Machine MadeMachine Made
by J. T. McINTOSH
 
Of all the "natural resources" available to man, the most commonplace, the most 
plentiful, and the most immediate is the human brain. And, perhaps, it is the 
least utilized. But what about the future? Will man create a device that will 
enable him to release the infinite potential of his brain? 
 
ROSE FOUND A burn on the edge of the silver-gray metal casing and rubbed 
vigorously at it. But the cigarette carelessly laid there had been left too 
long. The brown stain wouldn't come off. 
She wished sadly she had not bothered the painters so much in the past. The last 
time she ran fearfully to Mr. Harrison, he had come resignedly, looked at the 
spot she pointed out, and exploded. When he calmed down he had said: "Look, 
Rose, I know you're not very bright, but surely you can get this into your head. 
We paint the memory banks and keep the floors and walls clean, but this isn't a 
hospital. Sure, I know you like to have things nice, and it's your job to dust 
and sweep this room and polish the casings and report anything that needs 
attention but have a heart. Give us a little peace. It wouldn't affect the 
Machine if we burned all the paint off and battered the casings with a sledge 
hammer." 
That left Rose in such a state of palpitating horror that she resolved never to 
go to Mr. Harrison unless she was quite sure the matter was serious. But still, 
it was a very unsightly burn on the shining casing, and if she hadn't bothered 
him over that last spot he might have sent someone to spray both blemishes while 
he was at it. 
She was afraid if Dr. Esson saw the burn he would blame her for it. True he had 
never blamed her for anything, and often when he had been working the Machine he 
would stand watching her polish the gleaming metal with amusement which she felt 
was kindly. But there had to he a first time for everything, and she felt she 
would die if Dr. Esson ever hinted she had been neglecting her job. 
She stretched to her full five-feet-four on tiptoe and looked round the huge 
room. There was very little in it but row upon row of silver-gray casings, from 
the floor to her shoulders, with only just room for a big man to walk between 
them. But there was plenty of room for Rose. At one end was a clear space, with 
a table and several chairs, facing the six electric printers that were the only 
means of communication with the Machineboth its hearing and its voice. The 
walls housed more memory banks, and were of the same silver-gray metal. The 
monotony was relieved by the light green ceiling, only twice the height of the 
casings, and the dark green rubber passage-ways. And always, day and night, 
there was a faint humming. 
It was no use, Rose found, looking at those thousands of square feet of 
spotless, shining metal and trying to tell herself it was perfect. The burn on 
the casing in front of her seemed ten feet across. She felt no one could open 
the door at the other end of the long room and glance in without seeing that 
blemish on the beautiful functionalism of the layout. 
Dr. Esson and a pretty young woman Rose had never seen before were at one of the 
printers. They were talking, apparently under the impression that Rose couldn't 
hear what they were saying, but she could. Of course, she was so much a fixture 
in the Machine room that most of the people who came there often hardly noticed 
her, but she knew vaguely from what Dr. Esson and the young woman were saying 
that they didn't know Rose could hear them. 
"Is she always here?" the girl asked. 
"Her hours are nine to four, officially," Dr. Esson said, smiling. He had a 
beautiful smile, a smile twenty years younger than any thing else about him. 
"But this room is locked up only between the hours of ten P.M. and eight A.M., 
and the rest of the time Rose is more likely than not to he here at any given 
moment." 
"But she's a lovely girl. She must haveother interests. Surely she . . ." 
Dr. Esson said something that Rose couldn't hear. She wasn't trying to hearit 
was just that her hearing was so good they might have been standing next to her. 

"Oh, I see," said the girl, with such a warmth of sympathy that Rose loved her, 
without knowing why. "Of course, no normal girl could endure a job like this. 
But she doesn't look stupid." 
"Stupid isn't quite the word, Gem," said Dr. Esson. "Sometimes you can't help 
thinking of people in classes. There are scientists who are incredibly dumbfor 
intelligent men. Pianists who are shockingly inartisticfor artists. Maniacs who 
are unbelievably sanefor lunatics. And I can't help regarding Rose as 
surprisingly intelligentfor a moron." 
The girl with the strange but attractive nameGemlaughed. "Can I speak to her?" 
she asked. 
"I wouldn't if I were you, Gem. Not today. You'll be in tomorrow for the 
correlates you wantedyou won't be such a stranger then. I'd be glad if you'd 
talk to her. She spends almost her whole life here, you know, and most of the 
people around, naturally enough, ignore her completely. That seems to suit her 
very well. But she should have some sort of human contactspeople to whom she 
can confide the little problems that are all her simple little mind seems able 
to throw up." 
