:08.336
Most of them were just curious, but there were a few with money enough and curiosity enough to try a few tapes when they went out and told the crowd about it.
00:18:08.576 --> 00:18:09.896
Others started coming in.
00:18:10.446 --> 00:18:12.067
Being near Gotham university.
00:18:12.277 --> 00:18:15.186
In two days, we were handling a crowd of students.
00:18:15.186 --> 00:18:15.757
So big.
00:18:15.906 --> 00:18:17.376
They lined up for blocks.
00:18:17.856 --> 00:18:20.497
They came in with their money clutched in their hot little hands.
00:18:20.826 --> 00:18:24.757
And they went out crammed with every bit of knowledge, their own professors had.
00:18:25.477 --> 00:18:32.436
Then after three days, the better business bureau, the district attorney's office and the police all came down on us.
00:18:33.017 --> 00:18:35.567
This thing is a bare face swindle of some kind.
00:18:35.777 --> 00:18:38.356
And I shall see that these two men get prison for it.
00:18:38.717 --> 00:18:39.707
The da announced.
00:18:40.217 --> 00:18:45.557
Carter had been expecting just that and had a lawyer already when the preliminary hearing was held.
00:18:46.247 --> 00:18:52.696
He brought in our witnesses, joyful college students who had quit going to classes all together because they were dead sure of passing.
00:18:52.727 --> 00:18:53.146
Anyway.
00:18:53.646 --> 00:18:55.686
Then Carter sprung his clincher.
00:18:56.166 --> 00:18:56.686
Your Honor.
00:18:57.037 --> 00:18:57.906
He said to the judge.
00:18:58.356 --> 00:19:03.817
The courtroom janitor has agreed for a consideration to let me demonstrate electro education on him.
00:19:04.326 --> 00:19:05.406
Is the court agreeable.
00:19:05.916 --> 00:19:07.477
Well, the court was agreeable.
00:19:07.896 --> 00:19:13.267
So right there in the courtroom, Carter set up R E apparatus and used it on the janitor.
00:19:13.737 --> 00:19:16.346
This janitor was a big fat headed old guy.
00:19:16.346 --> 00:19:16.826
They called.
00:19:17.277 --> 00:19:20.936
Puddinghead on account, everyone around court knew how dumb he was.
00:19:21.386 --> 00:19:24.596
Well, Carter shot all our law courses into him.
00:19:24.987 --> 00:19:30.297
He gave him not only civil law, criminal law corporation, law, and theory of jurisprudence.
00:19:30.656 --> 00:19:37.767
He also gave him graduate courses in such fancy stuff as the Justinian code and medieval ecclesiastical law.
00:19:38.666 --> 00:19:41.426
When it was over and it took a little more than an hour.
00:19:41.876 --> 00:19:43.977
Old Puddinghead got up and talked.
00:19:44.576 --> 00:19:47.727
He not only proved that he knew everything now about the law.
00:19:48.267 --> 00:19:52.136
He proved that the judge himself was woefully ignorant about a lot of it.
00:19:52.686 --> 00:19:55.784
Electro education is obviously all it claims to be.
00:19:55.943 --> 00:19:58.423
said the judge quickly to stop this painful expose.
00:19:58.874 --> 00:19:59.864
Case dismissed.
00:20:00.374 --> 00:20:02.173
The courtroom exploded with excitement.
00:20:02.173 --> 00:20:04.753
Uh, reporters crowded wildly around Carter.
00:20:05.384 --> 00:20:07.453
I found the judge himself plucking my arm.
00:20:08.864 --> 00:20:09.614
Uh, Mr.
00:20:09.614 --> 00:20:10.933
Purdy in confidence.
00:20:11.653 --> 00:20:13.844
Could you give me those courses too?
00:20:14.173 --> 00:20:15.433
The judge asked timidly.
00:20:15.953 --> 00:20:19.584
Overnight electro education became the sensation of the country.
00:20:19.943 --> 00:20:21.413
It was like a bomb going off.
00:20:22.193 --> 00:20:23.753
I'll admit that it's sort of floored me.
00:20:24.294 --> 00:20:33.334
I'm a modest kind of guy I'd figured on profits on maybe even a chain of education shop someday, but I hadn't figured on what he rapidly became.
00:20:34.054 --> 00:20:35.134
It didn't grow.
