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Astounding Stories of Super-Science March 1931, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Beyond the Vanishing Point - Chapter VI: The Girl in the Golden Cage CHAPTER VI. The Girl in the Golden Cage "y world," Glora was saying. "You like it? See the starlight on the lake? I have heard that your world looks like this at night, in summer. Ours is always like this. No day, no night. Just like this—starlight." Her hand went to Alan's shoulder. "You like it? My world?" "Yes. Yes, Glora, It's beautiful." There seemed a sheen on everything, a soft, glowing sheen of phosphorescence from the rocks rising to meet the pale wan starlight. The night air was soft, with a gentle breeze that rippled the distant lake into a great spread of gold and silver light. The city was called Orena. I saw at once that we were about normal size to its houses and people. There were fields beneath our ledge, with farm implements lying in them; no workers, for this was the time for sleep. Ribbons of roads wound over the country, pale streamers in the starlight. Glora gestured. "The giants are on their island. Everyone sleeps now. You see the island off there?" Beyond the city, over the low stone roofs of its flat-topped dwellings, the silver spread of lake showed a green-clad island some three miles off shore. The distance made its white stone houses seem small. But as I gazed, I realized that they were large to their environment, all far larger than those of the little town. The island was perhaps a mile in length. Between it and the mainland a boat was coming toward us. It was a dark blob of hull on the shining water, and above it a queerly shaped circular sail was puffed out like a balloon-parachute by the wind. "The giants live, there?" said Alan. "You mean Polter's men?" "And women. Yes." "Are there many giants?" "No." "How many?" I put in. "How large are they? In relation to us now, I mean. And to your normal size?" I turned to Alan. "Polter and Babs must be down there now! They must have arrived only recently. But we must determine what size to be before we go any further. We can't be gigantic If he sees us—if we assailed him—well, he'd kill Babs. We're got to plan. Glora tell us—" "You ask so many questions so fast, George. There are two hundred or more of the giants. And there are more than that many thousands of our people here. Slaves, because the giants are four times as large. This little city, these fields, these hills of stone and metal, all this was ours to have in peace and happiness—until your Polter came. And that starlight on the water—" She gestured. "Everywhere is a great reach of desert and forests. Insects, but there are no wild beasts—nothing to harm us. Nature is kind here. The weather is always like this. We were happy—until Polter came." "And only a few thousand people," Alan said. "No other cities?" "What lies off in the great distance we do not know. Our nation is ten times what is here. A few other cities, though some of our people live in the forests—" She broke off. "That boat is coming for Polter. He is in the city, no doubt of that. The boat will take him and that girl you call Babs to the giant's island. His castle is there." If we could get on that boat and go with him to the island—! But in what size? Very small? But then, if we were very small it would take us hours to get from here to the boat. Glora pointed out where it would land—just beyond the village where the houses were set in a sparse fringe. It would be there, apparently, in ten or fifteen minutes. Polter was probably there now with Babs, waiting for it. In our present size we could not get there in time. It was two or three miles at least. But a trifle larger—the size of one of Polter's giants—would enable us to make it. We would be seen, but in the pale starlight, keeping away from the city as much as possible, we might only be mistaken for Polter's people. And when we got closer we would diminish our size, creep into the boat, get near Babs and Polter and then plan what to do. Futile plans! All of life is so futile, so wind-swept upon the tossing sea of chance! We climbed down from the ledge and stood at the base of the towering cliff which reared its jagged wall against the stars. A field and a road were near us. The road seemed of normal size. A man was across the field. He did not seem to notice us. He was apparently about my height. He presently discarded his work, went away from us and vanished. "Hurry, Glora." Alan and I stood beside her while she took pellets from her vials. It needed a careful adjustment. We wanted our stature now to be four times what it was. Glora gave us pellets of both drugs, one of which was slightly more intense than the other. "Polter made them this way," she said. "The two at once gives just the growth to take us from this normal size to the stature of the giants." Alan and I did not touch our own vials. We had used none of our enlarging drug upon the journey; the supply she had given us of the other was nearly gone. As I took these pellets which Glora now gave us, standing there by the side of that road, I recall that I was struck with the realization that never once upon this journey had I conceived myself to be other than normal stature. I am normally about six feet tall. I still felt—there in that golden atom—the same height. This landscape seemed of normal size. There were trees nearby—spreading, fantastic looking growths with great strings of pods hanging from them. But still, as I looked up to see one arching over me with its blue-brown leaves and an air-vine carrying vivid yellow blossoms—whatever the size of the tree, my consciousness could only conceive myself as of a normal six-foot stature standing beneath it. The human ego always is supreme! Around each man's consciousness of himself the entire universe revolves! We crouched on the ground when this growth now began; it would not do to be observed changing size. Polter's giants never did that. Years before, he had made them large—his few hundred men and women. They were, Glora said, people both of this realm and from our great world above—dissolute, criminal characters who now had set themselves up here as the nucleus of a ruling race. In a moment now, we were the size of these giants. Twenty to twenty-five feet tall, in relation to this environment. But I did not feel so. As I stood up—still myself in normal stature—I saw around me a shrunken little landscape. The trees, as though in a Japanese garden, were about my own height; the road was a smooth level path: the little field near us a toy fence around it. In another road across it, the man was walking. In height he would barely have reached my knees. He saw us rise beside the trees. He darted off his road in alarm, and disappeared. I have taken longer to tell all this than the actual time which passed. We could see the boat coming from the island, and it was still a fair distance off shore. We ran along the road, skirting the edge of the little town. Its houses were none of them taller than ourselves. The windows and doorways were ovals into which we could only have inserted a head or an arm. They were most of them dark. Little people occasionally stared out, saw us run past, and ducked back, thankful that we did not stop to harass them. "This way," said Glora. She ran like a fawn, hardly winded, with Alan and me heavily panting behind her. "There are trees—thick trees—quite near where the boat lands. We can get in them and hide and change our size to smallness. But hurry, for we will need so much time when we are small!" The little spread of town and the shining lake remained always to our right. In five minutes we were past most of the houses. A patch of woods, with thick interlacing treetops about our own height, lay ahead. It extended a few hundred feet over to the lake shore. The sailboat was heading in close. There was a broad, starlit roadway at the edge of the lake, and a dock there at which the boat was preparing to land. Would we be in time? I suddenly feared not. To get small now, with distance lengthening between us and the boat, would be disastrous. And where was Polter? Abruptly we saw him. There had been only little people visible to us; none of our own height. The lake roadway by the dock was brightly starlit. As we approached the intervening patch of woods it seemed that a crowd of little people were near the dock. Polter must have been sitting. But now he rose up. We could not mistake his hunched thick figure, the lump on his shoulders clear in the starlight with the gleaming lake as a background. The crowd of little figures were milling around his knees. In the silence of the night the murmur of their voices floated over to us. "There he is!" Alan gasped. We all three checked our running; we were at the edge of the patch of woods. "By God, there he is! Let's get larger! Rush him! Why that's only a few hundred feet over there!" But Babs? Where was Babs? "Alan! Down!" I crouched, pulling Alan and Glora with me. "Don't let him see us! He'd know at once—and where is Babs? Can't rush him, Alan. He'd see us coming—kill her—" Of all the strange events which had been flung at us, I think this sudden crisis now most confused Alan and me. To get larger, or smaller? Which? Yet something must be done at once. Glora said, "We can get through the woods best in this size. And not be seen—get closer to the landing." We crouched so that the little treetops were always well over us. The patch of woods was dark. A soil of black loam was under us, a thick soft underbrush reached our knees, and lacy, flexible leaves and branches were at our shoulder height. We pushed them aside, forcing our way softly forward. It was not far. The little murmuring voices of the crowd grew louder. Presently we were crouching at the other edge of the woods. I softly shoved the tree branches aside until we could all three get a clear view of the strange scene now directly before us. And I saw a toy dock, at which a twenty-foot, barge-like open sailboat was landing; a narrow starlit roadway, crowded with a milling throng of people all no more than a foot and a half in height. The crowd milled almost to where we were crouching, unseen in the shrubbery. Across the road by the dock. Polter stood with the crowd down around his knees. In height he seemed the old fa miliar Polter. Bareheaded, with his shaggy black hair shot with white. He was dressed in Earth fashion: narrow black evening trousers and a white shirt and collar with flowing black tie. I saw at once what Alan had noticed—the change in him. An abnormality of age. I would have called him now forty, or older. Beyond even that there was an abnormality. A man old before his time; or younger than he should have been for the years he had lived. An indescribable mingling of something. The mingling, of the two worlds, perhaps. It marked him with a look at once unnatural and sinister. These were instant impressions. Glora was plucking at me. "On the white chest of his shirt, something is there." Polter was coatless, with snowy white shirt and cuffs to his thick wrists. He was no more than fifty feet from us. On his shirt bosom something golden in color was hanging like a large bauble, an ornament, an insignia. It was strapped tightly there with a band about his chest, a cord like a necklace chain up to his thick hunched neck, and other chains down to his belt. I stared at it. An ornament, like a cube held flat against his shirt-front—a little golden cube, ornate with tiny bars. I heard Alan murmuring, "A cage! Why George, it's—" And then, simultaneously, realization struck me. It was a golden cage strapped there. And I seemed to see that there was something in it. A tiny figure? Babs! "I think he has her there," Glora murmured. "You see the little box with bars? The girl Babs, a prisoner in there." She spoke swiftly, vehemently. "He will take the boat to the island." She suddenly gripped us. "You think really it best to go? I do what you say. I had the wish to get to my father with these drugs." "No!" exclaimed Alan. "We must keep close to Polter!" We were ready with our pellets. But a sudden activity in the road made us pause. The crowd of little people were hostile to Polter. A sullen hostility. They milled about him as he stood there, gazing down at then sardonically. And abruptly he shouted at them in English. "You speak my language, some of you. Then listen." The crowd fell silent. "Listen. This iss your future Queen. Can you see her? She iss small now. But she has the magic power. Soon, she will be large. Like me." The crowd was shouting again. It surged forward, but it lacked a leader, and those in advance shoved backward in fear. Polter spoke again. "This girl from my world, you will like her. She iss kind and very beautiful. When she iss large, you will see how beautiful." A little stone suddenly came up from the throng of little people and struck Polter on the shoulder. Then another. The crowd, emboldened, made a rush; surged against his legs. He shouted, "You do that? Why how dare you? I show to you what giants do when you make dem angry!" From down by his knees he plucked the small figure of a man. The crowd scattered with shouts of terror. Polter had the struggling eighteen-inch figure by the wrist. He whirled it around his head like a nine-pin and flung it over the canopy of the dock far out into the shimmering lake! About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various. 2009. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1931. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30166/30166-h/30166-h.htm#Beyond_the_Vanishing_Point . This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

