The Great Automatic Gramma. Answer: ISC Prism (Evergreen)

Knipe is appreciated
In the beginning of the story, Mr. John Bohlen, the head of the firm of electrical engineers appreciates Knipe, a young engineer, for his contribution in developing an automatic computing engine. When the boy Adolf Knipe shows no excitement or joy over ,it Mr. Bohlen gives the details about the efficiency of this machine. It can provide correct answers to mathematical problems within seconds, and produce lengthy calculations in a very small space.
All the words of praise and the acknowledgement of his skill and competence fail to please the young engineer Knipe. He keeps on thinking about the tiny hands of the chief M.r John Bohlen and his face that this boy does not like. The chief finds the boy shaby and untidy. He notices the dirty dress of the boy and his hair falling on his face and asks him to have holiday for a week. Bohlen tells Knipe to take rest during this time and enjoy.

Knipe’s discontent
On his return to the room where he lives, Knipe expresses his discontent that John Bohlen could not understand the reason of his disturbed mind. The chief, Knipe thought, believed that the boy’s problem was perhaps due to some woman. Knipe started thinking of taking revenge from his greatest enemies. He thought out a plan to do so. The idea attracts him that he could use the electrical computing machine for the propose. He decides to feed several words and sentences into the computer to write a story. But he fears that a computer cannot have original thoughts.

Knipe’s plan
Knipe then shares is plan with John Bohlen in his office. Bohlen rejects the idea telling him that no one will accept a machine that writes stories. Knipe then tells his incharge that he was unhappy with Bohlen’s job and wanted to be a writer. Knipe tells that he has written 506 stories though all of them were rejected by publishers. Bohlen feels relieved that Knipe is not a good writer. Knipe asserts that his stories are better than the stories published in the journals which have rejected Knipe’s stories. Apart from this, he has programmed the machine to produce stories that each of these journals prefers to publish. He points out that published works earn a lot of money also. He convinces Bohlen that the machine has the potential to earn them a lot of profit as the magazines handsomely pay the published authors for their works.
He suggests that they can fabricate writers by setting up their own literary agency. They will ask the writers to write for the agency, pay their works at a low price and then publish them in different journals getting a much higher price. Knipe offers Bohlen to put his name on some of their writings. He feels happy imagining himself a famous writer. Thus, he agrees to Knipe’s proposal and tells Snipe to develop the new machine. They agree to tell others that the new machine was just another mathematical calculator.

The machine is ready
They completed the machine within six months and kept ti away from others where only Knipe and Bohlen could go near it. Both of them were nervous as they got ready to produce their first story with the help of this machine. By just pressing a button they will be able to generate stories and other articles that would make one a versatile writer. They decide to press the button with Today’s Women on it .After some strange noise, the machine produced a strange series of letters, but no story at al. After this, they try to generate a writing for the Digest but it does not give the proper result and there are no spaces between words. Bohlen, gets angry and impatient. Knipe assures him that the machine will certainly serve the purpose. Bohlen fears that it will never work. A few days later, it starts working well.

The Machine produces stones and articles
They start producing stories and articles with the help of the machine. It pleased Mr. Bohlen and he agreed with Knipe to set up a literary agency. The stories are sent to different magazines and except one that carried Bohlen’s name as the author, all get accepted. Anew story sent with Bohlen’s name on it gets selected. Their venture now brought greater success. Within six months they started selling about fifteen stories every week. It brought Knipe great success as a writer. Gradually, Knipe set up some fictitious persons as young authors.
Knipe now steathily starts adding his name to a bit more prestigious stories. He begins to earn more fame in literary circles than Bohlen. After some time they try to develop novels. Bohlen has noticed that Knipe has built up more prestigious position for himself and wants to produce a highly intellectual novel. Knipe upgrades the machine. The improved machine is now run by sitting on it to control its various functions. It has buttons to pre-select elements like tensions, pathos, surprise to produce a desired affect in a novel. Knipe adds another control to include passion as an important element of a novel. Bohlen rides the machine like driving a car to produce a novel. He succeeds in the second attempt. Knipe creates half a dozen more
novels in the same way and sends through their literary agency for publication.

Knipe grows greedy
The success they achieve turns Knipe greedier and he thinks of buying authors by offering money. The first writer that Knipe approaches turns him out. The second one considers his proposal serious and tries to hit him. His third attempt brings success. A female romance novelist agrees to sign the contract. She realizes that machine generates better novels than her own. Ultimately, Knipe succeeds in convincing about 70% of the writers to sign the contract. The process goes on and after the end of a year half of all the novels produced in English language are produced by Adolf. In other words, they carry Knipe’s name as the author as he has bought these novelists by making them sign the contract for money.
The story ends with a moralistic statement from one of the authors. This one is ready to see his children starve instead of signing the contract.