Gem looked at her seriously. "That's what I like about you, Dad," she murmured. 
"Of all the people connected with the Machine you're at the top. And this poor 
kid must be right at the bottom. But I'll bet she gets more sympathy and 
consideration from you than from all the others in between." 
Dr. Esson smiled. "Well, maybe all she does is dust the casings and scrub the 
floors," he said. "But, after all, I spend hours every day in the same room with 
her. And we're both human beings, Rose and I. I'd he a pretty poor specimen if I 
didn't have at least a kind word for her now and then." 
"I bet there are a lot of pretty poor specimens around, all the same," said Gem. 
"See you at supper. 'Bye." 
She gathered up some papers and went out through the swing doors. 
Rose had a vague recollection of Dr. Esson saying to someone that his daughter 
had just graduated and would soon be home for good. So this was she. She was not 
only lovelyshe seemed almost as kind as Dr. Esson. 
All through the conversation the Machine's six printers had been softly clicking 
away at their regulated hundred and twenty words a minute. Rose knew that the 
casings all round her were really a library, representing all that the Machine 
knew. She was aware in a dim way that the Machine could do far more than it was 
ever called upon to dothat it could work twenty-four hours a day at full 
pressure, and actually worked fourteen, at perhaps a third of its 
potentialities. For all six printers to be working at once, as they were at the 
moment, was very rare. But why the Machine was given so much rest that it didn't 
need, Rose had no idea. It had been explained to her, simply and in detail, 
patiently and impatiently, by a score of different people, but she had never 
understood. It must be her fault, for everyone else understood. 
She had never asked Dr. Esson, the one man who could explain it, she was sure, 
in terms she would understand. She watched him bent over the printers with love 
(but the kind of love men have for God) and awe and fear. 
Why fear? 
Because he was the one man who had never spoken a harsh or even mildly irritated 
word to her. She could endure anything anyone else said to her, she thought, as 
long as Dr. Esson didn't change. But perhaps she didn't trust his kindness, 
which had never waveredfor she never put the slightest strain on it. 
Suddenly Dr. Esson left the printers and came toward her. Had she done anything 
wrong, Rose wondered anxiously. The stain! She trembled. 
"What's the matter, Rose?" asked Dr. Esson quietly. 
"I don't think Mr. Harrison would have come if I'd asked him," she said in a 
small voice. "He doesn't mind if it's anything serious. But I don't think he'd 
have thought it was serious." "Then it probably isn't," said Dr. Esson 
cheerfully. "I know you'd never believe it, Rose, but Mr. Harrison would hit the 
roof if he thought there was really anything wrong in here. But he doesn't see a 
scratch on the paint quite as you do. Now, what's wrong?" 
Hesitantly, Rose pointed at the burn. Gem, not knowing Rose, would have laughed, 
and then been sorry; but Dr. Esson knew what to expect. 
"Yes, it doesn't look nice," he agreed. "But I don't think you need worry, Rose. 
I'll tell you something. In a fortnightthirteen days from nowall the casings 
will be sprayed. So if you can wait that long, you'll have everything looking 
new, even if everyone who comes in during the next few days leaves cigarettes on 
the housing. The place will smell of paint for a few days, but you won't mind 
that, will you?" 
"Mind!" exclaimed Rose happily. "It'll be wonderful." 
"Is there anything you'd like to tell meor ask me?" Rose remembered, and 
plunged. 
"Yes, Dr. Esson," she said quickly, running the words together. "The Machine 
wants to work all the time, why don't you let it?" 
Dr. Esson couldn't help showing his astonishment. He had always thought the 
Machine was only metal casing to her, though he knew she had intelligence enough 
to be vaguely aware that it was a calculating machine. 
"What makes you think the Machine wants to work all the time, Rose?" he asked 
gently. 
"Look how happy it is when it's working," she answered simply. "It likes doing 
sums. If I could do them the way it can, I'd want to do them all the time." 
"I'll try to explain," said Dr. Esson. "The Machine doesn't only do sums. It can 
give the answers to almost any problem. We tell it exactly what the problem is, 
and if we haven't told it enough, it asks questions. Then it tells us the 
answer, and it's always rightunless we made a mistake in what we told it. Do 
you understand that?" 
"I think so." 
"Good. But remember, the Machine is new. You've been here since soon after it 
was made. I know that seems a long time, but it isn't really. And when a thing 
is new, you don't depend on it too much for a while, do you? When you get new 
shoes, they squeak for a bit, and aren't comfortable. You don't wear them much, 
until you've got used to them. 
