The actual address, street, and house number, and everything else we get
by reference to the schedule."
"That's enough!" cried Hamilton. "I can see now. It would take a sheet
of paper a city block long merely to write down the figures."
"If you wrote down end to end all the possible relations that
forty-eight figures could be put into you'd need a lifetime to write
them down. Why, just with an alphabet of twenty-four letters, Leibnitz
the great mathematician, calculated that over six hundred septillions of
easily pronounceable words, none over three syllables long, could be
arranged. We have room enough to arrange any trifling little matter
like seventy or eighty million addresses, although, in truth, the
gang-punch merely provides the district and section of district, and the
schedule would give the rest if we had any need to refer to it."
"I see," said Hamilton, "and I suppose a number is put on the card which
corresponds with every district number on the schedule. Then I come in
on all the rest of the card."
"Yes, every other hole is punched by the clerk."
"But this machine doesn't seem to punch," the boy objected; "I put in a
canceled card just now and tried it, but when I put the key down,
nothing happened, the key just stayed down.
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