00:20:35.314 --> 00:20:36.604
It exploded.
00:20:37.084 --> 00:20:42.483
Within a month Carter had branches started or underway in every big city in the country.
00:20:42.903 --> 00:20:45.993
He'd bought up a factory to turn out the EEG apparatus.
00:20:46.324 --> 00:20:47.913
We trained our own operators.
00:20:48.183 --> 00:20:51.273
Yeah, it was simple since we just ran an E tape to teach them.
00:20:51.933 --> 00:20:59.163
Our advertising plastered, the newspapers, the billboards, the radio we made the whole country E conscious overnight.
00:20:59.673 --> 00:21:01.144
One of our best ads was.
00:21:01.683 --> 00:21:05.733
Why go to college for knowledge, would you drive a horse and buggy to work?
00:21:05.733 --> 00:21:07.953
I get smart the modern way.
00:21:08.763 --> 00:21:13.773
And there was a big billboard picture that showed a guy sitting with one of our E caps on his head.
00:21:14.193 --> 00:21:15.034
It advised.
00:21:15.753 --> 00:21:18.814
Don't be dumb chum, put on your learning cap today.
00:21:19.324 --> 00:21:27.483
For the classier trade, the advertising men had worked out displays that showed a dumb cluck cringing in the middle of a lot of brilliant looking conversationalists.
00:21:28.003 --> 00:21:30.973
Do you envy your friends when they discuss, learned subjects?
00:21:31.153 --> 00:21:32.054
The ad asked.
00:21:32.503 --> 00:21:33.584
Why be inferior?
00:21:33.913 --> 00:21:36.374
He will make a new man of you mentally.
00:21:36.903 --> 00:21:39.124
They poured into our III shops.
00:21:39.273 --> 00:21:43.354
They came in such droves that the police had to establish lines at every shop.
00:21:44.104 --> 00:21:48.124
Carter and I had big offices down in the Monarch state building by now.
00:21:48.713 --> 00:21:49.923
My work wasn't hard.
00:21:50.284 --> 00:21:55.144
I arrived at 11 each morning, smoked a cigar and then went to lunch for a few hours.
00:21:55.773 --> 00:21:58.084
The afternoon was not quite so tough.
00:21:58.743 --> 00:22:00.334
But Carter really worked.
00:22:00.693 --> 00:22:02.913
I never saw a guy with so much ambition.
00:22:03.453 --> 00:22:05.403
It kind of scared me the way he kept.
00:22:05.433 --> 00:22:08.104
He mushrooming out bigger and bigger each day.
00:22:09.034 --> 00:22:11.344
The universities and colleges had gone nuts.
00:22:11.794 --> 00:22:23.253
They tried first to suppress us, but they couldn't, they forebade their professors to sell us knowledge tapes, but we offered such big money that the professors did let us put their stuff on tapes on the sly.
00:22:24.064 --> 00:22:29.403
So the universities just gave up and closed their doors all except a few bitter enters.
00:22:30.003 --> 00:22:32.913
Then it was the turn of the high schools and the public schools.
00:22:33.544 --> 00:22:37.983
Senators got up in the state legislatures and demanded a new educational system.
00:22:38.544 --> 00:22:47.334
Why should we support a vast, expensive outmoded school system when he can give every child better schooling at a fraction of the cost they asked.
00:22:48.173 --> 00:22:55.013
The teachers, of course all fought that, but what chance did they have the taxpayers didn't want to keep up the schools?
00:22:55.344 --> 00:22:59.324
The parents didn't want to, when their kids could learn it also easy by IE.
00:22:59.743 --> 00:23:00.794
And the kids themselves.
00:23:00.794 --> 00:23:01.034
Sure.
00:23:01.034 --> 00:23:03.344
We're wholeheartedly for III from the start.
00:23:03.844 --> 00:23:06.874
The result was that the state set up instead of schools.
00:23:07.263 --> 00:23:11.523
E dispensary's in which our own operators gave the kids their stuff.
00:23:12.213 --> 00:23:15.364
Every kid had to go to school one hour a year.
00:23:15.814 --> 00:23:18.663
He got his years' work shot into him by tape.
00:23:18.903 --> 00:23:19.743
And that was that.
00:23:20.374 --> 00:23:23.284
And the state paid us a set fee for every pupil.