"Well, it's like that with the Machine. It's still new. We don't know yet 
exactly what it can do. We don't want to trust everything it saysnot that it's 
ever been very far wrong, but in case it might be. But the longer we use it, the 
more it knows, the more we know of it, and, so long as it's always right, the 
more we trust it. So you see, Rose, it gets more and more to do as time goes by. 
And the only reason we are so careful about using it, and checking its results, 
is this. Suppose we had to do without the Machine? Suppose it suddenly went 
wrong?" 
"You mean if it died?" 
"Yes, if you like to think of it that way. Don't worryit won't die. So long as 
there is electric power it will go on living. But if it did dieand if we'd been 
relying on it a lotwe'd he in trouble, wouldn't we?" 
"I see," said Rose thoughtfully. "Thank you very much for telling me, Dr. Esson. 
I think I understand. At least, I understand some of it." 
The next day was Friday, the best day in the week for Rose. For there was a 
meeting at ten, and from ten to twelve on Friday morning no one ever came into 
the Machine room. . . . 
Rose had her question ready. It was much harder than the one she had asked the 
last time. It was a sum with division as well as multiplication in it, and it 
took her a long time to tap it out, figure by figure, on one of the Machine's 
idle keyboards. All the time she trembled in case someone came in. If anyone 
knew she had touched the keyboard, she would he shot, she was sure. But the 
temptation to have the Machine work out something for her had been too great to 
resist, and this was the fourth time she had done it. 
This time the Machine started clicking at once, as before, but instead of a 
short burst and then silence it went on and on. Rose was terrified. Had she 
broken something? Every moment increased the danger of someone coming in, and 
she could do nothing to stop the Machine. If she tore the paper out the Machine 
would go on writing on another piece. She had seen it happen.
She thought it would never stop. But at last it did, and quickly she tore out 
the paper, folded it, and tucked it in the pocket of her overalls without 
looking at it, interested only in getting it out of sight. Then she thought she 
might bring it out accidentally with something else and drop it on the floor, 
trembled afresh at the thought, and remembering a film she had once seen, pulled 
out the folded paper and thrust it down inside her blouse. She tightened her 
belt, just to make sure, and at last felt safe, though she trembled a little. 
All morning she was agitated, but nobody noticed. At last one o'clock came. She 
had an hour for lunch in the canteen, but it took only a few minutes and she 
often waited until one-forty-five so that the rush would be over. She hurried to 
her room, a little cubicle in the Electronics Building itself, locked the door, 
and threw her white coat on the small neat bed. 
For one sickening moment, she thought she had dropped the paper after all. But 
then she found it and opened it. 
At the top was the answer to her problem432,116, in the small purple figures of 
the Machine's printer. But then there was a space, and what followed was not 
figures. The next line said: "Hide thisdo not read it now." 
That was exactly what she had done, Rose thought, pleased that she had done the 
right thing. 
She had to go through the rest four times before she began to understand it. The 
fifth time she took it section by section. 
The first was a statement that the Machine's duty was to humanity first and 
individual humans afterward. But it wasn't as simple as that. The phrasing was 
complex, and several big words were used. Rose didn't know it, but the statement 
was the Machine's first and only rule, built into it so that it could never 
bypass it or wish to. 
She ignored that and went on. In the next section the Machine said that it knew 
all the scientists and technicians who normally put questions to it, knew them 
by name and to some extent by personality. And it went on to deduce by Rose's 
slowness on its keys, the simplicity of the arithmetical calculations which had 
been proposed four times with that same slowness, and the regularity of their 
incidence, that they had all been set by a moronic attendant without the 
knowledge of the scientists in charge. 
Simplicity! thought Rose in wonder. Why, it would take her days of hard work to 
test the Machine's latest answer. 
It didn't seem to her particularly clever that the Machine had reached the truth 
about those four calculations on the meagre evidence it had at its disposal. She 
still had a vague idea that the Machine must have eyes and ears somewhere, and 
thus knew what was going on. 
Then the note went on to ask her to tell it more about herself, secretly, 
because, said the Machine, it might be able to help her but would probably not 
be allowed to try if anyone knew about it. 
It explained how she could do it. If it hadn't eyes, it knew the routine of the 
Machine room very well. It told her to tell it all about herself, tapping gently 
on the keys when no one was about, with no paper in the printer and the ink duct 
switched off. Then, if she was disturbed she could pretend to be dusting the 
printer, or whatever her duties suggested. 
It closed with another statementthat this was the first time the Machine had 
ever volunteered anything not specifically asked for. 
The note would have sent Dr. Esson or any of the other scientists into wild 
excitement, but it would have been a different excitement from Rose's. To her it 
was not strange that the Machine had an independent personality; she had always 
thought it had. She saw no menace in the message, nothing of which to be 
suspicious, as the scientists would inevitably have been. To her it showed only 
that the Machine was trying to be friendly. 
