Once upon a time there was a kid named Giorgio.
Giorgio loved anything that had something to do with technology, electricity and this kind of things … very, very much.
One day, walking home from school Giorgio was a little worried.
At school they had just learned to write in cursive, and he had to do all of his homework writing in cursive. The homework note read: “write in cursive a 2 pages essay about a subject of your choice”.
Once he got home Giorgio began his homework. After what felt like 2 and half hours the clock had only moved by 10 minutes … and he had only written 1 line.
He knew exactly what he wanted to write; he simply was very slow in writing in cursive.
“If only I could figure out a way to make a machine that writes following my spelling” Giorgio thought “I would only have to remember how to spell, the machine would write for me….”
“I could say A-N-D … and the machine would write ‘and’”. “That would be great!”
He was about to start building such a machine, but Giorgio thought about it a little more and realized that spelling the entire homework to the machine would be pretty hard work. It would probably be just as hard as writing it in cursive.
“If I make a machine that knows every word I could just talk…”
And so, Giorgio put himself hard at work building this machine.
He took a large shoebox, 2 or 3 pieces of wood, a lot of wires, and a couple of springs. After what it felt like 10 minutes later, the clock had moved by 2 and half hours, and Giorgio came out with a weird looking thing. Basically it was a shoebox with lots of wires sticking out and around it, also sticking out was a spring attached to a pen.
Then, Giorgio placed his homework notebook under the pen, and started to talk, and the pen started to write.
The next day Giorgio tuned in his homework and before the end of the day his teacher returned it.
“Not only you wrote 5 pages instead of 2”. Said his teacher. “ But you also wrote so nicely and cleanly, I have never seen such a nicely done homework”.
Giorgio was so proud of himself. But the teacher had something more to say. “Tomorrow in class we are going to write short essays, Giorgio”. He said. “Make sure to do such a wonderful work again, we are going to place it in the school hallway for everyone to see.” Giorgio really wanted to have his work in the school hallway for everyone to see. But he wasn’t so happy about it this time…
That day coming back home from school, Giorgio was again, worried.
How was he going to do it? He surely was not going to be able to repeat anything close without the machine. There was no alternative, he had to take the machine to school, and hope that the teacher would not see it.
The next day, Giorgio arrived at school with an even bigger shoebox. This shoebox hid the smaller one with the cables coming out all over it and with the spring holding the pen.
“When the teacher is not looking, I will take it out, and quickly talk to it and make it write the whole thing.” Giorgio thought. Giorgio was pretty confident.
The plan started to work out. The teacher got busy helping a different table with their essays.
Giorgio quickly took the machine out, turned it on, and said, “The reason I liked this story…” and the machine wrote “The reason I liked this story” … “is that”. Giorgio started but just then a classmate asked, “can I borrow that pencil?” and the machine wrote “ is that can I borrow that pencil?”
Giorgio looked at his friend and said, “be quiet please!” and another class mate said “I’m using this pencil, take this one if you want”.
And the machine wrote, “be quiet please! I’m using this pencil, take this one if you want”.
“No! you guys are ruining it!” said Giorgio. And the machine wrote “No! you guys are ruining it!”.
“He just asked for a pencil”. Said one classmate. “What’s your problem Giorgio?” Said the other.
And the machine wrote: “ he just asked for a pencil what’s your problem Giorgio?”
“Aaarrrggghhh!” said Giorgio in desperation. And the machine wrote exactly what he said.
By then the teacher had noticed a bit of confusion, and went to go check on them.
“What’s going on here?” Asked the teacher. And the machine wrote: “What’s going on here?” Then, the teacher looked at Giorgio notebook and saw, “ The reason I liked this story is that can I borrow that pencil? Be quiet please! I’m using this pencil, take this one if you want. No! You guys are ruining it! He just asked for a pencil what’s your problem Giorgio? Aaarrrggghhh! What’s going on here?”
“What’s going on with your notebook?” Said the teacher. And the machine wrote: “What’s going on with your notebook?”. The teacher could not understand and said. “Giorgio?! What is this?” And the machine wrote: “Giorgio!? What is this?”
Giorgio didn’t say anything. And for once the machine didn’t write anything. Everyone was now looking at Giorgio and at his notebook being written by the pen attached to a spring. Everyone started to ask questions and the machine wrote them all.
At the end Giorgio turned the machine off and confessed. “I didn’t do such a nice homework the other day” he said close to sobbing. “I didn’t want to write cursive, and so I created this machine”. It worked very well when I used it at home alone in my room”.
“I’m sorry”. Added Giorgio. “I didn’t want to tell you that I could not do such a good job by myself, and so I tried to hide it and use it also for this essay…” Giorgio was really sorry.
Well Giorgio” said the teacher, “you are going to have to do you homework with your own hands for now on”
“But, I think this thing that you have created is pretty amazing!” We will put this machine on display in the school hallway. By leaving it on we will know at the end of the day what the people think about it.
And so Giorgio had to write cursive with his own hands, but he still got something to display in the hallways.