Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine Read Online Free PDF

winked at her. Soundlessly he shaped the words “Who cares?” with his lips.
    He looked over at Joe, who sat two rows away, and did the same thing. Joe nodded and voicelessly said, “Minny.”
    Eddie Philips, secretly watching the three of them, scowled. He had told Miss Arnold about the glider because he was jealous and hoped to get Dan into trouble. Now, seeing their winks and smiles, he felt anger churning around in him like a stomach-ache.
    â€œI wonder why they’re grinning at each other like that,” he muttered to George Bessel, who sat in front of him. “You’d almost think they didn’t mind all that homework. I’ll bet Danny has something up his sleeve.”
    He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Maybe,” he added, “just maybe I’ll follow him after school and keep an eye on him. I’ll get that smart aleck yet. Wait and see.”
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    The Homework Paradise
    Danny closed his copy of The Study of Science with a sigh, and blinked at Joe and Irene. They were all seated at the console of Miniac, in Professor Bullfinch’s laboratory. It was three days later.
    â€œThat’s the last book,” Danny said. “Now Minny knows everything in all our school books.”
    â€œPhew!” said Joe, wiping his forehead, “You know, that was hard work—storing all that information in the machine. I didn’t realize there was so much to know. Maybe it’d just be easier to do our homework every day.”
    â€œI don’t think so,” Danny said. “Sure, it was hard work. But now we’re free forever.”
    â€œTill next term,” Irene corrected him.
    â€œWell, that’s almost forever. The next step is to program tomorrow’s assignment.”
    He pushed back his chair and got up.
    Joe said, “What’s all this programming you’re always talking about?”
    â€œWait a sec,” Danny said. “I’ll just get some refreshments for us. We can use ’em. Irene, you get out tomorrow’s homework.”
    He went down the hall to the kitchen, while Irene arranged their notebooks on the desk and Joe stretched and yawned. Danny returned in a few moments with a plate of chocolate graham crackers and three bottles of Coca-Cola.
    Irene said, “The biggest piece of homework we have for tomorrow is twenty problems in arithmetic.”
    â€œThat’s easy,” said Danny.
    He fed the end of a roll of typewriter paper into the electric typewriter and cleared the memory banks for action.
    â€œNow,” he said. “Programming is telling the machine exactly what questions you want answered and how you want them answered. In order to do that right, you have to know just what sequences of operation you want the machine to go through.”
    â€œUh-huh.” Joe nodded. “What does that mean?”
    â€œLook. Suppose you want to jump across a ditch—”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhy what?”
    â€œWhy would I want to jump across a ditch?”
    â€œDon’t be silly. I’m just giving you a for-instance. All right, first you have to figure out how far it is across the ditch. Then you have to look in your memory to see how far you can jump. Then you have to compare the two to see if you can jump this ditch. Those steps are the operations your mind has to go through. The order in which you think of them is their sequence. See?”
    â€œI guess so.”
    â€œAll right. If we want Minny to give us the right answers to an arithmetic problem, or a history question, we first have to analyze the operations the machine has to go through, and the order in which it does them. Then we put this down on a piece of paper together with the addresses of all the information or the parts of the machine that will be used to solve the problems. That’s programming. ”
    â€œI see.” Joe rubbed his nose soberly. “I think I understand that all right. But I