Jules Verne — Paris in the Twentieth Century - Ch.5

Chapter 5: Which Treats of Calculating Machines and Self-Protecting Safes At eight o’clock the next morning, Michel Dufrenoy headed for the offices of the Casmodage and Co. Bank, which occupied, in the Rue Neuve-Drouot, one of those buildings erected on the site of the old Opera; the young man was taken into a vast parallelogram filled with strangely shaped machines. At first he could not make out what they were: they looked rather like huge pianos. Glancing toward the adjacent office, Michel caught sight of several enormous safes: not only did these resemble fortresses but they were even crenelated, and each of them could easily have lodged a garrison of twenty men. Michel could not help shuddering at the sight of these armored coffers. “They look absolutely bomb-proof,” 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 the device of this kind, whose conception had seemed so remarkable at the time. Since then, the architect Perrault, Count Stanhope, Thomas de Colmar, Mauret and Jayet 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 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 the 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 preserved, and the most intricate deals could be transacted over great distances. Each banking house had its own special wires, according to the Wheatstone 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 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, the consumption of paper had increased to unheard-of proportions; France, which a century before had produced some sixty million kilograms of paper, now utilized more than three hundred million kilograms; moreover there was no longer any need to fear the exhaustion of rag-based stocks, which had been advantageously replaced by alfa, aloes, Jerusalem artichoke, lupine, and twenty other cheaply cultivated plants; in twelve hours, the Watt and Burgess processes could turn a piece of wood into a splendid grade of paper; forests no longer serve firewood, but for printing. The Casmodage Bank had been one of the first to adopt this wood-based paper; when used for contracts, letters, and deeds, it was prepared with Lemfelder’s gallic acid, which rendered it impregnable to the chemical agents of forgers; since the number of thieves had increased with the volume of commerce, it was essential to take protective measures. Such was this establishment, in which enormous deals were transacted. Young Dufrenoy was to play the most modest of roles in it, as the first servant of his calculating machine, and would enter upon his functions that very day. Such mechanical labor was very difficult for him, for he did not possess the sacred fire, and the machine functioned quite poorly under his fingers; try as he would, a month after his installation, he made more errors than on his first day, and yet he struggled with the infernal keyboard until he felt he had reached the brink of madness. He was kept under severe discipline, moreover, in order to break any impulses of independence or artistic instincts; he had no Sunday free, and no evening to spend with his uncle, and his only consolation was to write him, in secret. Soon discouragement and disgust got the better of him, and he grew incapable of continuing the tasks he had been assigned. At the end of November, the following conversation regarding him occurred between Monsieur Casmodage, Boutardin fils, and the Cashier: “The boy is monumentally inept,” the banker observed. “The claims of truth oblige me to agree,” replied the Cashier. “He is what used to be called an artist,” Athanase broke in, “and what we would call a ninny.” “In his hands, the machine is becoming a dangerous instrument,” returned the banker. “He brings us sums instead of subtractions, and he’s never been able to give us a calculation of interest as only fifteen percent!” “A pathetic case,” observed the cousin. “But how can we use him?” inquired the Cashier. “Can he read?” asked Monsieur Casmodage. “Presumably,” Athanese replied. “We might use him for the Ledger; he could dictate Quinsonnas, who’s been asking for an assistant.” “A fine idea,” observed the cousin. “He’s not good for much else besides dictating – his handwriting is dreadful.” “And nowadays everyone writes such a fine hand,” commented the Cashier. “If he doesn’t work out at this new job,” declared Monsieur Casmodage, “he won’t be good for anything but sweeping the offices!” “And even that…,” observed the cousin. “Bring him in,” said the banker. Michel appeared before the redoubtable triumvirate. “Monsieur Dufrenoy,” said the Director, his lips spread the most scornful of