First and Last | Page 9

sharply: a
gesture not at all to my taste nor, I think, to that of anyone who is trying
to read his paper.
I looked up and saw a man who must have been quite sixty years of age.
He had on a soft, felt slouch hat, a very old and greenish black coat; he
stooped and shuffled; he was clean-shaven, with long grey hair, and his
eyes were astonishingly bright and piercing and set close together.
He said, "I beg your pardon."
I said, "Eh, what?"
He said again "I beg your pardon" in the tones of a man who almost
commands, and having said this he put his hat on the table, dragged a
chair quite close to mine, and pulled a folded bunch of foolscap sheets
out of his pocket. His manner was that of a man who engages your
attention and has a right to engage it. There were no preliminaries and

there was no introduction. This was apparently his manner, and I
submitted.
"I have here," he said, fixing me with his intense eyes, "the plans for a
speedometer."
"Oh!" said I.
"You know what a speedometer is?" he asked suspiciously.
I said yes. I said it was a machine for measuring the speed of vehicles,
and that it was compounded of two (or more) Greek words.
He nodded; he was pleased that I knew so much, and could therefore
listen to his tale and understand it. He pulled his grey baggy trousers up
over the knee, settled himself, sitting forward, and opened his
document. He cleared his throat, still fixing me with those eyes of his,
and said--
"Every speedometer up to now has depended upon the same principle
as a Watt's governor; that is, there are two little balls attached to each
by a limb to a central shaft: they rise and fall according to their speed of
rotation, and this movement is indicated upon a dial."
I nodded.
He cleared his throat again. "Of course, that is unsatisfactory."
"Damnably!" said I, but this reply did not check him.
"It works tolerably well at high speeds; at low speeds it is useless; and
then again there is a very rapid fluctuation, and the instrument is of
only approximate precision."
"Not it!" said I to encourage him.
"There is one exception," he continued, "to this principle, and that is a
speedometer which depends upon the introduction of resistance into a
current generated by a small magneto. The faster the magneto turns the
stronger the current generated, and the change is indicated upon a dial."
"Yes," said I sadly, "as in the former case so in this; the change of
speed is indicated upon a dial." And I sighed.
"But this method also," he went on tenaciously, "has its defects."
"You may lay to that," I interrupted.
"It has the defect that at high speeds its readings are not quite correct,
and at very low speeds still less so. Moreover, it is said that it slightly
deteriorates with the passage of time."
"Now that," I broke in emphatically, "is a defect I have discovered
in----"

But he put up his hand to stop me. "It slightly deteriorates, I say, with
the passage of time." He paused a moment impressively. "No one has
hitherto discovered any system which will accurately record the speed
of a vehicle or of any rotary movement and register it at the lowest as at
the highest speeds." He paused again for a still longer period in order to
give still greater emphasis to what he had to say. He concluded in a
new note of sober triumph: "I have solved the problem!"
I thought this was the end of him, and I got up and beamed a
congratulation at him and asked if he would drink anything, but he only
said, "Please sit down again and I will explain."
There is no way of combating this sort of thing, and so I sat down, and
he went on:
"It is perfectly simple...." He passed his hand over his forehead. "It is so
simple that one would say it must have been thought of before; but that
is what is always said of a great invention.... Now I have here" (and he
opened out his foolscap) "the full details. But I will not read them to
you; I will summarize them briefly."
"Have you a plan or anything I could watch?" said I a little anxiously.
"No," he answered sharply, "I have not, but if you like I will draw a
rough sketch as I go along upon the margin of your newspaper."
"Thank you," I said.
He drew the newspaper towards him and put it on his knee. He pulled
out a pencil; he held the foolscap up before his eye, and he