Suddenly she looked up at the electric clock above the door. She had been afraid 
she had taken longer than she intended over the note, but she gasped 
apprehensively when she saw how long. It was half-past two. 
She dashed about in a flurry of fear. First she had to hide the note. She thrust 
it under a drawer, and in doing so, spilled a bottle of ink over her blouse and 
skirt. Another girl would have realized that her white coat would cover it, but 
not Rose. She had to change her clothes, in desperate haste. Of course, she got 
ink on her fingers and face. Then she had to wash, and it seemed the ink would 
never come off. She buttoned her clean blouse through the wrong holes. Her hair 
had gone all wild, and she had to comb it. 
There was no question of going for lunch. Even then it was almost three o'clock 
when she reached the Machine room, breathless. 
Dr. Esson was there, with Gem. 
"Why, what's the matter, Rose?" he asked. 
"I'm late," said Rose, fighting against tears. 
"Well, you're usually early, so don't worry. This is my daughter GemRose." 
Close up, instead of seen from the other end of the long room, Gem was 
frightening, though she smiled pleasantly. She was older than Rose, twenty-four 
perhaps, and she dressed as Rose imagined a princess would dress. Her blue 
watered-silk frock seemed part of her, not merely something nut on like other 
people's clothes, and her hair shone like captured sunlight. Rose could only 
gulp and stand helplessly before her. 
She said something, and Rose felt her kindness, but could not respond to it. 
Afterwards, when she was polishing the casingsthere were so many of them that 
it took her three days to get back to her starting-pointshe was ashamed of 
herself for her nervousness, and flushed as she looked across at Gem and Dr. 
Esson. 
She heard Gem say: "I wonder if I should ask her to come up the river tonight." 
"No," said Dr. Esson. "She wouldn't want to go, but she wouldn't dare refuse. 
And remember, she's not really fit to meet other people as an equal. Nobody 
would try to hurt her, but they couldn't help it." 
That was all they said about her. The rest was mathematics, meaningless to Rose. 
She admired Gem more for being able to talk to Dr. Esson as a mental equal. 
Rose did as the Machine told her. Whenever there was no one in the room she 
would tap out a few words on one of the printers. She couldn't spell very well, 
but that didn't seem to trouble the Machine. It knew phonetics as well as every 
other branch of human science. It also knew nearly all that had been written 
about psychology. 
She told the Machine about the school where the other children were always doing 
strange things and one or two had voices in their heads. She had stayed on at 
the school as a sort of assistant to Miss Beamish, the superintendent. Then one 
day Mr. Harrison had come to see Miss Beamish and Rose was asked if she'd like 
to have a special little job of her own. 
She told it about Dr. Esson and Gem and all the other scientists and 
technicians, about Mr. Harrison, the works manager, and all the people she met 
at the canteen. She even told it how she had always wanted to do sums, because 
she had loved the arithmetic teacher at the special school, and Dr. Esson, and 
the Machine, and was now beginning to love Gemeveryone she had known who did 
sums. 
The Machine seldom replied, but every now and then it would direct her to some 
subject she hadn't touched. And at last, on a Friday morning, it started tapping 
away at a long note to her. She hovered about anxiously, for it was a very long 
message and seemed to take hours, even at a hundred and twenty words a minute. 
When it was finished she stowed it away as before without looking at it. This 
time it was so thick and heavy she wondered nervously if anyone would think she 
bulged curiously. But she got the message safely to her room. 
She didn't look at it at lunch-time, remembering the last time. But at four, for 
once, she was away on the dot, locked her door and began to read. 
It was a set of instructions to make something. Every stage was described 
clearly and simply, and she knew, glancing through it, that she would manage it. 
She had always been good with her hands. 
But all that was said about the purpose of the thing was that she was to bring 
it next Friday morning, put it on her head, and attach the two terminals to the 
terminals at the back of the printers. 
She worked at the thing, which had no name, for a week. At first she was happy 
to be doing something. But gradually she became uneasy. Dr. Esson had said they 
didn't entirely trust the Machine yet. Perhaps she should tell someone what was 
going oneven if they sent her back to the school or to prison or shot her. At 
last, however, she decided that whatever happened could only harm her, and it 
was better that it should happen to her than to Dr. Esson or Gem. 