The Girl in the Golden Cage 

“It’s my own Invention”

The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Chimneys X. Chimneys Inspector Badgworthy in his office. Time, 8.30 a.m. A tall portly man, Inspector Badgworthy, with a heavy regulation tread. Inclined to breathe hard in moments of professional strain. In attendance Constable Johnson, very new to the Force, with a downy unfledged look about him, like a human chicken. The telephone on the table rang sharply, and the inspector took it up with his usual portentous gravity of action. “Yes. Police station Market Basing. Inspector Badgworthy speaking. What?” Slight alteration in the inspector’s manner. As he is greater than Johnson, so others are greater than Inspector Badgworthy. “Speaking, my lord. I beg your pardon, my lord? I didn’t quite hear what you said?” Long pause, during which the inspector listens, quite a variety of expressions passing over his usually impassive countenance. Finally he lays down the receiver, after a brief “At once, my lord.” He turned to Johnson, seeming visibly swelled with importance. “From his lordship—at Chimneys—Murder.” “Murder,” echoed Johnson, suitably impressed. “Murder it is,” said the inspector, with great satisfaction. “Why, there’s never been a murder here—not that I’ve ever heard of—except the time that Tom Pearse shot his sweetheart.” “And that, in a manner of speaking, wasn’t murder at all, but drink,” said the inspector, deprecatingly. “He weren’t hanged for it,” agreed Johnson gloomily. “But this is the real thing, is it, sir?” “It is, Johnson. One of his lordship’s guests, a foreign gentleman, discovered shot. Open window, and footprints outside.” “I’m sorry it were a foreigner,” said Johnson, with some regret. It made the murder seem less real. Foreigners, Johnson felt, were liable to be shot. “His lordship’s in a rare taking,” continued the inspector. “We’ll get hold of Dr. Cartwright and take him up with us right away. I hope to goodness no one will get messing with those footprints.” Badgworthy was in a seventh heaven. A murder! At Chimneys! Inspector Badgworthy in charge of the case. The police have a clue. Sensational arrest. Promotion and kudos for the aforementioned inspector. “That is,” said Inspector Badgworthy to himself, “if Scotland Yard doesn’t come butting in.” The thought damped him momentarily. It seemed so extremely likely to happen under the circumstances. They stopped at Dr. Cartwright’s, and the doctor, who was a comparatively young man, displayed a keen interest. His attitude was almost exactly that of Johnson. “Why, bless my soul,” he exclaimed. “We haven’t had a murder here since the time of Tom Pearse.” All three of them got into the doctor’s little car, and started off briskly for Chimneys. As they passed the local inn, The Jolly Cricketers, the doctor noticed a man standing in the doorway. “Stranger,” he remarked. “Rather a nice-looking fellow. Wonder how long he’s been here, and what he’s doing staying at the Cricketers? I haven’t seen him about at all. He must have arrived last night.” “He didn’t come by train,” said Johnson. Johnson’s brother was the local railway porter, and Johnson was therefore always well up in arrivals and departures. “Who was there for Chimneys yesterday?” asked the inspector. “Lady Eileen, she come down by the 3.40, and two gentlemen with her, an American gent, and a young Army chap—neither of them with valets. His lordship come down with a foreign gentleman, the one that’s been shot as likely as not, by the 5.40, and the foreign gentleman’s valet. Mr. Eversleigh come by the same train. Mrs. Revel came by the 7.25, and another foreign-looking gentleman came by it too, one with a bald head and a hook nose. Mrs. Revel’s maid came by the 8.56.” Johnson paused, out of breath. “And there was no one for the Cricketers?” Johnson shook his head. “He must have come by car then,” said the inspector. “Johnson, make a note to institute inquiries at the Cricketers on your way back. We want to know all about any strangers. He was very sunburnt, that gentleman. Likely as not, he’s come from foreign parts too.” The inspector nodded his head with great sagacity, as though to imply that that was the sort of wide-awake man he was—not to be caught napping under any consideration. The car passed in through the Park gates of Chimneys. Descriptions of that historic place can be found in any guide book. It is also No. 3 in Historic Homes of England, price 21s. On Thursdays, chars-à-bancs come over from Middlingham and view those portions of it which are open to the public. In view of all these facilities, to describe Chimneys would be superfluous. They were received at the door by a white-headed butler whose demeanour was perfect. “We are not accustomed,” it seemed to say, “to having murder committed within these walls. But these are evil days. Let us meet disaster with perfect calm, and pretend with our dying breath that nothing out of the usual has occurred.” “His lordship,” said the butler, “is expecting you. This way, if you please.” He led them to a small cosy room which was Lord Caterham’s refuge from the magnificence elsewhere, and announced them. “The police, my lord, and Dr. Cartwright.” Lord Caterham was pacing up and down in a visibly agitated state. “Ha! inspector, you’ve turned up at last. I’m thankful for that. How are you, Cartwright? This is the very devil of a business, you know. The very devil of a business.” And Lord Caterham, running his hands through his hair in a frenzied fashion until it stood upright in little tufts, looked even less like a peer of the realm than usual. “Where’s the body?” asked the doctor, in curt business-like fashion. Lord Caterham turned to him as though relieved at being asked a direct question. “In the council chamber—just where it was found—I wouldn’t have it touched. I believed—er—that that was the correct thing to do.” “Quite right, my lord,” said the inspector approvingly. He produced a notebook and pencil. “And who discovered the body? Did you?” “Good Lord, no,” said Lord Caterham. “You don’t think I usually get up at this unearthly hour in the morning, do you? No, a housemaid found it. She screamed a good deal, I believe. I didn’t hear her myself. Then they came to me about it, and of course I got up and came down—and there it was, you know.” “You recognized the body as that of one of your guests?” “That’s right, inspector.” “By name?” This perfectly simple question seemed to upset Lord Caterham. He opened his mouth once or twice, and then shut it again. Finally he asked feebly. “Do you mean—do you mean—what was his name?” “Yes, my lord.” “Well,” said Lord Caterham, looking slowly round the room, as though hoping to gain inspiration. “His name was—I should say it was—yes, decidedly so—Count Stanislaus.” There was something so odd about Lord Caterham’s manner, that the inspector ceased using his pencil and stared at him instead. But at that moment a diversion occurred which seemed highly welcome to the embarrassed peer. The door opened and a girl came into the room. She was tall, slim and dark, with an attractive boyish face, and a very determined manner. This was Lady Eileen Brent, commonly known as Bundle, Lord Caterham’s eldest daughter. She nodded to the others, and addressed her father directly. “I’ve got him,” she announced. For a moment the inspector was on the point of starting forward under the impression that the young lady had captured the murderer red-handed, but almost immediately he realized that her meaning was quite different. Lord Caterham uttered a sigh of relief. “That’s a good job. What did he say?” “He’s coming over at once. We are to ‘use the utmost discretion.’” Her father made a sound of annoyance. “That’s just the sort of idiotic thing George Lomax would say. However, once he comes, I shall wash my hands of the whole affair.” He appeared to cheer up a little at the prospect. “And the name of the murdered man was Count Stanislaus?” queried the doctor. A lightning glance passed between father and daughter, and then the former said with some dignity: “Certainly. I said so just now.” “I asked because you didn’t seem quite sure about it before,” explained Cartwright. There was a faint twinkle in his eye, and Lord Caterham looked at him reproachfully. “I’ll take you to the Council Chamber,” he said more briskly. They followed him, the inspector bringing up the rear, and darting sharp glances all around him as he went, much as though he expected to find a clue in a picture frame, or behind a door. Lord Caterham took a key from his pocket and unlocked a door, flinging it open. They all passed into a big room panelled in oak, with three long windows giving on the terrace. There was a long refectory table and a good many oak chests, and some beautiful old chairs. On the walls were various paintings of dead and gone Caterhams and others. Near the left-hand wall, about half-way between the door and the window, a man was lying on