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Title of Story
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The Automatic Pen. Guaranteed to Spell Correctly.
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Critical Introduction
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The concept of miniature words packed onto tiny vinyl records and packed into a pen that can then correct a word as the user writes is such an inventive concept that this story, languishing in the children's pages and long forgotten, it definitely deserves to be in my top 50. In fact, with so many economic and technology pundits over the decades saying no one expected miniaturisation, forgetting the many science fiction writers who did, kudos should be given to author Kate Helen Weston for directly creating a miniaturisted identification engine inside a pen, when other science fiction writers of her time were still packing mechanical beings with full sized wax cylinders and vinyl plates.
As this is a short story there isn't much more to say besides that Weston came to Australia with her family to dig for gold and would have been here during the invention rush period that came after, making Weston, along with Adelaide Primrose, one of the few female writers of Invention Opera in Australia.
For more information about Kate Helen Weston, please visit the blog post by Sue at Whispering Gums linked below.
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Story Summary
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A university student gives her physics and mathematics professor her science project, a pen that will write the right words as he writes, as he had trouble with spelling. This leads to a romance and marriage. A short story with more of a linguistic rather than science focus. A light, humorous story.
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Science Fiction Subgenres
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Invention Opera
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Children's science fiction stories
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Inventions
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A pen that is programmed to correct someone's words as they write, built from parts taken from a phonograph. "To that end she strove through days of keenest application and industry, filling her nights with dreams of revolving cylinders of minute dimensions, closely would records, and infinitesimal electrical batteries, all to be contained within the narrow limits of a hollow penhandle." It is later determined that the family must record the entire dictionary into the pen for it to work.
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Science
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While the text doesn't specifically discuss science, it does list the following words in various places:
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thermodynamics
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electrostatic
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dextrose
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laevulose
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ethyl acetoacetate
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absolute electrical measurements
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microengineering
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miniaturisation
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Science Future Articles
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Miniaturisation in communication devices discussed in 1948 when the Australian army reduced morse code training. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/171260009
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Science Extrapolations
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Perhaps this futuristic pen storing the entire English dictionary and programmed to correct an attempt at mispelling predicts various autocorrect programs.
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How this Story was Identified
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Using my own designed Automated Popular English Fiction Genre Classification Program (APEFGCP) with the ChatGPT API to determine possible genres.
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Date Details Added to IA
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October 2024
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Attributed Author
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Kate Helen Weston
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Author Gender
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Female
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Nationality
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Australian
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Single or Serialised
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Single
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First Published Date of Last Installment
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1919-04-12
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Year For Sorting
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1919
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Date Range
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1919-04-12
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Number of Installments
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Three chapters printed in one issue
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Complete or Supplemented
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Complete
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Estimated Word Count
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3,200
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Length
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Short Story
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Book Release Details
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Flash fiction
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Newspaper Publisher Citation
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The Observer
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Newspaper Name Location Years
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Observer, Adelaide, SA 1905-1931
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Location Town City
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Adelaide
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Location State Territory
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South Australia
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Provincial or Metro
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Metropolitan
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First Republished on InfiniteAnthologies.com
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YES
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General Subjects
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Newspaper Fiction
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Australian Fiction
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Language
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English
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Copyright
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CC By 4.0; Australian Copyright Act 1968
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Apply for Access to Any Media Held by IA
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To access the associated media with this item, please register / login as a guest researcher via the menu.
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Content Advisory
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These items are historical texts digitised from their original publication, and reflects the social attitudes, cultural values, and language of the time in which they were created. Some content may include depictions or references that are racist, sexist, ableist, colonialist, or otherwise offensive by contemporary standards. This material is presented uncensored for scholarly, archival, and educational purposes. It serves as a record of past cultural attitudes and is preserved here to support critical engagement, historical reflection, and the advancement of inclusive scholarship. Reader discretion is advised.