00:23:23.973 --> 00:23:24.513
Money.
00:23:24.604 --> 00:23:36.153
Well, it came in by tons, by carloads all over the country, all over most of the world, he was replacing the schools and colleges and still Carter wasn't satisfied.
00:23:36.653 --> 00:23:39.173
What we have got to avoid this saturation of the market.
00:23:39.173 --> 00:23:39.473
Pete.
00:23:39.804 --> 00:23:40.463
He told me.
00:23:41.034 --> 00:23:44.394
As soon as everyone is full of knowledge, they will quit buying education.
00:23:44.834 --> 00:23:48.193
Well, there will still be the new generation of students each year.
00:23:48.243 --> 00:23:50.163
And that brings in a big, steady profit.
00:23:50.253 --> 00:23:50.733
I said.
00:23:51.314 --> 00:23:52.334
That's not enough.
00:23:52.513 --> 00:23:53.953
He said in his determined way.
00:23:54.614 --> 00:23:56.084
What we need is repeat business.
00:23:56.084 --> 00:23:57.523
Like the movie industry gets.
00:23:58.044 --> 00:23:59.023
I'll work on that.
00:23:59.834 --> 00:24:01.183
And boy, he did.
00:24:01.604 --> 00:24:07.874
He got big new advertising campaigns planned that kept the public needled by successive waves of advertising.
00:24:08.394 --> 00:24:10.193
For awhile, we plugged science.
00:24:10.574 --> 00:24:13.523
A man, couldn't understand the world unless he was full of science.
00:24:13.913 --> 00:24:16.284
A woman should be ashamed to meet her bridge club.
00:24:16.314 --> 00:24:19.854
If she couldn't discuss higher physics or colloid chemistry.
00:24:20.544 --> 00:24:21.624
It wore people down.
00:24:21.624 --> 00:24:22.104
All right.
00:24:22.523 --> 00:24:26.933
A lot of them came in and had us erase other stuff and fill them chock full of science.
00:24:27.624 --> 00:24:31.794
When a man reached his neural capacity, we had to erase to put new knowledge.
00:24:31.794 --> 00:24:39.443
In of course we had a few sad experiences with guys who wanted to know absolutely everything and who went badly from too much.
00:24:39.473 --> 00:24:40.044
IE.
00:24:40.854 --> 00:24:42.384
To avoid trouble with the law.
00:24:42.683 --> 00:24:44.634
Our operators were strict on that now.
00:24:45.534 --> 00:24:51.084
When our sale of science subjects began to fall off, we switched our advertising to concentrate on art.
00:24:51.564 --> 00:24:54.384
We made expert knowledge of art, all the rage.
00:24:54.743 --> 00:24:55.403
Sure enough.
00:24:55.824 --> 00:25:01.374
People came in by thousands to have their science knowledge erased so they could take on our cargo of art.
00:25:02.124 --> 00:25:06.384
Carter had worked out advertising that made young people good repeat customers to.
00:25:07.134 --> 00:25:09.263
If they didn't feel satisfied in their professions.
00:25:09.534 --> 00:25:10.733
Why not try a new one.
00:25:11.453 --> 00:25:14.034
Lots of young lawyers for instance, would decide.
00:25:14.034 --> 00:25:19.253
They'd rather be doctors they'd simply come in and have their legal knowledge erased.
00:25:19.554 --> 00:25:22.973
Take on a full course of medical subjects and then hang out a shingle.
00:25:23.574 --> 00:25:27.294
Maybe two weeks later, they'd be back wanting now to try engineering.
00:25:28.013 --> 00:25:28.403
Me.
00:25:28.884 --> 00:25:30.354
I was on top of the world.
00:25:30.384 --> 00:25:41.423
Literally, I lived in the highest and biggest penthouse in town and Helen was in the clouds mainly on account of our new baby boy who had been born a year after we started E.
00:25:41.753 --> 00:25:43.943
And who was now Husky and thriving.
00:25:44.443 --> 00:25:47.923
And little Percival is going to be proud of his father when he attains maturity.
00:25:48.193 --> 00:25:58.544
I told Helen not only because of my wealth, but because of my erudition, I really talk like that by then for Helen had insisted on me taking a full course in English grammar.
00:25:58.544 --> 00:26:00.253
Soon after we started the business.
