Tachypomp
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The Tachypomp is a short story by Edward Page Mitchell originally published January 1874 anonymously in The Sun, a New York daily newspaper.
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[edit] Publishing Information
After the original publication in The Sun, the Tachypomp and other stories by Edward Mitchell were reprinted in The Crystal Man, edited by Sam Moskowitz, published by Doubleday in 1973.
[edit] Story Line
The plot revolves around the Mr. Furnace’s (the narrator) quest to marry his math professor’s daughter. Unfortunately, the math teacher does not approve of him, as he does not excel in mathematics. The professor sets him a challenge: to discover the principle of infinite speed. The narrator turns to his tutor, and is able to find the solution in the tachypomp. Eventually the professor agrees to allow Mr. Furnace to marry his daughter.
[edit] Tachypomp, a machine
The term tachypomp refers to a fictional device theoretically capable of attaining infinite speed. The machine itself is a series of trains (or any train-like vehicle) each half the length of the first, stacked vertically. The trains would thus move in tandem, and their speeds would be added to find the speed of the train on top. For instance, if the bottom train were moving 40 miles an hour and the train above that 40 miles an hour, then the speed of the higher train would be 80 miles an hour.
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