"Purdy," I said, and I hedged a little then. "I don't know. I've saved some money and also my wife's Uncle Dimblewitt left her a legacy last year. We've got thirty thousand and I was figuring to open up my own electric repair-shop when I got a little more."

Carter bit his lip. "Thirty thousand," he muttered. "It might be done with that. It just might."

"Hold on, don't spend my dough so fast!" I told him. "First, what is the gadget?"

He got all eager and excited as he explained. "It's a new method of education."

"Oh!" I said, and I guess my voice was plenty flat. "Well, that's fine. But I don't think there'd be much profit in that."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Carter blazed. "This method of education is new! It's something entirely undreamed of until now."

He asked me:

"When you learn something, when you learn that the Earth is round, for instance, how does your brain do it?"

"I don't know," I said. "How does it?"

"The nerve-cells of your brain, the neurones, already contain the ideas of Earth and round," he explained. "Constant repetition of 'Earth is round' establishes a connection between the two neurone-groups, by gradually lowering the resistance at the synapses of neurone-contacts. Thus, when in future you think of Earth, the thought-impulse flashes along that low-resistance path to the specific neurones containing round."

Being an electrician, I could dimly understand that.

"So that's how it's done?" I said. "And that's why you have to study things so long to learn them?"

Carter nodded quickly. "Long study and repetition establishes the neural paths necessary for remembering. But suppose, by applying a tiny electronic impulse from outside, you could artificially establish a low-resistance path between those two neurone-groups?"

I got that, too. "Then I'd know that 'Earth is round' without having to bother learning it?"

"That's the idea!" Carter said. "And that's what Doctor Kindler has been working on for years. I worked with him, of course," he added hastily. "The discovery is as much mine as his.

"You see," he went 

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