00:26:01.003 --> 00:26:03.614
I had also taken all the other advanced E courses.
00:26:03.644 --> 00:26:08.864
My brain would hold so that in those days there were few wiser guys than me in the world.
00:26:09.364 --> 00:26:10.084
Yes, dear.
00:26:10.173 --> 00:26:11.104
It is wonderful.
00:26:11.104 --> 00:26:13.864
Know that Percival can be proud of his parents when he grows up.
00:26:14.223 --> 00:26:15.394
Helen said happily.
00:26:15.953 --> 00:26:18.413
Well, that's all you ever know about the future.
00:26:18.913 --> 00:26:22.044
For it was the very next morning that the whole thing busted.
00:26:22.824 --> 00:26:29.784
It busted when an old guy who looked vaguely professorial came crowding into my office in spite of my four secretaries.
00:26:30.284 --> 00:26:31.554
Are you Peter Purdy?
00:26:31.574 --> 00:26:34.124
The vice-president of the electro education company.
00:26:34.394 --> 00:26:35.084
He asked me.
00:26:36.163 --> 00:26:36.493
Yes.
00:26:36.493 --> 00:26:36.794
Yes.
00:26:36.794 --> 00:26:41.203
But if you have a knowledge record to sell, you should take it to our knowledge purchasing agent.
00:26:41.413 --> 00:26:41.953
I told him.
00:26:42.344 --> 00:26:44.084
I do not handle details like that.
00:26:45.284 --> 00:26:46.963
He just stood and stared at me.
00:26:47.144 --> 00:26:49.574
And then all of a sudden he let out a yell.
00:26:51.044 --> 00:26:54.584
The electrician, he yelled pointing at me wildly.
00:26:55.544 --> 00:27:00.763
Suddenly I recognized the old boy and I got my feet down off the desk and got out of my chair.
00:27:01.574 --> 00:27:02.023
Dr.
00:27:02.023 --> 00:27:02.713
Kindler.
00:27:03.013 --> 00:27:04.334
I said all surprised.
00:27:04.963 --> 00:27:05.894
It was him all right.
00:27:06.223 --> 00:27:10.394
Carter's colleague that had been in a Sanitarium all this time, being a schizophrenia.
00:27:11.084 --> 00:27:13.693
But he did not look out of his head now at all.
00:27:13.874 --> 00:27:15.344
He just looked mad.
00:27:15.844 --> 00:27:17.673
Doctor I'm overjoyed to see you.
00:27:17.794 --> 00:27:19.743
I said, and so will Carter be.
00:27:19.923 --> 00:27:21.753
We had no idea you were cured.
00:27:22.453 --> 00:27:27.243
Doc Kindler interrupted me by shouting at me every dirty name a scientists could think of.
00:27:27.693 --> 00:27:32.253
You blind fools to turn my discovery loose on the world without knowing more about it.
00:27:32.614 --> 00:27:34.683
You don't even know what you may have done.
00:27:35.493 --> 00:27:36.874
Then he shouted even louder.
00:27:37.263 --> 00:27:38.013
Police.
00:27:38.463 --> 00:27:39.874
I hate to tell what followed.
00:27:40.294 --> 00:27:47.403
When Carter came in and saw the old doc, he turned a sickly color and started the scram, but the police were already arriving.
00:27:47.763 --> 00:27:50.253
And then the whole thing busted wide open.
00:27:50.753 --> 00:27:52.644
No need to give you the whole bitter story.
00:27:52.743 --> 00:27:56.374
It's had publicity enough and enough people have called me a dope.
00:27:57.324 --> 00:28:00.723
I suppose at that that it's better than being convicted of theft, like Carter.
00:28:01.263 --> 00:28:01.713
Yeah.
00:28:02.074 --> 00:28:07.023
Carter had just deliberately stolen the old doc's invention and hadn't helped invented at all.
00:28:07.023 --> 00:28:11.614
Like he told me he'd figured doc Kindler was away in the Sanitarium for life.
00:28:11.794 --> 00:28:16.503
Not guessing that shock therapy would finally succeed in restoring the old doc's mind.
00:28:17.094 --> 00:28:23.874
I don't blame the old dock for blowing up the way he did when he came back and found out nor for the names he called me in court.
00:28:24.713 --> 00:28:28.074
I'd rather be called a stupid stooge than a thief any day.