his back, his arms flung wide. Dr. Cartwright went over and knelt down by the body. The inspector strode across to the windows, and examined them in turn. The centre one was closed, but not fastened. On the steps outside were footprints leading up to the window, and a second set going away again. “Clear enough,” said the inspector, with a nod. “But there ought to be footprints on the inside as well. They’d show up plain on this parquet floor.” “I think I can explain that,” interposed Bundle. “The housemaid had polished half the floor this morning before she saw the body. You see, it was dark when she came in here. She went straight across to the windows, drew the curtains, and began on the floor, and naturally didn’t see the body which is hidden from that side of the room by the table. She didn’t see it until she came right on top of it.” The inspector nodded. “Well,” said Lord Caterham, eager to escape. “I’ll leave you here, inspector. You’ll be able to find me if you—er—want me. But Mr. George Lomax is coming over from Wyverne Abbey shortly, and he’ll be able to tell you far more than I could. It’s his business really. I can’t explain, but he will when he comes.” Lord Caterham beat a precipitate retreat without waiting for a reply. “Too bad for Lomax,” he complained. “Letting me in for this. What’s the matter, Tredwell?” The white-haired butler was hovering deferentially at his elbow. “I have taken the liberty, my lord, of advancing the breakfast hour as far as you are concerned. Everything is ready in the dining-room.” “I don’t suppose for a minute I can eat anything,” said Lord Caterham gloomily, turning his footsteps in that direction. “Not for a moment.” Bundle slipped her hand through his arm, and they entered the dining-room together. On the sideboard were half a score of heavy silver dishes, ingeniously kept hot by patent arrangements. “Omelet,” said Lord Caterham, lifting each lid in turn. “Eggs and bacon, kidneys, devilled bird, haddock, cold ham, cold pheasant. I don’t like any of these things, Tredwell, ask the cook to poach me an egg, will you?” “Very good, my lord.” Tredwell withdrew. Lord Caterham, in an absent-minded fashion, helped himself plentifully to kidneys and bacon, poured himself out a cup of coffee, and sat down at the long table. Bundle was already busy with a plateful of eggs and bacon. “I’m damned hungry,” said Bundle with her mouth full. “It must be the excitement.” “It’s all very well for you,” complained her father. “You young people like excitement. But I’m in a very delicate state of health. Avoid all worry, that’s what Sir Abner Willis said—avoid all worry. So easy for a man sitting in his consulting-room in Harley Street to say that. How can I avoid worry when that ass Lomax lands me with a thing like this? I ought to have been firm at the time. I ought to have put my foot down.” With a sad shake of the head, Lord Caterham rose and carved himself a plate of ham. “Codders has certainly done it this time,” observed Bundle cheerfully. “He was almost incoherent over the telephone. He’ll be here in a minute or two, spluttering nineteen to the dozen about discretion and hushing it up.” Lord Caterham groaned at the prospect. “Was he up?” he asked. “He told me,” replied Bundle, “that he had been up and dictating letters and memoranda ever since seven o’clock.” “Proud of it, too,” remarked her father. “Extraordinarily selfish, these public men. They make their wretched secretaries get up at the most unearthly hours in order to dictate rubbish to them. If a law was passed compelling them to stop in bed until eleven, what a benefit it would be to the nation! I wouldn’t mind so much if they didn’t talk such balderdash. Lomax is always talking to me of my ‘position.’ As if I had any. Who wants to be a peer nowadays?” “Nobody,” said Bundle. “They’d much rather keep a prosperous public house.” Tredwell reappeared silently with two poached eggs in a little silver dish which he placed on the table in front of Lord Caterham. “What’s that, Tredwell?” said the latter, looking at them with faint distaste. “Poached eggs, my lord.” “I hate poached eggs,” said Lord Caterham peevishly. “They’re so insipid. I don’t like to look at them even. Take them away, will you, Tredwell?” “Very good, my lord.” Tredwell and the poached eggs withdrew as silently as they came. “Thank God no one gets up early in this house,” remarked Lord Caterham devoutly. “We shall have to break this to them when they do, I suppose.” He sighed. “I wonder who murdered him,” said Bundle. “And why?” “That’s not our business, thank goodness,” said Lord Caterham. “That’s for the police to find out. Not that Badgworthy will ever find out anything. On the whole I rather hope it was Nosystein.” “Meaning——” “The All British Syndicate.” “Why should Mr. Isaacstein murder him when he’d come down here on purpose to meet him?” “High finance,” said Lord Caterham vaguely. “And that reminds me, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Isaacstein wasn’t an early riser. He may blow in upon us at any minute. It’s a habit in the city. I believe that, however rich you are, you always catch the 9.17.” The sound of a motor being driven at great speed was heard through the open window. “Codders,” cried Bundle. Father and daughter leaned out of the window and hailed the occupant of the car as it drew up before the entrance. “In here, my dear fellow, in here,” cried Lord Caterham, hastily swallowing his mouthful of ham. George had no intention of climbing in through the window. He disappeared through the front door, and reappeared ushered in by Tredwell, who withdrew at once. “Have some breakfast,” said Lord Caterham, shaking him by the hand. “What about a kidney?” George waved the kidney aside impatiently. “This is a terrible calamity, terrible, terrible.” “It is indeed. Some haddock?” “No, no. It must be hushed up—at all costs it must be hushed up.” As Bundle had prophesied, George began to splutter. “I understand your feelings,” said Lord Caterham sympathetically. “Try an egg and bacon, or some haddock.” “A totally unforeseen contingency—national calamity—concessions jeopardized——” “Take time,” said Lord Caterham. “And take some food. What you need is some food, to pull you together. Poached eggs now? There were some poached eggs here a minute or two ago.” “I don’t want any food,” said George. “I’ve had breakfast, and even if I hadn’t had any I shouldn’t want it. We must think what is to be done. You have told no one as yet?” “Well, there’s Bundle and myself. And the local police. And Cartwright. And all the servants of course.” George groaned. “Pull yourself together, my dear fellow,” said Lord Caterham kindly. “(I wish you’d have some breakfast.) You don’t seem to realize that you can’t hush up a dead body. It’s got be buried and all that sort of thing. Very unfortunate, but there it is.” George became suddenly calm. “You are right, Caterham. You have called in the local police, you say? That will not do. We must have Battle.” “Battle, murder and sudden death,” inquired Lord Caterham, with a puzzled face. “No, no, you misunderstand me. I referred to Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard. A man of the utmost discretion. He worked with us in that deplorable business of the Party Funds.” “What was that?” asked Lord Caterham, with some interest. But George’s eye had fallen upon Bundle, as she sat half in and half out of the window, and he remembered discretion just in time. He rose. “We must waste no time. I must send off some wires at once.” “If you write them out, Bundle will send them through the telephone.” George pulled out a fountain pen and began to write with incredible rapidity. He handed the first one to Bundle, who read it with a great deal of interest. “God! what a name,” she remarked. “Baron How Much?” “Baron Lolopretjzyl.” Bundle blinked. “I’ve got it, but it will take some conveying to the post office.” George continued to write. Then he handed his labours to Bundle and addressed the master of the house: “The best thing that you can do, Caterham——” “Yes,” said Lord Caterham apprehensively. “Is to leave everything in my hands.” “Certainly,” said Lord Caterham, with alacrity. “Just what I was thinking myself. You’ll find the police and Dr. Cartwright in the Council Chamber. With the—er—with the body, you know. My dear Lomax, I place Chimneys unreservedly at your disposal. Do anything you like.” “Thank you,” said George. “If I should want to consult you——” But Lord Caterham had faded unobtrusively through the farther door. Bundle had observed his retreat with a grim smile. “I’ll send off those telegrams at once,” she said. “You know your way to the Council Chamber?” “Thank you, Lady Eileen.” George hurried from the room. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (1998). The Secret of Chimneys. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65238/pg65238-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Chimneys