smiles, “your notorious incapacity compels us to withdraw you from the operation of Machine Number Four; the results you have been producing are a constant cause of errors in our statements; this cannot continue.” “I regret the fact, Monsieur –“ Michel replied coldly. “Your regrets are of no use whatever,” the banker replied severely; “henceforth you will be assigned to the Ledger. I am told that you can read. You will dictate.” Michel said nothing. The change meant nothing to him; the Ledger and the Machine were interchangeable as far as he was concerned. He then withdrew, after asking when his position would change. “Tomorrow,” answered Athanase. “Monsieur Quinsonnas will be informed.” The young man left the offices, thinking not of his new employment but of this Quinsonnas, whose very name alarmed him! What could such a man be? Some individual who had grown old copying articles for the Ledger, balancing accounts current for sixty years, subject to the fever of outstanding balances and the frenzy of double entry! Michel marveled that the bookkeeper had not yet been replaced by a machine. Yet he felt an authentic joy at abandoning his calculating machine; he was proud of having operated it so poorly; its pseudopiano aspect had repulsed him. Back in his room, he soon found night coming on amid his reflections; he went to bed but could not sleep; a sort of nightmare overwhelmed his brain. The Ledger flashed before him, assuming fantastic dimensions; sometimes he felt he was being pressed between the white pages like some dried plant in an herbal, or else caught in the binding, which squeezed him in its brazen clamps. He got up in great agitation, seized by an invincible desire to examine this formidable device. “It’s all nonsense,” he told himself, “but at least I’ll get to the bottom of it.” He leaped out of bed, opened the door of his room, and groping, stumbling, arms extended, eyes blinking, ventured downstairs into the offices. The huge halls were dark and silent, where only a few hours ago the din of finance – the clink of coins, the rustle of banknotes, the squeak of pens on paper – had filled them with that sound so peculiar to banking houses. Michel groped his way ahead, losing himself in the center of this labyrinth; he was not to certain where the Ledger was situated but felt sure to find it; first he would have to cross the hall of the machines – he recognized them in the darkness. “They’re sleeping,” he mused, “not calculating now.” And he continued his reconnaissance, passing through the hall of the giant safes, bumping into one at every step. Suddenly he felt the ground give way under his feet, a dreadful noise filled his ears; all the doors slammed shut; the bolts and locks slid into place, and deafening whistles were set off up in the cornices; a sudden illumination filled the offices with garish light, while Michel seemed to be sliding into some bottomless abyss. Dazed and terrified, the moment the ground seemed to be solid under his feet, he tried to run away. Impossible! He was a prisoner now, caught in an iron cage. At that very moment, several men in various stages of undress rushed towards him. “A thief!” exclaimed one. “We’ve got him!” said another. “Go call the police!” Michel instantly recognized among these witnesses of his disaster Monsieur Casmodage and Cousin Athanase. “You!” exclaimed the former. “Him!” exclaimed the latter. “That’s the last straw!” “He’s a sleepwalker,” someone said. For the honor of young Dufrenoy, this notion rallied the majority of these mend in their night shirts. The prisoner was uncaged, innocent victim of these ultramodern safes, which protected themselves automatically. Stretching out his arms in the dark, Michel had brushed against the Bond Safe, an apparatus of virginal sensitivity; an alarm had immediately sounded and the floor opened by means of a sliding panel, while the electric lights were automatically turned on at the sound of the locking doors. The employees, wakened by powerful buzzers, rushed toward the cage which had been lowered into the cellar. “That will teach you,” the banker scolded the young man, “to wander around where you have no business being!” Shamed, Michel found nothing to say in his defense. “Clever, that machine!” exclaimed Athanese. “Still,” interjected Monsieur Casmodage, “it won’t be complete until the thief is deposited in a police wagon and automatically driven to the Prefecture!” “As a matter of fact,” Michel thought, “not until the machine itself applies the article of the criminal code relative to trespass and burglary!” But he kept the refinement to himself, and fled to his room amid the bursts of laughter.