00:28:28.584 --> 00:28:29.153
Sure.
00:28:29.153 --> 00:28:32.784
They took the penthouse and the big bank account and everything else away from me.
00:28:33.354 --> 00:28:36.263
I was lucky that they gave me back my original 30,000.
00:28:36.923 --> 00:28:48.114
Doc Kindler had relented enough to me to stipulate that when he turned all rights in he over to the government you know what the first thing was that I did when I got out of court that day.
00:28:48.743 --> 00:28:53.753
I went to the nearest E shop and had them erase every course I had, even my grammar.
00:28:54.294 --> 00:28:56.003
And I did it because I was worried.
00:28:56.483 --> 00:28:59.723
I was worried about what doc Kindler had said that day in the courtroom.
00:29:00.223 --> 00:29:07.034
My crooked assistant and this dolt, Purdy whom he deceived, didn't realize all they were doing when they exploited my discovery.
00:29:07.574 --> 00:29:08.233
Kindler said.
00:29:08.653 --> 00:29:12.913
When I collapsed my experiments with electro education were not yet complete.
00:29:13.544 --> 00:29:24.344
I had discovered the minute electronic impulses used in electoral education have a permanent effect on the germplasm as well as the Soma, but hadn't yet found out what the effect is.
00:29:24.644 --> 00:29:27.253
Will you state your meaning in less technical terms, doctor?
00:29:27.733 --> 00:29:28.513
The judge asked.
00:29:29.354 --> 00:29:30.644
Kindler voice was grave.
00:29:31.483 --> 00:29:40.604
I mean that the E impulses have a powerful mutational effect on the genes that control the brain development of the unborn child.
00:29:41.104 --> 00:29:41.943
I got worried.
00:29:42.903 --> 00:29:46.203
Is my little boy going to be dotty because Helen and I took a lot of E.
00:29:46.294 --> 00:29:47.344
Before he was born.
00:29:48.334 --> 00:29:51.574
Um, Well that I can't say yet.
00:29:51.683 --> 00:29:52.763
Said Kindler grimly.
00:29:53.364 --> 00:29:56.453
I was trying to determine the nature of that effect when I collapsed.
00:29:56.723 --> 00:29:59.604
And you let Carter talk you into appropriating my work.
00:30:00.983 --> 00:30:06.773
That was what scared me into having all my E erased before I went home that night.
00:30:07.284 --> 00:30:09.443
And Helen threw a fit when she heard about it.
00:30:10.344 --> 00:30:11.753
Now don't get hysterical.
00:30:11.784 --> 00:30:12.354
I begged.
00:30:12.773 --> 00:30:15.683
The doc said he don't know what the effect on Percival would be.
00:30:16.104 --> 00:30:17.453
It might not be so bad.
00:30:18.653 --> 00:30:26.213
But you and I were almost the first people to take E and whatever's going to happen to people's babies because of it will happen first to Percival.
00:30:26.483 --> 00:30:27.233
She sobbed.
00:30:27.844 --> 00:30:29.644
We went in and hung over his crib.
00:30:30.483 --> 00:30:32.104
I couldn't see a thing wrong with him.
00:30:32.104 --> 00:30:32.943
And I said, so.
00:30:33.364 --> 00:30:39.094
He was as fat, healthy looking a year old baby, as you'd want to see as he lay there looking up at us.
00:30:40.384 --> 00:30:43.263
Yes, but what about his mind Helen sobbed?
00:30:43.594 --> 00:30:46.503
He should be trying to talk by now but he hasn't said a word.
00:30:47.003 --> 00:30:48.953
Well, maybe I could get them to talk.
00:30:49.134 --> 00:30:50.423
If I worked hard enough with them.
00:30:50.569 --> 00:30:51.619
I said desperately.
00:30:52.339 --> 00:30:53.990
I chucked Percival under the chin.
00:30:54.500 --> 00:30:58.099
Say mama Percival, coochie, coochie, say mama.
00:30:59.569 --> 00:31:01.609
Percival opened his mouth and spoke.
00:31:02.150 --> 00:31:04.829
He spoken a rather wobbly and shrill, little voice.
00:31:05.400 --> 00:31:06.789
I presume father.
00:31:06.930 --> 00:31:15.150
He said that the encouraging sounds that you are directing at me are onomotopoeic in origin and are designed to stimulate the faculty of imitation.
