"The Tachypomp" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

Edward Page Mitchell Edward Page Mitchell (1852–1927) was an American editorial and short story writer for '' The Sun'', a daily newspaper in New York City. He became that newspaper's editor in 1897, succeeding Charles Anderson Dana. Mitchell was recognized as a ...

originally published January 1874 anonymously in '' The Sun'', a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...

. It was Mitchell's first

science-fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

story. Mitchell was known for his editorial work on ''The Sun'', but because his science-fiction stories were published anonymously, his well-regarded work was mostly forgotten until its rediscovery in the early 1970s. "The Tachypomp" is an early use of mathematics as the principal premise of a science-fiction story, and it was one of the first to use the word " android", here used to describe a purely mechanical creature.

Publishing information

After the original publication in ''The Sun'', the story was reprinted in

Clifton Fadiman Clifton Paul "Kip" Fadiman (May 15, 1904 – June 20, 1999) was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality. He began his work with the radio, and switched to television later in his career. Background Born in Bro ...

's '' Fantasia Mathematica'' (1958). In 1973, "The Tachypomp" and other stories were reprinted in ''The Crystal Man: Landmark Science Fiction'', edited by

Sam Moskowitz Sam Moskowitz (June 30, 1920 – April 15, 1997) was an American writer, critic, and historian of science fiction. Biography As a child, Moskowitz greatly enjoyed reading science fiction pulp magazines. As a teenager, he organized a branch o ...

Plot synopsis

The plot revolves around Mr. Furnace’s (the narrator) quest to marry his math professor’s daughter. Unfortunately, the math teacher does not approve of him, as he does not excel in mathematics. The professor sets him a challenge: to discover the principle of infinite

speed In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (ma ...

. The narrator turns to his tutor, and is able to find the solution in the tachypomp. Eventually the professor agrees to allow Mr. Furnace to marry his daughter. The tutor tells Furnace about several scientific discoveries. These include: * an android capable of computing

vulgar fraction A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...

s and composing

sonnets A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

; * a hollow tube leading through the earth to the Kerguelen Islands (where a Dutch navigator Rhuyghens is said to have found an "abysmal pit"); * a solution to squaring the circle; * a perpetual motion machine; * the tachypomp.

Tachypomp

The term "tachypomp" refers to a fictional device theoretically capable of attaining infinite speed. The machine itself is a series of trains (or any train-like vehicle) each half the length of the preceding, stacked vertically. The trains would thus move in tandem, and their speeds would be added to find the speed of the train on top. For instance, if the bottom train were moving 40 miles an hour and the train above that 40 miles an hour, then the speed of the higher train would be 80 miles an hour. Though an interesting idea in theory, the

special theory of relativity In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory regarding the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein's original treatment, the theory is based on two postulates: # The laws o ...

dictates that the speed of light in a vacuum is absolute and represents an ultimate speed limit for the universe (at least

locally In mathematics, a mathematical object is said to satisfy a property locally, if the property is satisfied on some limited, immediate portions of the object (e.g., on some ''sufficiently small'' or ''arbitrarily small'' neighborhoods of points). P ...

). If a Tachypomp were constructed, relativistic principles such as

length contraction Length contraction is the phenomenon that a moving object's length is measured to be shorter than its proper length, which is the length as measured in the object's own rest frame. It is also known as Lorentz contraction or Lorentz–FitzGerald ...

and

time dilation In physics and relativity, time dilation is the difference in the elapsed time as measured by two clocks. It is either due to a relative velocity between them ( special relativistic "kinetic" time dilation) or to a difference in gravitational ...

would prevent any component of the system from achieving or exceeding the speed of light. The final line of the story, "Still I can see no reason why the Tachypomp should not have succeeded. Can you?" would be addressed thirty years later, when these relativistic effects were laid out by

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

in 1905.

References

External links

The Tachypomp and other stories by Edward Page Mitchell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tachypomp, The 1874 short stories American short stories Fictional trains Faster-than-light travel in fiction