The 40 Under 40 Fueling Spain's Startup Economy

40 অনূর্ধ্ব 40 স্পেনের স্টার্টআপ অর্থনীতিতে জ্বালানি দিচ্ছে

Die 40 unter 40 treiben Spaniens Startup-Wirtschaft voran

Los 40 menores de 40 que impulsan la economía de las startups en España

Les 40 de moins de 40 ans alimentent l'économie des startups espagnoles

40 अंडर 40 स्पेन की स्टार्टअप अर्थव्यवस्था को बढ़ावा दे रहा है

スペインのスタートアップ経済を支える40歳未満の40人

스페인의 스타트업 경제를 촉진하는 40세 미만 40세

Os 40 abaixo dos 40 impulsionam a economia das startups na Espanha

40 Yaş Altı 40, İspanya'nın Startup Ekonomisini Güçlendiriyor

Nhóm 40 Under 40 thúc đẩy nền kinh tế khởi nghiệp của Tây Ban Nha

40 位 40 岁以下的人士推动了西班牙的创业经济

From Help to Gentleman: A Tale of Social Mobility

Foreign Private Equity Hooked New England’s Fishing Industry: Here's How

Love and Mr. Lewisham by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . EPITHALAMY CHAPTER XXII. — EPITHALAMY. For three indelible days Lewisham’s existence was a fabric of fine emotions, life was too wonderful and beautiful for any doubts or forethought. To be with Ethel was perpetual delight—she astonished this sisterless youngster with a thousand feminine niceties and refinements. She shamed him for his strength and clumsiness. And the light in her eyes and the warmth in her heart that lit them! Even to be away from her was a wonder and in its way delightful. He was no common Student, he was a man with a Secret Life. To part from her on Monday near South Kensington station and go up Exhibition Road among all the fellows who lived in sordid, lonely lodgings and were boys to his day-old experience! To neglect one’s work and sit back and dream of meeting again! To slip off to the shady churchyard behind the Oratory when, or even a little before, the midday bell woke the great staircase to activity, and to meet a smiling face and hear a soft, voice saying sweet foolish things! And after four another meeting and the walk home—their own home. No little form now went from him and flitted past a gas lamp down a foggy vista, taking his desire with her. Never more was that to be. Lewisham’s long hours in the laboratory were spent largely in a dreamy meditation, in—to tell the truth—the invention of foolish terms of endearment: “Dear Wife,” “Dear Little Wife Thing,” “Sweetest Dearest Little Wife,” “Dillywings.” A pretty employment! And these are quite a fair specimen of his originality during those wonderful days. A moment of heart-searching in that particular matter led to the discovery of hitherto undreamt-of kindred with Swift. For Lewisham, like Swift and most other people, had hit upon, the Little Language. Indeed it was a very foolish time. Such section cutting as he did that third day of his married life—and he did very little—was a thing to marvel at. Bindon, the botany professor, under the fresh shock of his performance, protested to a colleague in the grill room that never had a student been so foolishly overrated. And Ethel too had a fine emotional time. She was mistress of a home—their home together. She shopped and was called “Ma’am” by respectful, good-looking shopmen; she designed meals and copied out papers of notes with a rich sense of helpfulness. And ever and again she would stop writing and sit dreaming. And for four bright week-days she went to and fro to accompany and meet Lewisham and listen greedily to the latest fruits of his imagination. The landlady was very polite and conversed entertainingly about the very extraordinary and dissolute servants that had fallen to her lot. And Ethel disguised her newly wedded state by a series of ingenious prevarications. She wrote a letter that Saturday evening to her mother—Lewisham had helped her to write it—making a sort of proclamation of her heroic departure and promising a speedy visit. They posted the letter so that it might not be delivered until Monday. She was quite sure with Lewisham that only the possible dishonour of mediumship could have brought their marriage about—she sank the mutual attraction beyond even her own vision. There was more than a touch of magnificence, you perceive, about this affair. It was Lewisham had persuaded her to delay that reassuring visit until Monday night. “One whole day of honeymoon,” he insisted, was to be theirs. In his prenuptial meditations he had not clearly focussed the fact that even after marriage some sort of relations with Mr. and Mrs. Chaffery would still go on. Even now he was exceedingly disinclined to face that obvious necessity. He foresaw, in spite of a resolute attempt to ignore it, that there would be explanatory scenes of some little difficulty. But the prevailing magnificence carried him over this trouble. “Let us at least have this little time for ourselves,” he said, and that seemed to settle their position. Save for its brevity and these intimations of future trouble it was a very fine time indeed. Their midday dinner together, for example—it was a little cold when at last they came to it on Saturday—was immense fun. There was no marked subsidence of appetite; they ate extremely well in spite of the meeting of their souls, and in spite of certain shiftings of chairs and hand claspings and similar delays. He really made the acquaintance of her hands then for the first time, plump white hands with short white fingers, and the engagement ring had come out of its tender hiding-place and acted as keeper to the wedding ring. Their eyes were perpetually flitting about the room and coming back to mutual smiles. All their movements were faintly tremulous. She professed to be vastly interested and amused by the room and its furniture and her position, and he was delighted by her delight. She was particularly entertained by the chest of drawers in the living room, and by Lewisham’s witticisms at the toilet tidies and the oleographs. And after the chops and the most of the tinned salmon and the very new loaf were gone they fell to with fine effect upon a tapioca pudding. Their talk was fragmentary. “Did you hear her call me Madame? Madame—so!” “And presently I must go out and do some shopping. There are all the things for Sunday and Monday morning to get. I must make a list. It will never do to let her know how little I know about things.... I wish I knew more.” At the time Lewisham regarded her confession of domestic ignorance as a fine basis for facetiousness. He developed a fresh line of thought, and condoled with her on the inglorious circumstances of their wedding. “No bridesmaids,” he said; “no little children scattering flowers, no carriages, no policemen to guard the wedding presents, nothing proper—nothing right. Not even a white favour. Only you and I.” “Only you and I. Oh!” “This is nonsense,” said Lewisham, after an interval. “And think what we lose in the way of speeches,” he resumed. “Cannot you imagine the best man rising:—‘Ladies and gentlemen—the health of the bride.’ That is what the best man has to do, isn’t it?” By way of answer she extended her hand. “And do you know,” he said, after that had received due recognition, “we have never been introduced!” “Neither have we!” said Ethel. “Neither have we! We have never been introduced!” For some inscrutable reason it delighted them both enormously to think that they had never been introduced.... In the later afternoon Lewisham, having unpacked his books to a certain extent, and so forth, was visible to all men, visibly in the highest spirits, carrying home Ethel’s shopping. There were parcels and cones in blue and parcels in rough grey paper and a bag of confectionery, and out of one of the side pockets of that East-end overcoat the tail of a haddock protruded from its paper. Under such magnificent sanctions and amid such ignoble circumstances did this honeymoon begin. On Sunday evening they went for a long rambling walk through the quiet streets, coming out at last into Hyde Park. The early spring night was mild and clear and the kindly moonlight was about them. They went to the bridge and looked down the Serpentine, with the little lights of Paddington yellow and remote. They stood there, dim little figures and very close together. They whispered and became silent. Presently it seemed that something passed and Lewisham began talking in his magnificent vein. He likened the Serpentine to Life, and found Meaning in the dark banks of Kensington Gardens and the remote bright lights. “The long struggle,” he said, “and the lights at the end,”—though he really did not know what he meant by the lights at the end. Neither did Ethel, though the emotion was indisputable. “We are Fighting the World,” he said, finding great satisfaction in the thought. “All the world is against us—and we are fighting it all.” “We will not be beaten,” said Ethel. “How could we be beaten—together?” said Lewisham. “For you I would fight a dozen worlds.” It seemed a very sweet and noble thing to them under the sympathetic moonlight, almost indeed too easy for their courage, to be merely fighting the world. “You ‘aven’t bin married ver’ long,” said Madam Gadow with an insinuating smile, when she readmitted Ethel on Monday morning after Lewisham had been swallowed up by the Schools. “No, I haven’t very long,” admitted Ethel. “You are ver’ ‘appy,” said Madam Gadow, and sighed. “I was ver’ ‘appy,” said Madam Gadow. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2006). Love and Mr. Lewisham. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11640/11640-h/11640-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

EPITHALAMY

Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter X - BRITISH SPECIALTIES

Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter IX 

Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter XI - GASTRONOMIC AMERICA

CES: When Sextech Collides with Misogyny CES is the largest tech show in the world. Held every year in Vegas, it’s a barometer for trends in the tech world — you can reliably predict what will become big in the coming years by walking around the floor and seeing what is debuting. One area that’s been steadily growing is sextech, of course. I watch mostly from the sidelines because as a man in the world of sextech, a lot of what I write feels like “mansplaining” to me. There is a lot of innovation going on in sextech, and most of it is done by women. This is not an accident. During an interview with a European business journal I was once asked to explain why sextech innovators are usually women, and my reply was that women are more driven to improve their sex lives than men so they’d be a lot better at sextech than men. CES actually reflects this — until this year, the biggest sextech splash at the show was a sex doll produced by a male-led company(*yawn*). If that’s not the definition of banal, I don’t know what is. This year promised to be something different. A female founded company, , initially won a coveted CES Innovation Award for their Osé “vibrator” product. While technically a vibrator, the device is so much more than that. Using biomimicry and robotics, the Osé allows women to reach orgasm while keeping the experience hands-free. It’s an incredible technical advance in arguably the oldest field of sextech, mimicking the human mouth, tongue, and fingers. Lora DiCarlo Early October of 2018, the panel in charge of the award informed Lora Dicarlo of the award. By the end of October, the award was rescinded. , the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) explained their position: via a clause in their guidelines, products were not eligible if they are judged “in their sole discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with the CTA’s image will be disqualified. CTA reserves the right in its sole discretion to disqualify any entry at any time which, in CTA’s opinion, endangers the safety or well being of any person, or fails to comply with these Official Rules. CTA decisions are final and binding.” In an article on Tech Crunch Lora DiCarlo was also prohibited from exhibiting “because they don’t fit a product category,” claimed CTA Senior Manager of Event Communications Sarah Brown in . a statement to Tech Crunch This is, quite frankly, a lie. CES obviously tried to do damage control by letting a woman communicate their reasoning, but it’s a bit like Sarah Sanders lying for Trump — who is this woman and how much are they paying her to sell out her own gender? Sextech companies have exhibited at CES in the past, most notably the aforementioned sex robot — which was part of a full-on exhibit of VR porn by Naughty America. 2016 was the breakout year for sextech at CES, with a product from OhMiBod winning another innovation award. Despite all of this previous permissiveness, somehow a product aimed at women is “obscene” when it gets too much attention. Lora Haddock, founder and CEO of Lora DiCarlo, sees through this obvious lie. “There is an obvious double-standard when it comes to sexuality and sexual health,” she writes in . “While there are sex and sexual health products at CES, it seems that CES/CTA administration applies the rules differently for companies and products based on the gender of their customers. Men’s sexuality is allowed to be explicit with a literal sex robot in the shape of an unrealistically proportioned woman and VR porn in point of pride along the aisle. Female sexuality, on the other hand, is heavily muted if not outright banned … This double standard makes it clear that women’s sexuality is not worthy of innovation. By excluding female-focused Sex Tech, CES and CTA are essentially saying that women’s sexuality and sexual health is not worthy of innovation.” a statement on the Lora DiCarlo website Indeed, this is CES shooting itself in the foot completely. Sextech is dominated by women-led companies, yet CES is continuing to ignore these. This should be a wakeup call to consumers of sextech — don’t look towards the mainstream to show you where the innovation is, but never give up your assault on the mainstream. Next year is bound to be different because of this controversy. The CES is trying quietly to keep a lid on the biggest consumer segment nobody knows about because it offends their sensibilities — when really what they are offended at is that a woman-led company designed something solely directed at women’s pleasure. Ask yourself why the CES hates this, and you’ll understand that the powers that be at CES actually view women as something to prance around in skimpy costumes at booths as “booth babes” — not as corporate leaders. CES and CTA should be ashamed of itself for showing the world how misogynistic their leaders are.

