lodged a garrison of twenty men.
Michel
could not help shuddering at the sight of these armored coffers. "They
look absolutely bombproof, " he reflected.
A
middle-aged man, his morning quill already behind his ear, was solemnly
strolling among these monuments. Michel soon identified him as belonging to
the genus Number, order Cashier; precise, orderly, and ill- tempered, this individual invariably accepted money
with enthusiasm and paid it out only grudgingly. He seemed to regard such
disbursements as thefts; receipts, on the other hand, he treated as
restitutions. Some sixty clerks, copyists, and shipping agents were busily
scribbling and calculating under his direction. Michel was to take his place
among them; an office boy led him to the important personage who was expecting
him. "Monsieur, " the Cashier remarked, "when you enter these
precincts, you will first of all forget that you belong to the Boutardin
family. That is the procedure. "
"It
suits me fine, " Michel replied.
"To
begin your apprenticeship, you will be assigned to Machine Number Four. "
Michel turned around and discovered the calculating machine behind him. It had
been several centuries since Pascal had constructed a device of this kind,
whose conception had seemed so remarkable at the time. Since then, the architect
Perrault [9] ,
Count Stanhope [10] ,
Thomas de Colmar, Maurel and Jayet [11] had made any number of valuable modifications to such machines. The Casmodage
Bank possessed veritable masterpieces of the genre, instruments which indeed
did resemble huge pianos: by operating a sort of keyboard, sums were
instantaneously produced, remainders, products, quotients, rules of proportion,
calculations of amortization and of interest compounded for infinite periods
and at all possible rates. There were high notes which afforded up to one
hundred fifty percent! The capacities of these extraordinary machines would
easily have defeated even the Mondeux [12] and the [proper name missing in the manuscript].
Except
that you had to know how to play them: Michel would be obliged to take lessons
in fingering. It was evident that he had entered the employment of a banking
house which required and adopted all the resources of technology. Moreover, at
this period, the volume of business and the diversity of correspondence gave
mere office devices an extraordinary importance. For example, the Casmodage
Bank issued no less than three thousand letters a day, posted to every corner
of the world. A fifteen-horsepower Lenoir never ceased copying these letters,
which five hundred employees incessantly fed into it.
Nevertheless
electric telegraphy must have greatly diminished the number of letters, for new
improvements now permitted the sender to correspond directly with the
addressee; secrecy of correspondence was thus preserved, and the most intricate
deals could be transacted over great distances. Each banking house had its own
special wires, according to the Wheatstone [13] System long since in use throughout England. Quotations of countless stocks on
the international market were automatically inscribed on dials utilized by the
Exchanges of Paris, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Turin, Berlin, Vienna, Saint
Petersburg, Constantinople, New York, Valparaiso, Calcutta, Sydney, Peking,
and Nuku Hiva. Further, photographic telegraphy, invented during the last
century by Professor Giovanni Caselli [14] of Florence, permitted transmission of the facsimile of any form of writing or
illustration, whether manuscript or print, and letters of credit or contracts
could now be signed at a distance of five thousand leagues.
The
telegraph network now covered the entire surface of the earth's continents and
the depths of the seas; America was not more than a second away from Europe,
and in a formal experiment made in London in 1903, two agents corresponded with
each other after having caused their dispatches to circumnavigate the globe.
It
is apparent that in this phase of business,
Michel
could not help shuddering at the sight of these armored coffers. "They
look absolutely bombproof, " he reflected.
A
middle-aged man, his morning quill already behind his ear, was solemnly
strolling among these monuments. Michel soon identified him as belonging to
the genus Number, order Cashier; precise, orderly, and ill- tempered, this individual invariably accepted money
with enthusiasm and paid it out only grudgingly. He seemed to regard such
disbursements as thefts; receipts, on the other hand, he treated as
restitutions. Some sixty clerks, copyists, and shipping agents were busily
scribbling and calculating under his direction. Michel was to take his place
among them; an office boy led him to the important personage who was expecting
him. "Monsieur, " the Cashier remarked, "when you enter these
precincts, you will first of all forget that you belong to the Boutardin
family. That is the procedure. "
"It
suits me fine, " Michel replied.
"To
begin your apprenticeship, you will be assigned to Machine Number Four. "
Michel turned around and discovered the calculating machine behind him. It had
been several centuries since Pascal had constructed a device of this kind,
whose conception had seemed so remarkable at the time. Since then, the architect
Perrault [9] ,
Count Stanhope [10] ,
Thomas de Colmar, Maurel and Jayet [11] had made any number of valuable modifications to such machines. The Casmodage
Bank possessed veritable masterpieces of the genre, instruments which indeed
did resemble huge pianos: by operating a sort of keyboard, sums were
instantaneously produced, remainders, products, quotients, rules of proportion,
calculations of amortization and of interest compounded for infinite periods
and at all possible rates. There were high notes which afforded up to one
hundred fifty percent! The capacities of these extraordinary machines would
easily have defeated even the Mondeux [12] and the [proper name missing in the manuscript].
Except
that you had to know how to play them: Michel would be obliged to take lessons
in fingering. It was evident that he had entered the employment of a banking
house which required and adopted all the resources of technology. Moreover, at
this period, the volume of business and the diversity of correspondence gave
mere office devices an extraordinary importance. For example, the Casmodage
Bank issued no less than three thousand letters a day, posted to every corner
of the world. A fifteen-horsepower Lenoir never ceased copying these letters,
which five hundred employees incessantly fed into it.
Nevertheless
electric telegraphy must have greatly diminished the number of letters, for new
improvements now permitted the sender to correspond directly with the
addressee; secrecy of correspondence was thus preserved, and the most intricate
deals could be transacted over great distances. Each banking house had its own
special wires, according to the Wheatstone [13] System long since in use throughout England. Quotations of countless stocks on
the international market were automatically inscribed on dials utilized by the
Exchanges of Paris, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Turin, Berlin, Vienna, Saint
Petersburg, Constantinople, New York, Valparaiso, Calcutta, Sydney, Peking,
and Nuku Hiva. Further, photographic telegraphy, invented during the last
century by Professor Giovanni Caselli [14] of Florence, permitted transmission of the facsimile of any form of writing or
illustration, whether manuscript or print, and letters of credit or contracts
could now be signed at a distance of five thousand leagues.
The
telegraph network now covered the entire surface of the earth's continents and
the depths of the seas; America was not more than a second away from Europe,
and in a formal experiment made in London in 1903, two agents corresponded with
each other after having caused their dispatches to circumnavigate the globe.
It
is apparent that in this phase of business,
Similar Books
