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The Symbolic Hieronymus Machine
You encounter them every day, but have you ever stopped to think about what makes a machine a machine?
Merriam-Webster defines a machine as “a mechanically, electrically or electronically operated device for performing a task”. But consider for a moment, a device that has no parts or power source, and whose function is defined with just lines and symbols.
If it somehow miraculously manages to work, can it still be considered a machine?
This is the odd story of just such a device.
To understand the Symbolic Hieronymus Machine you first need to understand the origin — a patented device of the same name that was not symbolic at all.
Here’s where we meet Dr. Thomas Galan Hieronymus. His invention was an electronic device intended for the detection and analysis of minerals using a phenomenon he coined “eloptic radiation”. Aptly named the “Hieronymus Machine”, he was granted a U.S. patent in 1949.
Parts included a simple pickup coil, an optical prism, an amplifier circuit, and a touch-sensitive output device.
To operate the device you would simply place an object, such as a mineral, by the pickup coil so that the eloptic radiation could flow through the circuit and be amplified by the prism.
Using a combination of a touch-sensitive plate and a tuning knob, you would then calibrate the device for the sample. Now with a known value or “rate”, it becomes possible to determine if that same mineral is present in future samples.
Dr. Hieornymus believed that all matter emanates eloptic radiation, that it resonates at different rates depending on the material, and that his device could be tuned to detect that rate.
Obviously, there is no supporting evidence for the existence of this form of radiation. In fact, the machine doesn’t operate by any known principles of physics. However, users have nonetheless claimed success with being able to consistently determine the mineral composition of objects placed by the device.
If that’s not strange enough, here’s where the story really gets weird.
Enter John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science Fiction, a science fiction magazine published under a variety…