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OCR from TBC and Trove
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THE AUTOMATIC PEN. GUARANTEED TO 6PELL CORRECTLY. By Kate Helen Weston. ^CHAPTER I. The invention of the Automatic Pen ■would never have, come about but for one of the pamphlets of a projected Austra lian exhibition falling into the hands of Lucy Medcroft. In turning over its pages, Lucy became possessed of a great desire to enter the lists of competitors, for was not she a trueborn and typical daughter of the Commonwealth, and as such eligible for all departments. Which to enter for, that was the trouble. As there were four other daugh-! ters in the home beBide herself, who were all excellent housekeepers, Lucy, who had shown no aptitude for the domestic sphere, had been allowed to derelop herself along educational lines. She could not, therefore, hope to compete successfully in any branch of domestic economy. Bess did all the family's needlework, May painted in oils, Augusta dabbled in photography, and Philiis supplied all the art draperies and fancy work the income of ithe family al lowed. All these avenues were therefore denied to Lucy. There wag literature, of course. She had once tried to 'write a story, but after getting the heroine into an em'broglio, ouv of which no possible means of escape sug gested itself, and the hero having met ■with a mysterious end, which admitted of ■ no hope of his taking any further interest in the lady's fate, the manuscript had found Ujelf under the copper one washing day, and literature as a profession was abandoned. Looking through the .prospectus, Lucy wondered what was left, and then she read the following:—"Special prizes will be offered for inventions of any Mnd by •women resident in Australia," and a yearn ing to conquer new worlds took hold of her. To invent something. Precious thought. But what? Bess suggested a dishwasher. Lucy ele vated her fine nose, and pwe it as her opinion that a kettle of hot water answered the same purpose. May re marked that an appliance for 'holding up long skirts in wet weather might be a good idea; tbut Lucy silenced her by pointing out that the abbreviated state of the fashions called rather for an appliance for holding skirts down when the elements •were unfavourable, and that, for her part, the woman who was foolish enough to wear long skirts could go unaided. In this spirit she met the suggestion made by her family from time to time, until at last they laughingly informed her, with a shrug of the shoulders, that there was nothing left to suggest, unless it were a mathematical problem which should puzzle the heads of all her university pro fessors to unravel. For Lucy's forte lay in mathematics. Her father said she should have been • the boy of the family, for while Robert, the eldest son of the house of Medcroft, toiled painfully upyard through vulgar fractions and decimals, to say nothing of the later hor rors of Algebraic equations and geometri cal problems, Lucy his junior, skipped lightly above liim, coming out at the top o: the matriculation lists, and 'winning a coveted university scholarship. Robert now held q position in the Edu cation Department, and was engaged to teach what he had himself learned with such infinite labour. Lucy was doing her third year's course for her BjSc. degree, and revelling in. delightful experiments in the physical laboratory of her university. The professor of physics, John Glad stone Smythe, -was very proud of his young pupil, Lucy Medcroft. He grudged (neither tune nor trouble upon the experi ments which her keen questioning sug gested, and often two heads, one bright brown, with a delirious shock of crisp curls above its brow, and the other, a smooth, decorous ones, with black hair streaked with grey about the temples, might be seen in very close proximity, bending in engrossed silence above the particular experiment in hand. In hours less engrossing they dis cussed many topics, and it was Professor Smythe who unconsciously supplied Lucy with a clue to the form of her invention. •Every human being has his weakness, end inspite of his great erudition in the departments of mathematics and physios, Professor Smythe was no exception. He could not spell correctly: Some unde veloped bram cell existed in that sleek end well-formed head, which held so many deep and weighty problems, and do what he could, the professor could never re member whether "embarrassed" had one r or two, nor whether he should double the 1 in "fulfilled" or not. While he dashed