THE SPACE ANNIHILATOR.[3]
ON the afternoon of Saturday, August 18, 1900, as I was looking over the daily paper after my return from the Blendheim Electric Works, where I am employed, I noticed in the advertising department the following:
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ENGINEERS AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.
Ten thousand dollars will be paid to the man or woman duplicating an instrument now in the possession of this company——
That was as far as I read. Some cheap advertising scheme, I thought, and immediately forgot all about the paragraph.
When, however, towards the last of the month, I received the regular issue of my pet scientific paper, I saw on the first page the same glaring announcement. The fact of the notice being in that paper was guarantee that the offer was bona fide, and I looked the article over carefully.
In addition to the foregoing, the advertisement went on to state that one of a pair of seismaphones, an invention with patent pending and not yet in the market, had been lost. The inventor was dead, and no one had as yet been able to construct an instrument similar to the one now in the company’s possession.
Further particulars would be sent to any one satisfying the company that his request for the same was not prompted by idle curiosity, but by a desire to aid science in replacing the lost instrument.
Then came the greatest surprise of all; for, signed at the bottom of this interesting statement, as the man representing the company, was the name of Randolph R. Churchill, Patent Office, Washington, D. C.