(Click on the thumbnail to read pdf file in your browser. Feel free to download and distribute the file in its original form, with all advertisements and credits intact.)To be honest, I'm not sure this counts as science fiction. It's about an unlikely invention, sure, and the resolution hinges on the working of a bit of technology. But I have the feeling that if the author had submitted it to Our Founder, Hugo Gernsback, it would have come back by return post.
Gernsback, especially in the pre-Amazing Stories days that are Sunday Scientifiction's bailiwick, preferred his fiction to demonstrate a scientific idea, or speculate on future technology, sometimes to the near-exclusion of plot. Even when it's a more conventional story, like "The 'Loaded' Line" from a while back, it's definitely the science and technology that's the point of the thing.
I can't even call this story science fiction by virtue of the magazine it appeared in, as I could if it came from one of Gernsback's magazines like Science and Invention. This one is from The Argosy, a general fiction magazine, which only had the occasional story with fantastic content.
But whether it's proper science fiction, or just a vaguely technological tall tale, I found it amusing, and that's good enough for me.
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