00:31:15.809 --> 00:31:19.589
Nevertheless, I must beg you not to continue making such utterances.
00:31:20.109 --> 00:31:21.700
Helen and I gaped at each other.
00:31:22.839 --> 00:31:26.769
He talked, I choked out, he talked like a professor.
00:31:26.769 --> 00:31:27.430
You heard him.
00:31:27.910 --> 00:31:32.890
Helen stared wide-eyed but he never said a word before, not a word.
00:31:33.390 --> 00:31:35.009
Percival appear to be bored.
00:31:35.730 --> 00:31:41.700
Really you could hardly expect me to join in the sort of unintelligent conversation that goes on in this house.
00:31:43.079 --> 00:31:43.470
Yeah.
00:31:43.920 --> 00:31:47.609
That was the effect of he is electronic impulses on the unborn.
00:31:48.180 --> 00:31:54.299
Every E course that Helen and I had ever taken was in Percival's brain when he was born.
00:31:55.079 --> 00:31:59.849
The fact that we'd had our own knowledge erased, hadn't affected him in the least.
00:32:00.599 --> 00:32:03.599
And I was going to have a son that would look up to me.
00:32:04.319 --> 00:32:05.400
That is a laugh.
00:32:05.970 --> 00:32:12.509
Our personal loves his parents, but we will never see the day when we know half as much as he did when he was born.
00:32:13.170 --> 00:32:16.430
It was the same with all the other kids born after he, of course.
00:32:17.029 --> 00:32:22.039
Every last one of them came into the world equipped with a full cargo of knowledge.
00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:24.680
You know how it's changed things.
00:32:25.099 --> 00:32:27.680
They had to cut the voting and office holding age to zero.
00:32:27.710 --> 00:32:28.250
Of course.
00:32:28.670 --> 00:32:33.259
We couldn't restrict office to adults when our own kids were 10 times smarter than we were.
00:32:34.009 --> 00:32:36.589
Half of Congress is under 10 years old these days.
00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:39.950
And the big offices are mostly filled with kid geniuses.
00:32:40.549 --> 00:32:44.630
I hear there's a 12 year old out in California that they're grooming for president.
00:32:45.160 --> 00:32:47.049
What gets me though, is this.
00:32:47.769 --> 00:32:54.160
These kids of ours still keep piling new knowledge into their brains with E now.
00:32:54.490 --> 00:32:56.259
20 or 30 years from now.
00:32:56.529 --> 00:33:02.289
What are their kids going to be like, oh, I do some wondering about that.
00:33:04.829 --> 00:33:07.680
Well gang, that's it for the first story of the new season.
00:33:08.220 --> 00:33:09.269
I hope you enjoy it.
00:33:09.420 --> 00:33:12.180
And I look forward to providing additional interesting stories.
00:33:12.180 --> 00:33:14.759
I will hail from all different kinds of themes this year.
00:33:15.210 --> 00:33:16.619
Now don't worry.
00:33:16.619 --> 00:33:17.460
Faithful listeners.
00:33:17.700 --> 00:33:20.400
Nick Carter will indeed be back this year.
00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:22.500
I just don't have an exact date.
00:33:22.950 --> 00:33:27.390
Yet, but rest assuredly, he will return to the podcast.
00:33:28.140 --> 00:33:34.319
I'd like to remind you all to visit the website for links to past episodes, upcoming information for the podcast.
00:33:34.559 --> 00:33:36.539
Subscriber links to our newsletter.
00:33:36.930 --> 00:33:44.160
And of course my buy me a coffee page where you can donate to support the show or become a regular subscriber.
00:33:44.849 --> 00:33:51.420
And there may be some exciting upcoming news about what I'd like to do to expand the format of the show.
00:33:51.900 --> 00:33:53.940
So please stay tuned for that.
00:33:54.750 --> 00:33:55.289
Oh, gosh.
00:33:55.740 --> 00:33:57.990
Well, it looks like I've rambled long enough again.
00:33:58.650 --> 00:33:59.640
As always friends.
00:34:00.029 --> 00:34:01.230
Thanks for listening.
00:34:01.500 --> 00:34:03.059
Keep sharing the stories.
00:34:03.390 --> 00:34:05.700
And be a good human.
00:34:06.839 --> 00:34:07.920
Bye for now.
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