When Sextech Collides with Mysogyny

A long time ago, we had an article that featured some tips on . As far as I remember, that’s the only piece we’ve ever done on code formatting. But as you work on projects with more people, formatting is one thing you need to consider to keep everyone sane. You’d like to have a consistent style across the code base. That way, there’s less controversy in code reviews, and people don’t need to think as much to update code. They shouldn’t have to wonder about following the style guide or what exists in a fragment of code. how to organize your import statements This week, we’re going to go over three different Haskell code formatting tools. We’ll examine , , and . These all have their pluses and minuses, as we’ll see. Stylish Haskell Hindent Brittany For some ideas of what Haskell projects you can do, download our . You can also take our free and learn how to use Stack to organize your code! Production Checklist Stack mini-course Stylish Haskell The first tool we’ll look at is . This is a straightforward tool to use, as it does some cool things with no configuration required. Let’s take a look at a poorly formatted version of code from our . Stylish Haskell Beam article {-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-}{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts #-}{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-}{-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-}{-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-}{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}{-# LANGUAGE StandaloneDeriving #-}{-# LANGUAGE TypeApplications #-}{-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-}{-# LANGUAGE TypeSynonymInstances #-}{-# LANGUAGE ImpredicativeTypes #-}

module Schema where

import Database.Beamimport Database.Beam.Backendimport Database.Beam.Migrateimport Database.Beam.Sqliteimport Database.SQLite.Simple (open, Connection)

import Data.Int (Int64)import Data.Text (Text)import Data.Time (UTCTime)import qualified Data.UUID as U

data UserT f = User  { _userId :: Columnar f Int64  , _userName :: Columnar f Text  , _userEmail :: Columnar f Text  , _userAge :: Columnar f Int  , _userOccupation :: Columnar f Text  } deriving (Generic) There are many undesirable things here. Our language pragmas don’t line up their end braces. They also aren’t in any discernible order. Our imports are also not lined up, and neither are the fields in our data types. Stylish Haskell can fix all this. First, we’ll install it globally with: stack install stylish-haskell (You can also use instead of ). Then we can call the command on a file. By default, it will output the results to the terminal. But if we pass the flag, it will update the file in place. This will make all the changes we want to line up the various statements in our file! cabal stack stylish-haskell -i >> stylish-haskell -i Schema.hs

--- Result:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric         #-}{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts      #-}{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances     #-}{-# LANGUAGE GADTs                 #-}{-# LANGUAGE ImpredicativeTypes    #-}{-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-}{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings     #-}{-# LANGUAGE StandaloneDeriving    #-}{-# LANGUAGE TypeApplications      #-}{-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies          #-}{-# LANGUAGE TypeSynonymInstances  #-}

module Schema where

import           Database.Beamimport           Database.Beam.Backendimport           Database.Beam.Migrateimport           Database.Beam.Sqliteimport           Database.SQLite.Simple (Connection, open)

import           Data.Int               (Int64)import           Data.Text              (Text)import           Data.Time              (UTCTime)import qualified Data.UUID              as U

data UserT f = User  { _userId         :: Columnar f Int64  , _userName       :: Columnar f Text  , _userEmail      :: Columnar f Text  , _userAge        :: Columnar f Int  , _userOccupation :: Columnar f Text  } deriving (Generic) Stylish Haskell integrates well with most common editors. For instance, if you use Vim, you can also run the command from within the editor with the command: :%!stylish-haskell We get all these features without any configuration. If we want to change things though, we can create a configuration file. We’ll make a default file with the following command: stylish-haskell --defaults > .stylish-haskell.yaml Then if we want, we can modify it a bit. For one example, we’ve aligned our imports above globally. This means they all leave space for . But we can decide we don’t want a group of imports to have that space if there are no qualified imports. There’s a setting for this in the config. By default, it looks like this: qualified imports:  align: global We can change it to to ensure our imports are only aligned within their grouping. group imports:  align: group And now when we run the command, we’ll get a different result: module Schema where

import Database.Beamimport Database.Beam.Backendimport Database.Beam.Migrateimport Database.Beam.Sqliteimport Database.SQLite.Simple (Connection, open)

import           Data.Int  (Int64)import           Data.Text (Text)import           Data.Time (UTCTime)import qualified Data.UUID as U So in short, Stylish Haskell is a great tool for a limited scope. It has uncontroversial suggestions for several areas like imports and pragmas. It also removes trailing whitespace, and adjusts case statements sensibly. That said, it doesn’t affect your main Haskell code. Let’s look at a couple tools that can do that. Hindent Another program we can use is . As its name implies, it deals with updating whitespace and indentation levels. Let’s look at a very simple example. Consider this code, adapted from our Beam article: [hindent](https://github.com/commercialhaskell/hindent) user1' = User default_  (val_ "James")  (val_ "james@example.com")  (val_ 25)  (val_ "programmer")

findUsers :: Connection -> IO ()findUsers conn = runBeamSqlite conn $ do    users <- runSelectReturningList $ select $ do        user <- (all_ (_blogUsers blogDb))        article <- (all_ (_blogArticles blogDb))        guard_ (user ^. userName ==. (val_ "James"))        guard_ (article ^. articleUserId ==. user ^. userId)         return (user, article)    mapM_ (liftIO . putStrLn . show) users There are a few things we could change. First, we might want to update the indentation level so that it is 2 instead of 4. Second, let’s restrict the line size to only being 80. When we run on this file, it’ll make the changes. hindent user1' =  User    default_    (val_ "James")    (val_ "james@example.com")    (val_ 25)    (val_ "programmer")

findUsers :: Connection -> IO ()findUsers conn =  runBeamSqlite conn $ do    users <-      runSelectReturningList $      select $ do        user <- (all_ (_blogUsers blogDb))        article <- (all_ (_blogArticles blogDb))        guard_ (user ^. userName ==. (val_ "James"))        guard_ (article ^. articleUserId ==. user ^. userId)        return (user, article)    mapM_ (liftIO . putStrLn . show) users Hindent is also configurable. We can create a file . By default, we would have the following configuration: .hindent.yaml indent-size: 2line-length: 80force-trailing-newline: true But then we can change it if we want so that the indentation level is 3: indent-size: 3 And now when we run it, we’ll actually see that it’s changed to reflect that: findUsers :: Connection -> IO ()findUsers conn =   runBeamSqlite conn $ do      users <-         runSelectReturningList $         select $ do            user <- (all_ (_blogUsers blogDb))            article <- (all_ (_blogArticles blogDb))            guard_ (user ^. userName ==. (val_ "James"))            guard_ (article ^. articleUserId ==. user ^. userId)            return (user, article)      mapM_ (liftIO . putStrLn . show) users Hindent also has some other effects that, as far as I can tell, are not configurable. You can see that the separation of lines was not preserved above. In another example, it spaced out instance definitions that I had grouped in another file: -- BEFOREderiving instance Show Userderiving instance Eq Userderiving instance Show UserIdderiving instance Eq UserId

-- AFTERderiving instance Show User

deriving instance Eq User

deriving instance Show UserId

deriving instance Eq UserId So make sure you’re aware of everything it does before committing to using it. Like , integrates well with text editors. stylish-haskell hindent Brittany Brittany is an alternative to Hindent for modifying your expression definitions. It mainly focuses on the use of horizontal space throughout your code. As far as I see, it doesn’t line up language pragmas or change import statements in the way does. It also doesn’t touch data type declarations. Instead, it seeks to reformat your code to make maximal use of space while avoiding lines that are too long. As an example, we could look at this line from our example: stylish-haskell Beam insertArticles :: Connection -> IO ()insertArticles conn = runBeamSqlite conn $ runInsert $   insert (_blogArticles blogDb) $ insertValues articles Our decision on where to separate the line is a little bit arbitrary. But at the very least we don’t try to cram it all on one line. But if we have either the approach above or the one-line version, Brittany will change it to this: brittany --write-mode=inplace MyModule.hs

--

insertArticles :: Connection -> IO ()insertArticles conn =  runBeamSqlite conn $ runInsert $ insert (_blogArticles blogDb) $ insertValues    articles This makes “better” use of horizontal space in the sense that we get as much on the first line. That said, one could argue that the first approach we have actually looks nicer. Brittany can also change type signatures that overflow the line limit. Suppose we have this arbitrary type signature that’s too long for a single line: myReallyLongFunction :: State ComplexType Double -> Maybe Double -> Either Double ComplexType -> IO a -> StateT ComplexType IO a Brittany will fix it up so that each argument type is on a single line: myReallyLongFunction  :: State ComplexType Double  -> Maybe Double  -> Either Double ComplexType  -> IO a  -> StateT ComplexType IO a This can be useful in projects with very complicated types. The structure makes it easier for you to add Haddock comments to the various arguments. Dangers There is of course, a (small) danger to using tools like these. If you’re going to use them, you want to ensure everyone on the project is using them. Suppose person A isn’t using the program, and commits code that isn’t formatted by the program. Person B might then look through that code, and their editor will correct the file. This will leave them with local changes to the file that aren’t relevant to whatever work they’re doing. This can cause a lot of confusion when they submit code for review. Whoever reviews their code has to sift through the format changes, which slows the review. People can also have (unreasonably) strong opinions about code formatting. So it’s generally something you want to nail down early on a project and avoid changing afterward. With the examples in this article, I would say it would be an easy sell to use Stylish Haskell on a project. However, the specific choices made in H-Indent and Brittany can be more controversial. So it might cause more problems than it would solve to institute those project-wide. Conclusion It’s possible to lose a surprising amount of productivity to code formatting. So it can be important to nail down standards early and often. Code formatting programs can make it easy to enforce particular standards. They’re also very simple to incorporate into your projects with and your editor of choice! stack Now that you know how to format your code, need some suggestions for what to work on next? Take a look at our ! It’ll give you some cool ideas of libraries you can use for building Haskell web apps and much more! Production Checklist

Keeping it Clean: Haskell Code Formatters

In , we made more progress in understanding GHC. We got our basic development cycle down and explored the general structure of the code base. We also made the simplest possible change by updating one of the error messages. This week, we’ll make some more complex changes to the compiler, showing the ways you can tweak the language. It’s unlikely you would make changes like these to fix existing issues. But it’ll help us get a better grasp of what’s going on. last week’s article As always, you can learn more about the basics of Haskell by checking out our other resources. Take a look at our or download our ! Liftoff Series Beginners Checklist Comments and Changing the Lexer Let’s get warmed up with a straightforward change. We’ll add some new syntax to allow different kinds of comments. First we have to get a little familiar with the Lexer, defined in . Let's try and define it so that we'll be able to use four apostrophes to signify a comment. Here's what this might look like in our code and the error message we'll get if we try to do this right now. parser/Lexer.x module Main where

'''' This is our main functionmain :: IO ()main = putStrLn "Hello World!"