off such easy words aa "thermadynamics," "asynchronous," and "electrostatical," and discoursed fluently on the subject of dextrose, laevulose, and ethyl acetoacetate, he never felt safe with regard to the difficulties presented in the spelling of "chief," "recieve," and deceive," and words of like kin, and his usual mode of procedure was to write the second and third-letters rather indistinctly, and drop a dot with delightful impartiality any where albove the entire length of the word. If the document in band were of an of ficial character, he utilized the services of "a well-thumbed dictionary which lay upon 'the table of his private room, thereby wasting much valuable time which he could ill spare, from his well-planned days. —- Lucy Medcroft was^ aware of his weak ne33.<and being constitutionally a good •speller (and though constitutionally may .sound out-of place in, this connection, I dm convinced of its correctness), did her ■(itmost to screen her favourite professor Ircm the sarcasms of her feilowstudents. i fl-there was anything to be'written, she begged him, as a personal favour, to let her write it, an offer gratefmlly accepted by /Professor Smythe, who came to rely upon her .assistance as a godsend to him in his heur of need. ' It was while helping him out of a phonetic difficuTtyaf ter lectures one afternoon that: he. gave expression to a wish which led to* LucyVfnventio'n. 'Wx, that someone would invent a pen sons, leaped cat of bet -chair, and careered round the lecture room in the i^ost meane. manner |jooo.u.c. ^ - Her Jeyes were brigot' and very wide operi^- her ensp hair jjn end, her colour ▼ivid carmine, and if it had not .been that .Professor Smythe waeaLrmed for her menial equilibrium, he wou.d have been inclined to, consider her the prettiest girl he had met-for a long time. As 'it wee, he murmured something about .a sedative, and following, her around the room calmed her with &-gentle dissertation on absolute electrical measurements, and a glass of water.
CHAPTER II. It was not, long after this that Lucy'a j mental condition prompted her to do strange things. j Among the debris of a lumber-room, de voted for the most part to the hobbies of I a younger brother, Lucy eame across an I old phonograph of obsolete pattern, and' she spent a good many of her spare hours, j from its battered transm.tter. As she had always professed an abhor-1 rence for the music of the -phonograph in 1 its highest form, her family wondered, but were silent. ! When she had learned by heart all its vocal possibilities, she silenced .is music j for ever, by minutely directing its' ana- j tomy, and leaving the pieces scattered in discriminately over tne lumber room, j Terrible retribution was threatened, and hard names bestowed upon owner of the precious instrument, but i Lucy smiled serenely, and promised to buy him a new one in the near future, which promise was regarded with scorn, for Lucy's lack of funds was proverbial. Borrowing what spare cash was to-be j obtained from all and sundry, Lucy now j devoted herself to her university work with renewed vigour. Thereafter, on the j plea of original research, she was allowed to spend many hours beyond those deemed necessary in the physical laboratory. Professor "Smythe. watched her curiously; indeed, he found her a very pleasant study, for though there were silver threads at his temples, he was yet young enough and human .enough to feel a pleasant warmth I in the region of his unappropriated heart,! when in the company of Lucy Medcroft, and Lucy's dream was of a day wh n she | might put into the hand of her beloved master a single little gift of her own in vention, the magic pen which should end i hie phonetic troubles, and set down is. I clear type, without fear of mistake, the ! wondeTS of hi6 mind. To that end she strove through days of j keenest application and industry, filling | her nights with dreams of revolving eylin-' ders or minute dimensions, closely wound records, and infinitesimal electrical bat-1 teries, all to be contained within the narrow limits of a hollow penhandle.. There were many initial difficulties to be overcome, as any one who attempts this form of invention will soon find, but one -by one Lucy disposed of them all. At home Robert wa9 in trouble. The annual examinations of hie class were ap proaching, and his 'bovs were backward. The grey matter of their brains, which went to the understanding of the English language, was deficient either in quantity or quality, and Robert was in despair. The orthography of one boy in