Hugo Gernsback

“ Meyer-Maier kept thinking of the ugly head of the tse-tse fly that he had seen through the magnifying glass. A strange thought occurred to him and made him smile. Suppose the stories of the negroes were true and the giant flies—butterflies and beetles as big as elephants did exist! And suppose that they propagated as flies do!—each one laying eighty million eggs a year! He laughed aloud and pictured to himself how such a creature would stalk through the streets. ”

“ He turned on the light and threw back the lid of the big chest, which contained the giant eggs. Suddenly he grew pale as death and staggered back. A creature was crawling out, a creature as big as a police dog—a frightful creature, with wings—a muscular body, and six hairy legs with claws. It crept slowly, raised its incandescent head to the light and polished its wings with its hind legs. Faint with fright, Meyer-Maier pressed against the wall with outspread arms. A loud buzzing,—the creature swept across the room, climbed up on the window sill and was gone. ”

“ The momentous truth as told in the single, short and unobtrusive sentence was: "Static electricity may be generated by rubbing together such substances as resin and fur." Little did Mr. Fosdick at the time suspect that his stumbling upon this bit of elementary science was to result in focusing upon him the fierce limelight of international publicity and to make Whiffleville, for a brief forty-eight hours, the breathless topic of conversation throughout the civilized world. ”

“ Science is not the dry thing that some people would like us to believe. Mr. Fosdick, in this captivating tale demonstrates this most aptly. Did you ever stroke a cat in the dark, and watch the sparks leap between your hand and the cat's fur? Perhaps you did. But it remained for the illustrious Fosdick to commercialize this great inherent power. The results were most amazing, as the readers will soon find out.
Starting with a single cat, highly charged with electricity, see what a catastrophe—no pun intended—he brings upon himself. ”

“ Eleven are dead. The other two will never escape alive. They are fed up with the poison-gas."
"Thank you." Meyer-Maier hung up the receiver. "Very well," he murmured, "now there can be no question of any danger, for each fly can only lay three or four eggs at once,—not a million."
An immense weariness overcame him. He went into his bed-room and fell exhausted on his bed. "It is well that there is a supreme wisdom which controls the laws of nature. Otherwise the world would be subject to the strangest surprises." He thought of the monsters and crept anxiously under the bed-clothes. ”

“ All day long the two terrorized men cowered in the generating room. Outside at a safe distance a great crowd gathered. No one dared go near and it was generally believed that the unfortunate Fosdick and Stetzle must eventually starve to death. During the afternoon correspondents from the great city dailies poured in on every train and camera men clicked their instruments about "the death shed" in shoals. Towards evening it became known that the casualities were "one cat dead and two men electrified." ”

“ The police kept a space clear in the center, where monstrously large and ugly, lay the dead giant fly. Its wings were burnt, its proboscis extended, while the legs, with their claws, were drawn up against the body. The abdomen was a great ball, full of bright red liquid. "That is certainly the creature that killed the horse," said Schmidt-Schimitt, and pointed at the thick abdomen. He then walked around the creature. "Glossina pal-palis. A monstrous tse-tse fly."
"Will you please send the monster to the zoological laboratory?" ”

“ In the generating room life was well nigh insufferable. The constant electrical discharges were irritating in the extreme and both men and units were in a vicious humor. It must be said, however, that President Fosdick made some attempt to bear the strain with the fortitude of a martyr to science; but the unhappy Stetzle displayed no such courage—he had a wife and family, he said, and he wanted to get out. Mr. Fosdick counseled the vice-president to have his family brought in, but to this suggestion Stetzle only replied with curses. ”

“ The door of the Station-House opened and the city commissioner entered. "I have just heard some fabulous stories," he said, and approached the visitors. "Professor Meyer-Maier? Major Pritzel-Wilzell! Can you explain all this?"
"I brought home with me four large eggs from my African expedition, for examination. Tonight these eggs broke open. Four great flies came out—a sort of tse-tse fly, such as is found on Lake Tanganyika. The creatures escaped through the window and we must make every endeavor to kill them at once." ”

“ Organized
Less than a week after Mr. Fosdick had made his experiment, all Whiffleville was thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the erection of a mysterious crib-like structure back of his tinshop. Only a chosen few knew the purpose of the strange building, and they, Eben Stetzle and five other friends and admirers of Mr. Fosdick, maintained a sphynx-like silence. In fact these men, having paid in ten dollars apiece to Mr. Fosdick, constituted the stockholders and the first board of directors of The Feline Light and Power Co. ”

“ A bolt of sheet rubber was passed in the next morning, however, and Fosdick set to work fashioning some insulating shoes for John L, These were completed by noon and the fifty thousand morbid spectators that had come in by special trains breathlessly watched the experiment. Rubber-shod, the cat was dropped to the ground—and it survived. A great cheer went up from the crowd. This had no sooner subsided than Prof. Snooks realized that a terrible mistake had been made. ”

“ MEYER-MAIER snatched up the receiver. He got the consoling message from the city police-commissioner: "The danger is over, Professor. Our air-squadron has destroyed the swarm with a cloud of poison-gas. Only two of the insects escaped death. These we have caught in a net and are taking them to the zoological gardens."
"And if they have left eggs behind them?"
"We are going to search the woods systematically and will inject Lysol into any eggs we find. ”

“ The Lieutenant turned to the desk of the sergeant. "What is up now?"
"A cab driver has been here who says that his horse was killed by a gigantic bird on Karlstrasse."
"Get the men of the second platoon ready for immediate action" he ordered the sergeant, and turned back to the telephone. "Hello Professor! Are you still there? Please come over as quickly as possible. What you told me is true. One of these giant insects has been seen." ”

“ By gradually drawing off the electrical charge by means of a condenser, the Professor in a week's time reduced the dog’s pressure to approximately five thousand volts and then the animal was further discharged by hooking him up to the town arc light system of fifty lamps which he maintained in the splendid effulgence of over two thousand candle power for a period of nine hours and eleven minutes before his power ran down. ”

“ Stetzle and nine children.
The Frightened People Leave the Town
THE next afternoon Prof. Snooks from a safe distance shouted to them that they might, perhaps, regain their liberty by wearing rubber boots; but that they should try the idea on a cat first. In this suggestion Mr. Fosdick saw a ray of hope, and Mr. Stetzle was so cheered that he offered to dispose of his stock in the company of Mr. Fosdick for a mere song. The offer was refused. Mr. Fosdick said that he was not interested particularly in financial matters at that time. ”

“ Mr. Fosdick and Mr. Stetzle are now living on two insulated stools in the laboratory of Doolittle College. Their potential is dropping at the rate of ten volts a day, and Prof. Snooks has calculated that they must remain there for the next 957 years, three months and two days before being fully discharged. It seems a great pity.
The End ”