…

Parser error on `''`Character literals may not be empty  |5 | '''' This is our main function  | ^^ Now, it’s easy enough to add a new line describing what to do with this token. We can follow the example in the Lexer file. Here’s where GHC defines a normal single line comment: "-- " ~$docsym .* { lineCommentToken }"--" [^$symbol \ ] . * { lineCommentToken } It needs two cases because of Haddock comments. But we don’t need to worry about that. We can specify our symbol on one line like so: "''''" .* { lineCommentToken } Now we can add the comment above into our code, and it compiles! Adding a New Keyword Let’s now look at how we could add a new keyword to the language. We’ll start with a simple substitution. Suppose we want to use the word like we use . Here's what a code snippet would look like, and what the compiler error we get is at first: iffy if main :: IO ()main = do  i <- read <$> getLine  iffy i `mod` 2 == 0    then putStrLn "Hello"    else putStrLn "World"

…

Main.hs:11:5: error: parse error on input 'then'   |11 |     then putStrLn "Hello"   |     ^^^^ Let’s do a quick search for where the keyword “if” already exists in the parser section. We’ll find two spots. The first is a list of all the reserved words in the language. We can update this by adding our new keyword to the list. We’ll look for the set in , and we can add it: reservedIds basicTypes/Lexeme.hs reservedIds :: Set.Set StringreservedIds = Set.fromList [ …  , "_", "iffy" ] Now we also have to parse it so that it maps against a particular token. We can see a line in where this happens: Lexer.x ( "if", ITif, 0) We can add another line right below it, matching it to the same token: ITif ( "iffy", ITif, 0) Now the lexer matches it against the same token once we start putting the language together. Now our code compiles and produces the expected result! lghc Main.hs./prog.exe5World Reversing If Now let’s add a little twist to this process. We’ll add another “if” keyword and call it . This will change the ordering of the if-statement. So when the boolean is false, our code will execute the first branch instead of the second. We'll need to work a little further upstream. We want to re-use as much of the existing machinery as possible and just reverse our two expressions at the right moment. Let's use the same code as above, except with the reverse keyword. Then if we input we should get instead of . reverseif 5 Hello World main :: IO ()main = do  i <- read <$> getLine  reverseif i `mod` 2 == 0    then putStrLn "Hello"    else putStrLn "World" So we’ll have to start by adding a new constructor to our type, under the current token in the lexer. Token if data Token =  …  | ITif  | ITreverseif  ... Now we’ll have to add a line to convert our keyword into this kind of token. ...("if", ITif, 0),("reverseif", ITreverseif, 0),... As before, we’ll also add it to our list of keywords: reservedIds :: Set.Set StringreservedIds = Set.fromList [ …  , "_", "iffy", "reverseif" ] Let’s take a look now at the different places where we use the constructor. Then we can apply them to as well. We can find two more instances in . First, there's the function , which dictates if a syntactic construct might need an open brace. Then there's the function, which tells us if we can start some kind of other indentation. In both of these, we'll follow the example of : ITif ITreverseif Lexer.x maybe_layout isALRopen ITif maybe_layout :: Token -> P ()…  where    f ITif = pushLexState layout_if    f ITreverseif = pushLexState layout_if

...isALRopen ITif = TrueisALRopen ITreverseif = True... There’s also a bit in where we'll need to parse our new token: Parser.y %token … 'if' { L _ ITif } 'reverseif' { L _ ITreverseif } Now we need to figure out how these tokens create syntactic constructs. This also seems to occur in . We can look, for instance, at the section that constructs basic if statements: Parser.y | 'if' exp optSemi 'then' exp optSemi 'else' exp    {% checkDoAndIfThenElse $2 (snd $3) $5 (snd $6) $8 >>      Ams (sLL $1 $> $ mkHsIf $2 $5 $8)        (mj AnnIf $1:mj AnnThen $4          :mj AnnElse $7          :(map (\l -> mj AnnSemi l) (fst $3))         ++(map (\l -> mj AnnSemi l) (fst $6))) } There’s a lot going on here, and we’re not going to try to understand it all right now! But there are only two things we’ll need to change to make a new rule for . First, we'll obviously need to use that token instead of on the first line. reverseif if Second, see that statement on the third line? This is where we make the actual Haskell "If" expression in our syntax tree. The refers to the second instance of in the token list, and the refers to the third and final expression. These are, respectively, the and branch expressions of our "If" statement. Thus, to reverse our "If", all we need to do is flip this arguments on the third line! mkHsIf $5 exp $8 True False | 'reverseif' exp optSemi 'then' exp optSemi 'else' exp    {% checkDoAndIfThenElse $2 (snd $3) $5 (snd $6) $8 >>      Ams (sLL $1 $> $ mkHsIf $2 $8 $5)        (mj AnnIf $1:mj AnnThen $4          :mj AnnElse $7          :(map (\l -> mj AnnSemi l) (fst $3))         ++(map (\l -> mj AnnSemi l) (fst $6))) } Finally, there’s one more change we need to make. Adding this line will introduce a couple new shift/reduce conflicts into our grammar. There are already 233, so we’re not going to worry too much about that right now. All we need to do is change the count on the assertion for the number of conflicts: %expect 235 -- shift/reduce conflicts Now when we compile and run our simple program, we’ll indeed see that it works as expected! lghc Main.hs./prog.exe5Hello Conclusion So this week we saw some more complicated changes to GHC that have tangible effects. Next week, we’ll wrap up our discussion of GHC by looking at the contribution process. We’ll see the “simple” way with Github first. Then we’ll also walk through the more complicated process using tools like Arc and Phabricator. To learn more about Haskell, you should check out some of our basic materials! If you’re a beginner to the language, read our . It’ll teach you how to use Haskell from the ground up. You can also take a look at our to see some more advanced and practical skills! Liftoff Series Haskell Web Series

Contributing to GHC 3: Hacking Syntax and Parsing

In the last few weeks, we’ve looked at a few different open source Haskell projects like and . This week, we’ll start looking at perhaps the biggest and most important open source element of the Haskell ecosystem. This is , the Glasgow Haskell Compiler. Without GHC and the hard work that goes into it from many volunteers, Haskell would not be the language it is today. So in the next few weeks we’ll be explore the process of building and (hopefully) contributing to GHC. HNix Codeworld GHC I’m currently operating on a Windows laptop, which brings many frustrations. Getting GHC to build on Windows is a non-trivial task with many potential hurdles. On the bright side, I view this as an opportunity to show that one can contribute even in the most adverse circumstances. So most of this article will focus on the trials of using Windows. There is a section further down that goes over the most important parts of building for Mac and Linux. I’ll be following by Simon Peyton Jones, sharing my own complications. this guide Now, you need to walk before you can run. If you’ve never used Haskell before, you have to try it out first to understand GHC! Download our to get started! You can also read our to learn more about the language basics. Beginner’s Checklist Liftoff Series MSYS The main complication with Windows is that the build tools for GHC are made for Unix-like environments. These tools include programs like and . And they don’t work in the normal Windows terminal environment. This means we need some way of emulating a Unix terminal environment in Windows. There are a couple different options for this. One is , but the more supported option for GHC is . So my first step was to install this program. This terminal will apply the “Minimalist GNU for Windows” libraries, abbreviated as “MinGW”. autoconf make Cygwin MSYS 2 Installing this worked fine the first time. However, there did come a couple points where I decided to nuke everything and start from scratch. Re-installing did bring about one problem I’ll share. In a couple circumstances where I decided to start over, I would run the installer, only to find an error stating . This occurred because the old version of this program was still running on a process. You can delete the process or else just restart your machine to get around this. bash.exe: permission denied Once MSys is working, you’ll want to set up your terminal to use programs by default. To do this, you’ll want to set the path to put the directory first: MinGW mingw echo “export PATH=/mingw<bitness>/bin:\$PATH” >> ~/.bash_profile Use either or for depending on your system. Also don’t forget the quotation marks around the command itself! 32 64 <bitness> Package Preparation Our next step will be to get all the necessary packages for GHC. MSys 2 uses an older package manager called , which operates kind’ve like . First you’ll need to update your package repository with this command: pacman apt-get pacman -Syuu As per the instructions in SPJ’s description, you may need to run this a couple times if a connection times out. This happened to me once. Now that pacman is working, you’ll need to install a host of programs and libraries that will assist in building GHC: pacman -S --needed git tar bsdtar binutils autoconf make xz \    curl libtool automake python python2 p7zip patch ca-certificates \    mingw-w64-$(uname -m)-gcc mingw-w64-$(uname -m)-python3-sphinx \    mingw-w64-$(uname -m)-tools-git This command typically worked fine for me. The final items we’ll need are and . These are Haskell programs for lexing and parsing. We’ll want to install Cabal to do this. First let’s set a couple variables for our system: alex happy arch=x64_64 # could also be i386bitness=64  # could also be 32 Now we’ll get a pre-built GHC binary that we’ll use to Bootstrap our own build later: curl -L https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.2.2/ghc-8.2.2-${arch}-unknown-mingw32.tar.xz | tar -xJ -C /mingw${bitness} --strip-components=1 Now we’ll use Cabal to get those packages. We’ll place them (and Cabal) in , so we’ll make sure that’s created first: /usr/local/bin mkdir -p /usr/local/bincurl -L https://www.haskell.org/cabal/release/cabal-install-2.2.0.0/cabal-install-2.2.0.0-${arch}-unknown-mingw32.zip | bsdtar -xzf- -C /usr/local/bin Now we’ll update our Cabal repository and get both and : alex happy cabal updatecabal install -j --prefix=/usr/local/bin alex happy Once while running this command I found that failed to install due to an issue with the library. I got errors of this sort when running the command: happy mtl ghc-pkg check Cannot find any of [“Control\\Monad\\Cont.hi”, “Control\\Monad\Cont.p_hi”, “Control\\Monad\\Cont.dyn_hi”]Cannot find any of [“Control\\Monad\\Cont\\Class.hi”, “Control\\Monad\Cont\\Class.p_hi”, “Control\\Monad\\Cont\\Class.dyn_hi”] I managed to fix this by doing a manual re-install of the package: mtl cabal install -j --prefix=/usr/local/ mtl --reinstall After this step, there were no errors on , and I was able to install without any problems. ghc-pkg check happy cabal install -j --prefix=/usr/local/ happyResolving dependencies…Configuring happy-1.19.9…Building happy-1.19.9…Installed happy-1.19.9 Getting the Source and Building Now our dependencies are all set up, so we can actually go get the source code now! The main workflow for contributing to GHC uses some other tools, but we can start from Github. git clone --recursive git://git.haskell.org/ghc.git Now, you should run the command from the directory. This resulted in some particularly nasty problems for me thanks to my antivirus. It decided that was an existential threat to my system and threw it in the Virus Chest. You might see an error like this: ./boot ghc perl sh: /usr/bin/autoreconf: /usr/bin/perl: bad interpreter: No such file or directory Even after copying another version of perl over to the directory, I saw errors like the following: Could not locate Autom4te/ChannelDefs.pm in @INC (@INC contains /usr/share/autoconf C:/msys64/usr/lib .) at C:/msys64/usr/bin/autoreconf line 39 In reality, the path should have a lot more entries than that! It took me a while (and a couple complete do-overs) to figure out that my antivirus was the problem here. Everything worked once I dug out of the Virus chest. Once runs, you’re almost set! You now need to configure everything: @INC perl boot ./configure --enable-tarballs-autodownload The extra option is only necessary on Windows. Finally you’ll use to command to build everything. Expect this to take a while (12 hours and counting for me!). Once you’re familiar with the codebase, there are a few different ways you can make things build faster. For instance, you can customize the file in a couple different ways. You can set , or you can set . The latter will skip the first stage of the compiler. make build.mk BuildFlavor=devel2 stage=2 You can also run from the sub-directories rather than the main directory. This will only build the sub-component, rather than the full compiler. Finally, there’s also a command that will skip building a lot of the dependencies. make make fast Mac And Linux I won’t go into depth on the instructions for Mac and Linux here, since I haven’t gotten the chance to try them myself. But due to the developer-friendly nature of those systems, they’re likely to have fewer hitches than Windows. On Linux for instance, you can actually do most of the setup by using a Docker container. You’ll download the source first, and then you can run this docker command: >> sudo docker run --rm -i -t -v `pwd`:/home/ghc gregweber/ghc-haskell-dev /bin/bash On Mac, you’ll need to install some similar programs to windows, but there’s no need to use a terminal emulator like MSys. If you have the basic developer tools and a working version of GHC and Cabal already, it might be as simple as: >> brew install autoconf automake>> cabal install alex happy haddock>> sudo easy_install pip>> sudo pip install sphinx For more details, check . But once you’re set up, you’ll follow the same , and instructions as for Windows. here boot configure make Conclusion So that wraps up our first look at GHC. There’s plenty of work to do just to get it to build! But next week we’ll start looking at some of the simplest modifications we can make to GHC. That way, we can start getting a feel for how the code base works. If you haven’t written Haskell, it’s hard to appreciate the brilliance of GHC! Get started by downloading our and reading our ! Beginners Checklist Liftoff Series

