The main mathematical content of this science fiction story is an illustration of the potential of exponential growth in the form of considering how a single dollar invested in a bank would grow in value over many years to be a huge sum:
| (quoted from John Jones's Dollar)
"Now you gentlemen who are
taking mathematics under Professor
L127M72421Male, of the
University of Mars, will remember
that where any number such
as X, in passing through a progressive
cycle of change, grows
at the end of that cycle by a proportion
p, then the value of the
original X, after n cycles, becomes
X(1 + p)n.
"Obviously, in this case, X
equalled one Dollar; p equalled
three one-hundredths; and n will
depend upon any number of
years which we care to consider,
following the date of deposit. By
a simple calculation, those of
you who are today mentally alert
can check up the results that I
shall set forth in my lecture.
"At the time that John Jones
died, the amount in the First
National Bank of Chicago to the
credit of John Jones the fortieth,
was as follows."
The professor seized the chalk
and wrote rapidly upon the oblong
space:
| 1931 | 10 years elapsed | $1.34 |
...
| 2521 | 600 years | $47,900,000 |
....
|
In the past, I did not consider this to be sufficiently mathematical to be included in this database. Perhaps I was just being snooty, or perhaps my standards have changed, but Vijay Fafat has convinced me to add it to the database now. There is one other tiny bit of mathematics in the form of this quote:
| (quoted from John Jones's Dollar)
"By the year 2621 A.D., two
events of stupendous importance
took place. There is scarcely a
man in this class who has not
heard of how Professor P222D29333Male
accidentally stumbled
upon the scientific fact
that the effect of gravity is reversed
upon any body which vibrates
perpendicularly to the
plane of the ecliptic with a frequency
which is an even multiple
of the logarithm of 2 of the
Naperian base 'e.'
|
However, as long as I'm adding this here, I'd like to add some remarks of a non-mathematical nature:
- It is cool that this story from 1915 seemingly predicts the current fad for "distance education" which is a hot topic in academia as well as cordless (cell?) phones:
| (quoted from John Jones's Dollar)
On the 201st day of the year
3221 A.D., the professor of
history at the University of
Terra seated himself in front
of the Visaphone and prepared
to deliver the daily lecture to his
class, the members of which resided
in different portions of the
earth.
The instrument before which
he seated himself was very like
a great window sash, on account
of the fact that there were three
or four hundred frosted glass
squares visible. In a space at the
center, not occupied by any of
these glass squares, was a dark
oblong area and a ledge holding
a piece of chalk. And above the
area was a huge brass cylinder;
toward this brass cylinder the
professor would soon direct his
subsequent remarks.
...
From his coat pocket, the professor
withdrew an instrument
which, although supplied with an
earpiece and a mouthpiece, had
no wires whatever attached.
Raising it to his lips, he spoke:
"Hello. Central Energy Station,
please." A pause ensued.
"Central Energy Station? This is
the professor of history at the
University of Terra, speaking....
|
- It is interesting to me that in 1915 (prior to the big crash of '29), the idea that an investment would just keep growing and growing (unless the bank was robbed, which the story does mention) may have seemed reasonable. Of course, since that time, nobody would fall for the myth of perpetual economic growth! (BTW In case this sarcasm is not so obvious far in the future when someone may read this remark, let me add that a recent resurgence of this same myth resulted in some unpleasantness.)
- And, even given the idea that value could just increase forever, the idea of the story is silly since one dollar invested by someone in the past would not grow in value beyond all that anyone else owns since other people also have money to invest. Instead, all one would see would be a decrease in the value of that dollar as not just John Jones's descendants but anyone with investments would be making money, which would simply devalue it.
- In some ways, this story is dated (e.g. all of the students are male), but I like other aspects as still being clever. For example:
| (quoted from John Jones's Dollar)
Now as to the Dollar. At this
day, when the Psycho-Erg, a
combination of the Psych, the
unit of esthetic satisfaction, and
the Erg, the unit of mechanical
energy, is recognized as the
true unit of value, it seems
difficult to believe that in the
twentieth century and for more
than ten centuries thereafter,
the Dollar, a metallic circular
disk, was being passed from
hand to hand in exchange for
the essentials of life.
|
At one point I had traced this story back to its 1927 appearance in Amazing Stories, but Bob Jennings kindly wrote to let me know that it is even older:
| Contributed by
Bob Jennings
You might want to make a correction. The story "John Jones' Dollar" was originally published in the August 1915 issue of The Black Cat magazine. Hugo Gernsback reprinted the story in the April 1927 issue of Amazing Stories, and Sam Moskowitz got it reprinted again in Amazing in the early 1960s. However the original first appearance was in 1915, when the concept of accumulated interest at 3% over decades held more potential interest.
|
In addition to its appearances in Black Cat (1915) and Amazing Stories (1927), it was notably reprinted again in the mathematical fiction collection Fantasia Mathematica. And, in any case, it is now available online for free through Project Gutenberg.
In July 2021, Vijay Fafat told me about a story called "Compounded Interest" by Mack Reynolds which was published in Fantasy & Science Fiction's August 1956 issue. That time travel story had some interesting ideas beyond just the elementary fact that investments at constant interest grow very big in the long run, but aside from using the word "compute" there really was no mathematical content. So, I have decided to simply mention it here rather than giving it a separate entry in the database. |
