DIMENSION X
With Folded Hands
April 15, 1950
John Stewart Williamson wrote using the name Jack Williamson, mostly, though he published some of his earlier works as Will Stewart or Nils O Sonderlund. In 1947 his novella length story With Folded Hands... appeared in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. It was well received and the publisher, John W. Campbell, asked for a novel length version, with some changes to the setting, characters and ending. Williamson obliged and it was serialized in the March, April and May 1948 issues with the name ...And Searching Mind. Williamson's creative use of ellipses in his titles can be seen as reflecting his view that the story's theme was part of a greater whole that existed beyond the boundaries of the story itself. Unfortunately he was forced to abandon the ellipses when the novel was published in 1949 with the title The Humanoids.
Williamson's story With Folded hands... was adapted to radio by John Dunkel, a screenwriter who wrote for radio, Television and film during a career that spanned from the 1930s to the 1990s. He removed the ellipses from the title.
In the story a purveyor of household robots finds that his newest competition is not what it seems to be.
HISTORICAL GLOSSARY
The title "With Folded Hands" refers to putting your hands together and interlacing your fingers. Kindergarten teachers would say, "Fold your hands and put them on your lap!" when they wanted the kids to sit quietly and not get into any trouble. With hands folded the kids would not be doing anything, not poking the kid next to them, drawing doodles on their math worksheet, nothing. There was also the expression: folding your hands in prayer since praying hands were not supposed to fidget. Therefore, folding your hands implies inactivity.
In the opening of the show the host says, "Have you ever heard of the Mark III? The amazing electronic brain they're using now up at Harvard University? In mere minutes it can solve scientific problems that our most brilliant mathematicians would take years to work out." This is a reference to something real. The Harvard Mark 1, also called an Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), was the first computing machine built. That was in 1944. In 1947 the new and improved Mark II was produced, then in 1949, just two years before this radio drama was adapted from the original 1947 novella, the Mark III came out. The Mark IV was completed a year after the radio drama aired.
When Harry is helping Professor Sledge, the professor says he needs two busbars and then says it would save time if Harry could help with the bench work. "Bench work" refers to mechanical work done by hand, not by a machine, in a workspace the size of an office cubicle. Soldering is included in benchwork and that is what Harry would need to do with the "busbars" which are components of electrical distribution systems.