Contributing to GHC 1: Preparation

I was profiling a simple loop (years ago). It was similar to: countForever ref = forever $ modifyIORef' ref (+1) I counted four assembly instructions. Addition takes ~300 picoseconds, but there is memory access so let’s say two nanoseconds To profile, I wrote: iorefLoop = doref <- newIORef (0 :: Int)replicateM_ 100000000 $ modifyIORef' ref (+1) I expected this to take ~ 0.2 seconds, but … $ bench ./bin/ioref-loop benchmarking ./bin/ioref-looptime                 332.3 ms   (330.4 ms .. 333.8 ms)1.000 R²   (1.000 R² .. 1.000 R²)mean                 334.4 ms   (333.2 ms .. 335.9 ms)std dev              2.822 ms   (2.182 ms .. 3.942 ms) Was this a good time? Was I expecting something unrealistic from Haskell? As a sanity check, I wrote an analogous in C: program int main (int argc, const char** argv){int ref = 0;while (ref < 100000000){ref++;}} I compiled and ran it like: $ gcc -O2 ./src/CLoop.c -o ./bin/CLoop && bench ./bin/CLoop benchmarking ./bin/CLooptime                 3.999 ms   (3.794 ms .. 4.235 ms)0.980 R²   (0.972 R² .. 0.992 R²)mean                 3.940 ms   (3.838 ms .. 4.093 ms)std dev              593.3 μs   (422.8 μs .. 816.0 μs)variance introduced by outliers: 90% (severely inflated) This was much faster than I had expected. Maybe isn’t accurate when programs are fast? bench I went on IRC (different times because GHC makes faster code now): jfischoff ~ Is there anyway to make modifyIORef' faster? jfischoff ~ I am surprised that in a second I was only able to           ↪ update this ref 100 million times:           ↪ timeout 1000000 $ forever $ modifyIORef' x (1+)jfischoff ~ where as c++ was able to do the same in 4 millisecondsglguy     ~ c++ was able to do 1 update every 0.04 nanoseconds?glguy     ~ an update rate of 25 gigahertz?dv-       ~ gcc probably just replaced it with a constantjfischoff ~ dv-: perhapsglguy     ~ That or C++ unlocks the fast mode of an Intel processor Burn. $ gcc -O2 CLoop.c -S Here’s the assembly: ; CLoop.s; Notice, there are no jumps.; There is no looping._main:                                  ## .cfi_startproc## BB#0:pushq %rbpLtmp0:.cfi_def_cfa_offset 16Ltmp1:.cfi_offset %rbp, -16movq %rsp, %rbpLtmp2:.cfi_def_cfa_register %rbpxorl %eax, %eaxpopq %rbpretq.cfi_endproc @main was right. The compiler got rid of the loop, I’m assuming, because I wasn’t using the result. I added a keyword to prevent : dv- volatile optimizations //CountForver.cint main (int argc, const char** argv){volatile int ref = 0;while (ref < 100000000){ref++;}} Compiling: $ gcc -O2 ./src/CLoopVolatile.c -o ./bin/CLoopVolatile$ bench ./bin/CLoopVolatile benchmarking ./bin/CLoopVolatile time                 158.2 ms   (156.7 ms .. 159.5 ms)1.000 R²   (0.999 R² .. 1.000 R²)mean                 159.1 ms   (158.4 ms .. 160.2 ms)std dev              2.423 ms   (1.755 ms .. 3.772 ms) The assembly of the loop is: loop:incl -4(%rbp)         # Increment the value at the address stored# in rbp displaced by 4.movl -4(%rbp), %eax   # move the value at the address stored in rbp# displaced by 4 to eax.cmpl $100000000, %eax # Compare to 100000000 to eax.jl loop               # Jump to the start of the loop if the eax# was less than when compared above. So, incrementing C’s mutable refs is over twice as fast as ? Maybe, though, handwritten assembly could be faster? Maybe the keyword threw off optimizations too much? IORef volatile ; AsmLoop.asmEXTERN _exitGLOBAL start SECTION .dataalign 8iterationCount DD 100000000result DD 0 SECTION .textstart:; Copy the iteration count to the ecx register; which is used by the loopnz instructionmov ecx, [iterationCount] loopBlock:inc dword [result] ; Increment the value at the address of resultloopnz loopBlock   ; Decrement the ecx counter and loop until ecx; is zero exitBlock:push dword 0 ; Set the exit code to zeromov  eax, 1  ; Place the system call number (exit) in the eax regsub  esp, 4  ; I have to add some dummy space to the stack for; some reasonint  0x80    ; Exit Compiling: $ nasm -fmacho src/AsmLoop.asm$ ld -o ./bin/AsmLoop -macosx_version_min 10.7.0 ./src/AsmLoop.o$ bench ./bin/AsmLoop benchmarking ./bin/AsmLooptime                 185.2 ms   (183.7 ms .. 186.9 ms)1.000 R²   (0.999 R² .. 1.000 R²)mean                 187.0 ms   (185.9 ms .. 188.5 ms)std dev              3.132 ms   (2.229 ms .. 4.269 ms) Wow, my l33t skillz increased the time by around 15% (three years ago this version was faster … just saying). So is about two times slower than naive approaches in C and assembly. What gives? To the core! IORef $ stack exec ghc-core -- --no-syntax -- -O2 \-dsuppress-all src/IORefLoop.hs Looking through the core I saw: ...case readMutVar# ipv1_aVW w2_a35mof _ { (# ipv2_aWt, ipv3_aWu #) ->case ipv3_aWu of _ { I# x_aUW ->case writeMutVar# ipv1_aVW (I# (+# x_aUW 1#)) ipv2_aWt... I find GHC core almost unreadable. One trick is to try to ignore most of the case statements. The first and third case statements are not for scrutinizing alternatives, but are to ensure proper sequencing of IO actions. Also, renaming the generated variables helps. Here is a cleaned up version of what was above: ...case readMutVar# ioRef token of{ (# token', x #) ->case x of{ I# unbox -> case writeMutVar# ioRef (I# (+# unbox 1#)) token'... The second case statement is unboxing an to a primitive unboxed , Int Int# case x of{ I# unbox and then boxing when setting. case writeMutVar# ioRef (I# (+# unbox 1#)) token' is the constructor (the means it is a compiler primitive). It wraps or boxes an unpacked, unboxed, "machine" int. Most of the time, GHC can unbox primitives automatically, but it can't in this case. Boxing/unboxing could be the root of the slowdown. I# Int # We need an unboxed mutable reference. I can think of two options: and . Ptr Int MutableByteArray First the version: Ptr main = alloca $ \ptr -> dopoke ptr (0 :: Int)replicateM_ 100000000 $ doi <- peek ptrlet !i' = i + 1poke ptr i' Running, I get: bench ./bin/ptr-loop benchmarking ./bin/ptr-looptime                 175.2 ms   (174.1 ms .. 176.2 ms)1.000 R²   (0.999 R² .. 1.000 R²)mean                 174.7 ms   (174.1 ms .. 175.2 ms)std dev              1.626 ms   (1.372 ms .. 2.089 ms) This is good! Almost twice as fast . IORef Now the version: MutableByteBuffer main = domba <- newAlignedPinnedByteArray 4 8replicateM_ 100000000 $ doi <- readByteArray mba 0 :: IO Intlet !i' = i + 1writeByteArray mba 0 i' Running: bench ./bin/mutable-byte-buffer-loop benchmarking ./bin/mutable-byte-buffer-looptime                 175.2 ms   (173.5 ms .. 177.3 ms)0.999 R²   (0.999 R² .. 1.000 R²)mean                 177.4 ms   (176.5 ms .. 178.4 ms)std dev              2.423 ms   (1.987 ms .. 2.919 ms) Basically identical. I’ve made progress, but I don’t want to use either or . They are not very safe ( is arguably safe enough, but I prefer not to manually allocate memory directly if I can help it). Ptr MutableByteBuffer Ptr If only there were a safe wrapper around one of the types? There is! is a safe wrapper around . Here is the version: Vector MutableByteBuffer Vector main = domba <- M.new 1replicateM_ 100000000 $ doi <- M.read mba 0 :: IO Intlet !i' = i + 1M.write mba 0 i' Running: bench ./bin/vector-loop benchmarking ./bin/vector-looptime                 178.6 ms   (177.3 ms .. 179.9 ms)1.000 R²   (0.999 R² .. 1.000 R²)mean                 178.2 ms   (177.1 ms .. 179.3 ms)std dev              3.021 ms   (2.082 ms .. 4.288 ms) Nice! With only a small increase in time, we get a safe interface for fast, unboxed mutable references. It is a little odd to use a collection type for a single element, but it’s not terrible, either. What’s on the Table The and the are not the fastest way one could write a loop that increments a number. That would involve putting the reference in a register for the duration of the loop, and other tricks like loop unrolling. Just to give a sense of how much faster things could be here is a some simple assembly example that does that. CLoopVolatile AsmLoop.asm ; FastAsmLoop.asmEXTERN _exitGLOBAL start SECTION .textstart:mov rcx, 0mov rax, 100000000 loopBlock:inc qword rcx     ;cmp rcx, rax      ;jl loopBlock      ; exitBlock:mov     rax, 0x2000001 ; exitmov     rdi, 0syscall Compiling $ nasm -fmacho64 src/FastAsmLoop.asm$ ld -o ./bin/FastAsmLoop -macosx_version_min 10.7.0 \./src/FastAsmLoop.o$ bench ./bin/FastAsmLoop; benchmarking ./bin/FastAsmLooptime                 38.38 ms   (37.96 ms .. 39.15 ms)0.999 R²   (0.995 R² .. 1.000 R²)mean                 38.22 ms   (37.98 ms .. 38.87 ms)std dev              715.8 μs   (282.6 μs .. 1.261 ms) I barely believe these numbers, but I think it shows that GHC still is leaving some performance on the table. Something else worth noting, this isn’t how a tight loop would be written in Haskell anyway. One would not need a mutable reference. In a future post I would like to do more direct comparison between Haskell and assembly similar to above. The C code was really just a baseline that lead me to look into what GHC was doing. Update: Michael Snoyman alerted me to a package of his that provides an unboxed mutable reference, among other nice things: https://www.stackage.org/haddock/lts-8.16/mutable-containers-0.3.3/Data-Mutable.html#t:URef The a project with this code that can also produce these timings can be found here: https://github.com/jfischoff/are-mutable-references-in-haskell-fast is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising & sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

