John Jones's Dollar by Harry Stephen Keeler

Unlike theprevious lectures, my talk will not confine itself to the happenings ofa few years, but will gradually embrace the course of ten centuries, theten centuries, in fact, which terminated three hundred years before thepresent date. I have prepared my lecture today upon a subject whichis, perhaps, of more economic interest than historical. 'I am pleased, gentlemen, to see you all posted at your local Visaphonesthis afternoon. Onnoticing this, a look of irritation passed over the professor'scountenance.īut, seeing that every other glass square but this one was filled up, hecommenced to talk.

One square, however, still remained empty. Upon moving a tiny switch attachedto the instrument, a metallic voice, seeming to come from somewhere inspace, repeated mechanically: 'Fifteen o'clock and one minute-fifteeno'clock and one minute-fifteen o'clock and one min-' Quickly, theprofessor replaced the instrument in his vest pocket and pressed abutton at the side of the Visaphone.Īs though in answer to the summons, the frosted squares began, one byone, to show the faces and shoulders of a peculiar type of young men young men with great bulging foreheads, bald, toothless, and wearingimmense horn spectacles. In order to assure himself that it was time to press the button whichwould notify the members of the class in history to approach their localVisaphones, the professor withdrew from his vest pocket a smallcontrivance which he held to his ear. And above the area was a huge brasscylinder toward this brass cylinder the professor would soon directhis subsequent remarks. In a space at the center, notoccupied by any of these glass squares, was a dark oblong area and aledge holding a piece of chalk. The instrument before which he seated himself was very like a greatwindow sash, on account of the fact that there were three or fourhundred frosted glass squares visible. On the 201st day of the year 3221 A.D., the professor of history at theUniversity of Terra seated himself in front of the Visaphone andprepared to deliver the daily lecture to his class, the members of whichresided in different portions of the earth. It can be the same with compound interest._

Keep doubling in this manner and you will find there isn't enough wheat in the world to fill the sixty-fourth square. Put a grain of wheat on the first square-two on the second-four on the third. Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at

John Jones's Dollar by Harry Stephen Keeler