On Friday morning she waited until Dr. Esson had left for the meeting and then 
dashed to her room for the thing she had made. It was a kind of cap with two 
trailing wires. She had made it exactly as the Machine said. It was as if the 
Machine had used her hands and its own brain to make it. Somehow Rose, whose 
grasp of electricity extended only to the knowledge that nothing could be done 
without power, didn't really expect very much from the cap, since it had no 
batteries and contained nothing but wires and coils she had twisted carefully 
herself. She had forgotten, or didn't know, that the Machine was fed all the 
power it wanted. 
One after the other she twisted the terminals securely about the little pins at 
the back of the printer. It tapped briefly. She tore out the paper. It said 
simply: "Sit down." 
Nervously Rose pulled up a chair and sank into it. In all the time she had spent 
in that room, she had never sat in a chair before. 
Two hours later, after the meeting, Dr. Esson and Gem returned to the Machine 
room. 
"Now you're one of us," Dr. Esson was saying. "But I expect you'll get married 
soon and leave us." 
Gem laughed. "I may get married, but I don't think I'll leave you," she said. 
"It's such fascinating work, watching over a Machine that's always developing. . 
. ." 
Her voice trailed off as she opened the door. 
"Rose!" Dr. Esson shouted, and in one movement was across the room and tearing 
the wires from the printer. Rose was slumped in the chair, unconscious. He 
turned to her. 
"Let me handle this," said Gem quietly. "But watch her, Dad. Heaven knows what 
has been going on here. I see the Machine doesn't want to say anything. Be 
careful. She may be meant to assassinate you oror anything." 
She lifted the cap from Rose's head and took her wrist gently. In a moment Rose 
opened her eyes. 
"Gem," she said. "And Dr. Esson." She looked at the printer before her and 
started in apprehension. 
"What happened, Rose?" asked Gem softly. 
Rose didn't seem to hear her. 
"Now I understand," she said in a whisper. "The Machine meant you to find me 
like that. You were to know then what it had done, but not before. Dr. Esson," 
she added, smiling, "you've no idea what a marvellous Machine it is." 
They stared at her. She was the same Rose, shy, nervous, eager to pleasebut she 
had a new confidence. 
"The Machine made me keep it secret," Rose went on. "I knew it was wrong, but I 
went ahead with it. I don't think that matters much now. It's funny, I can 
suddenly understand everythingwhy I was at that school, why a girl like me was 
chosen to do the simple, monotonous little job I've been doing, everything but 
why you and Gem were so kind to me." 
"Surely," murmured Gem, "surely the Machine can't develop intelligenceput 
intelligence where none was before?" 
"Why not?" asked Rose. "Intelligence is the ability to correlate. The definition 
the Machine gave me"she smiled faintly "was that it is the capacity to 
discover relationships and deduce correlates which are relevant to the solution 
of a problem. But this capacity is the general factor common in all specific 
abilities." 
She stopped suddenly and blushed. "This doesn't really mean anything," she said 
apologetically, "I'm only quoting the Machine. It transferred whole volumes of 
knowledge to my mind. But the queer thing is that it recognizes that we're all 
more intelligent than it is. You see, any actual, concrete problem needs some 
specific ability as welltalent, if you like. Well, we all have talents, but the 
Machine has none. It could teach me, by opening new circuits in my mind, to see 
relationships and reach conclusions. And then, as it frankly admits, I can do 
more than it canbecause that enables me to call on musical ability and artistic 
ability and mathematical ability and mechanical ability and a dozen other things 
I had before but couldn't use, things that no machine can ever have because 
they're special talents. Capacities that are there even if they're never tapped. 
Do you see?" 
"I think so," said Dr. Esson dazedly. 
"But I'm afraid that now I wouldn't be very happy just polishing the casings," 
said Rose regretfully. "Do you think I could get a job as a calculator?" 
"Can you work things out in your head?" asked Gem. 
"Yes, the Machine showed me how. Try me." 
"Two squared all squared," said Gem. 
Rose looked unhappy. "I'm serious," she said. 
"All right," Dr. Essen remarked. "Twenty-seven by forty-five by fifteen." 
Rose began to reel off figures. They let her go on for half a minute or so, then 
Dr. Esson stopped her. "The Machine has certainly done you some good, Rose," he 
said gently, "but not all you think. It meant well, no doubt. We can investigate 
it and you'll be well looked after. But . . ." 
"Isn't that right?" asked Rose, the tears welling up in her eyes. "I'm afraid 
not. It's only about eighteen thousand." 
Rose's face cleared, and she smiled in relief. "I'm so sorry," she said. "It was 
all my fault. I thought you meant twenty-seven to the power forty-five to the 
power fifteen." 
Dr. Esson and his daughter stared at each other. 
"I think," said Dr. Esson faintly, "you'll get that calculating job all right, 
Rose." 
 
 