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Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Patent Matters in Washington, D.C. here Patent Matters in Washington, D.C. To the Editor of the Scientific American: From the report of the Commissioner of Patents, just issued, it appears that its surplus revenue for the past year amounts to over one hundred and five thousand dollars, and that there is nearly a million dollars in the United States Treasury to the credit of the Patent Office; and yet, notwithstanding that this enormous amount is lying idle, our pseudo-economists at the Capitol refuse to grant the Office sufficient of its own funds to carry on its business promptly. So much is the work behindhand in some of the departments that, as the Commissioner states in his report, some of the attorneys who require certified copies of papers have been obliged to employ their own clerks to do office copying, and then had to pay the full legal rate of ten cents per hundred words, the same as though the Office had done the work. This style of , by making inventors pay two prices for their work, may be "reform" in the eyes of the average Democratic Congressman; but speaking for myself, as one of those who have had to pay twice, I would prefer to dispense with this style of "retrenchment and reform," and therefore ask you, Messrs. Editors, in behalf of the inventors of the United States, to so stir up our legislators that they will allow the Office sufficient of its own funds to do its work properly, and not delay the work of the inventor—work that he has to pay for in advance—and so prevent the discouragement and trouble which these delays always cause. economizing As the Patent Office has been doing a good business lately, there appears to be some attempt at rivalry at the Capitol, as the following list of applications for extension will show: LIST OF APPLICANTS FOR EXTENSIONS OF PATENTS NOW BEFORE CONGRESS. —— Reynolds, power loom brake.
Strong & Ross, scales.
Wm. & W.H. Lewis, photographic plates.
T.A. Weston, differential pulley.
S.S. Hartshorn, buckles.
H.A. Stone, making cheese.
N. Whitehall, cultivator.
J.R. Harrington, carpet lining.
H.L. Emery, cotton gins.
J. Stainthorp, moulding candles.
Walter Hunt's heirs, paper collars.
A.B. Wilson, sewing machines.
S.A. Knox, plows.
Rollin White, firearms.
Aikin A. Felthousen, sewing machines.
H. Woodman, stripping cotton cards.
L. Hall, heel trimmer.
J.A. Conover, wood splitter.
J. Dyson, carding engine.
G. Wellmann, card strippers.
E. Brady, safety valves.
Jearum Atkins, harvester rakes.
John Thomas, re-rolling railroad rails.
Thomas Mitchell, hair brushes.
Stephen Hull, harvesters.
T.R. Crosby, wiring blind slats.
G.W. Laban, mitre cutting machine.
T.A. Whitenack, harvesters.
J.J. Vinton, furnaces.
A. Fuller, faucets.
D. Baker, pitcher spouts and lids.
G.F. Chandler, refining sugar.
G.H. Nott, boiler furnace.
William Hall, lightning rods.
B.F. Rice, paper bag machines.
S.D. Nelson, shovels.
E.T. Russell, car springs.
Hubbell & Conant, steam pumps.
C.A. Chamberlain, shovels.
C.A. Adams, locks.
E.A. Leland, paint can. In addition to the above, I find the following names as applicants for extensions, but the inventions covered by the patents sought to be extended is not mentioned: S.S. Turner, Arculous Wyckoff, De Witt C. Cummings, Moses Marshall, J.W. Fowler, and Holloway & Graham. Many of the applicants have apparently given up their cases for this session, but they may be only lying back to its close in hopes that in the final rush their "little bills" may slip through easily. Several bills tinkering at the patent laws are before Congress, and one of these (House Bill, No. 3,370) passed the House on the 30th ult. It has one section that may be made to work great harm to inventors, as it prevents infringers being sued for more than one year's damages previous to notice of infringement being given. By this bill, if it is allowed to become a law, a person will be able to build and use patented machines or processes for years in some out of the way place where the inventor cannot easily find him; and should he be discovered, he can only be sued for one year's damages. There are other sections in this bill which will bear ventilating. Another bill, introduced into the Senate by Mr. Paddock, provides that all appeals from the Board of Appeals shall be direct to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, instead of to the Commissioner as heretofore; and that the fees shall be the same as now paid to the latter official. Mr. Sampson has introduced into the House a bill changing section 4886 so that it shall read as follows: "SEC. 4886. Any person who has discovered any new or useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new or useful improvement thereof, not known or used by others in this country, and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his invention or discovery thereof, and not in public use or on sale for more than two years prior to his application, unless the same is proved to have been abandoned, may, upon payment of the fees required by law, and other due proceedings had, obtain a patent therefor: ." The change is the addition of the words in italics. Provided, That the manufacture or composition of drugs as a medicine shall not be patentable The Smithsonian Institute has sent to Congress a memorial setting forth that the present Institute building is already too small for the vast amount of articles already placed there on exhibition; that at the late Centennial Exposition the Commissioners of various countries presented their entire collection of exhibits to the United States, which had delegated their care to the Smithsonian Institute, and they had no place for them; that the armory building was being fitted up for the reception of the United States Centennial collection, and they therefore asked that a building be erected for the foreign collection, which could be used as a national museum, or otherwise we should have to offend the donors by keeping their valuable gifts stowed away in cellars and other rubbish receptacles. Mr. Eads, who is now here on the lookout for his pay for his work on the South Pass of the Mississippi's mouth, has received intelligence from the resident engineer at the jetties that the channel through the shoal at the head of the South Pass is now twenty-two feet deep, and that the least width at which twenty feet depth is found is one hundred and ten feet. The principal works to improve this shoal were constructed during the last six months. The low stage and feeble current of the river has delayed their effect until the recent flood from the Ohio reached them, and the problem of deepening the shoal has been fully solved by the rapid scouring away of the obstruction. It is stated that the channel is quite straight and is deepening rapidly. The channel through the jetties at the mouth of the Pass is twenty-one feet deep. The entrance from the sea through the jetties is one thousand feet wide, and through the works at the head of the Pass eight hundred feet. A recent telegram from Nevada states that the Sutro Tunnel (of which I gave you some particulars in one of my letters) has now progressed a total distance of 15,565 feet and has fairly entered the mineral belt, and will soon help to increase the already vast products of the Comstock lode. While on the subject of mining, I will state that the amount of quicksilver produced in California has increased so immensely during the last two years that it has attracted the attention of all interested in the article throughout the world. The receipts for the year have been 63,928 and the exports 48,010 flasks. In addition to the receipts there, probably about six thousand flasks were shipped direct from the mines to Nevada, thus bringing up the total production to over 70,000 flasks, a gain in round numbers of from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand flasks over 1875. The exports in that year were 34,844 flasks, or 13,666 less than in 1876. Occasional. Tyrian Purple Ink For Marking Linen.—Von Bele gives the following method for preparing an ink for marking linen and cotton: Neutralize 75 grains of carbonate of ammonia with pure nitric acid, and triturate 45 to 60 grains of carmine with the solution. Mordant the fabric with a mixed solution of acetate of alumina and tin salt, and write upon it, when it is perfectly dry, with the ink. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various (2006). Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19406/pg19406-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

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