particu lar, Tomkins by name, was bad enough to lower the percentage of the whole fclass. Spell he could not, and the harassing in fluence of an inspector's presence on the day of examination would complete his mental confusion. Lucy asked to see the reading book from which the lesson wou'd be taken, and becoming deeply interested in its subject matter borrowed it for private perusal. In her hours of private research she spent j her time spelling the whole book into a metal t'uibe. behind whieih a tiny cylinder revolved. It was a laborious process, and her throat ached, but she would trust it to no one eke. One mistake, and the whole record would be ruined. ! On the morning of the examination 6he i put the finished article into Robert's hand | as he sat at breakfast. _ . ! "I think you said that Tomkins couldn't I write well," she said casually. ] "Oh, he doesn't write eo badly." replied] Robert moodily; "but he spell/a atroci ously." "t am sure you said lie writes badly, Robert," said Lucy nervously, "and- you know, bad writing is as fatal at an exami nation as bad spelling. I have a pen here which writes beautifully. I will lend it to j Tomkins if you will promise -to take care j of it; and on no. account let him take It to nieces nor lose it." "Tt's very kind of you. Sis," eaid Robfert, with his mouth full of bavpn, "but really, I think you'd 'better not. You don't know what bovs are." "Oh, but Robert, I'm eo anxious to help you," persisted Lucy with a quiver in her voice, and a supicious brightness in her eyes. "If you told Tomkins that I sent it specially to him. and that I expect him to do me credit when he usee it, I am sure he would be careful. Robert, do try it." "He'll make a fool of himself no matter what pen he uses," eaid Robert viciously. "I wish to goodness he'd get the measles or something." "The pen might be just as beneficial as the measles," pleaded Lucy. "I'm sure it would help him." " - To please her Robert took the pen,1 and as Tomkins turned up at the examination tneaale'ess, and. to all appearance stupider than ever, Robert carried out Lucy's in structions. The hoy glowed all over with irrepres sible jo-v" at the distinction which Miss Medcroft bad conferred upon him. He bad a profound admiration for her, and in his heart of hearts' a secret love for'mathe matics, which his native awkward shyness hid from all observers. He determined to do his best, .and so successful was bis best that he forgot to be nervous, and when he got on to the subjects in which he rpally felt at home he ' excelled himself. Robertcamehome in the erring with » puzzled bat jubilant expression. on. his] face; Lucy met him with widely iEiestion ing eyes. . ' "Tomkins saved the whole clasa," he1 said. "He made not fr-HB&gle mistake in spelling, and he seemed so elated with his success that he never Hesitated in his' arichmetic, it amply ran off the end of his ) pen—or your pen, rather, Lucy, for he re fused to put it out of his hand. You might make him a present of it, Lucy, as a momento of the occasion.".' "A moment! My pen; Robert, do you know that I've spent months of study ^ph that pen? It's worth hundred of pounds. Of course, I must find a way of duplicating I the records; but, bh, - Robert——'' and Lucy collapsed in an hysterical heap on an adjacent sofa and laughed and cried, until Robert began to fear that muahleern -ing had made ncr mad. ■ ■ Then Lucy thought it time to. tell her secret, and she unburdened her' mind to ber wondering family, for she needed their 00-operation. The whole of the dictionary must be spoken into the transmitter for the pen which wa9 to find its way into the profes sor's hand. So Lucy instituted a minia ture laboratory in the lumber-room, with pain of death as the penalty to. auy one I entering it for other than its legitimate ! purpose, and here the family wore itself to the verge of distraction over Lucy's in vention. The spelling operations began at 5 o'clock each morning, Robert putting in an hour before breakfast, to be followed^ by Lucy. At 9 a.m. Lucy was due at the University, and Bess came on duty until 11, when May took her place. Augusta and Pk.lks, with occasional help from their mother, took the afternoon shifts, and Lucy and her father putNin the evenings at such vocal exercises as "mesne, mcsoblast. meso carp, nasogastric, mesophloeum," &c. There was no longer any time to receive visitors nor make calls. Needlework was put out of sight, evening engagements can called, and tne pen became the sole topic of conversation and occupation. May was for leaving out some of the words, which she said nobody ever needed, but Lucy was inexorable. It should he a perfect pen which she presented to her /professor, and not one word of the English language ahould be missing. So the famliy toiled on, and by and by the task was finished
CHAPTER III. The first of August was the professor's birthday, anvi the pen was ready by that date. The day was one of those baimy forerunners of spring, which -whet the appetite for more. There was a mingled perfume of almond blossom and violets in the air. The birds in the parks and squares were playing chevy-chase in the grass, and discussing in high tones the best possible sites for summer residences. Oil the sunny side of the road, mortals were sunning themselves broadly, and thanking Providence that their lot was cost in a land of sunshine. AH the primeval instincts of Nature were awakening beneath the kiss of the su 11 god, and when the professor met Lucy Medcroft walking beneath the flagrant flcwering acacias, with the sunlight filter ing through the young foliage upon her hair and eyes, something awoke within him which had nothing whatever to do with the mathematical end abstruse questions with which -The mind of a ..university pro fessor is supposed to be engaged. At that tmoment he forgot that he was a professor, and only remembered that he was a man, and that Lucy Medcroft was a woman, beautiful of foi'm and face, and that .he loved her. They sat down together in the sunshine, on a bench which the city fathers had pro vided for such contingencies, and Lucy, with eyes aglow, wished him many happy returns of the day, and drew from the recesses of her lunch basket a small packet. He opened it yravcly, and the pen lay revealed in a dainty bed of pink cotton •wool. It looked as guileless as Lucy her self, and bow could he -mess its 'possibili ties. "I will use it always," he said simply, "for the sake of the giver,"- and then lis-, tened in wonderment while Lucy told in halting phrases what it was to mean to him, and how .hard she had -worked to bring it to a successful issue in time for his birthday. When the 'magic powers of the pen had been fully discussed, the professor, with Lucy's hand in his, told of that other magic power -which men call love, and in the pre sence of which all other things are for gotten. And to< Lucy, it was the sweetest 1 taie she had ever heard, and proved to her that there were a great many things in the world of far more" vital interest" to a woman's heart than even mathematics and physics. ; As to the Pen, now that the examina-' tious are over, Robert is inclined to scoff at past successes. He says that the moral support of Lucy's thought for Tomldns, and "her consideration in lending him a piece of personal property, accounted for Tojjikins acquitting himself so creditably, and that he dotsn'r believe the -pen had anythiuK to do with it. The professor, of course, sticfes by Lucy, ne still as is only to be expected, and ne still writes "uniaxal" and "adiabaticai" with the utmost ease; but one day when he was writing a report, he. found chiefly spelt as "clieifly." He disguised the fact from Lucy, however, for, after all, it might only. have been a slro.ou May's part when read-j ing into the transmitter (May is prover-' bially careless), or, at the worst, a little adjustment bf tbe pen's mechanism might be necessary. - • ■ i Ljucy is talking of reading the whole four books of Euclid into a future record, for the use of students at examinations, and is surprised that her professor is not. more keen oyer the project. j She has decided not to enter the Pen for the competition after all. For one thing, she has .only perfected the one re cord so .far, .anil that is in the professor's keeping,'dn&;-she is so busy, just now with her trouBseau that I doubt if she will even succeed in' passing her anuual examina-J tioris. ' i The, professor, looking fondly at her,' says that it does not matter a d , well,' it doesn't matter, anyway, whether she passes or not, because there are-years and years ahead of her, in. which (bey can work together, and there are only a lew months of courtship, which will Tiever return. Lucy quite agrees with him on that and all other subjects, so it is pretty certain'that her name will not appear in the passlista of her final year. Then, too, Professor and Mrs. Smythe are to leave for England and the Continent at the beginning of the next long vaca- tion, for purpose of original research, it is said, but I am inclined to think it is purely for an extended honeymoon.
