Plot summary: In a future where scientific research is controlled by the government, Professor of History Arnold Potterley seeks access to the chronoscope, a device that allows images of the past to be viewed, in order to study ancient Carthage, but his request is denied. Frustrated, he persuades the young physicist Jonas Foster to investigate Neutrinics, the scientific basis of chronoscopy. Foster discovers a more efficient method for building chronoscopes and constructs one, but reveals that it can observe only up to one hundred and twenty-five years into the past. When Potterley’s wife wishes to use the device to see her deceased daughter, Potterley destroys it. He then informs on Foster to the authorities in order to prevent the dissemination of the discovery; however, Foster’s uncle has already sent the plans to multiple publishers. The head of Chronoscopy then reveals the devastating truth: the chronoscope can observe not only the dead past but also the immediate present, so its widespread use would mean the absolute end of human privacy.
Summary of The Dead Past, by Isaac Asimov
The Dead Past is a science fiction short story written by Isaac Asimov and published in April 1956 in Astounding Science Fiction. The story takes place in a future where scientific research is centralized and controlled by a world government. The tale explores the consequences of the invention of the chronoscope—a device capable of observing the past—and examines the dangers of governmental suppression of scientific knowledge, as well as the ethical and social implications that arise when technology makes it possible to eliminate human privacy entirely.
Arnold Potterley is a professor of Ancient History whose bland appearance—washed-out blue eyes, a small nose, a neat figure, and gentle manners—conceals an obsession that is about to change the world. For two years he has attempted to obtain permission to use the chronoscope in order to investigate ancient Carthage for his academic studies. His interest is not merely professional: Potterley seeks to vindicate the Carthaginians from historical accusations of sacrificing children to the god Moloch by burning them alive in the belly of a Brazen idol. He maintains that these accusations are propagandistic lies spread by Carthage’s enemies, the Greeks and the Romans.
When Potterley approaches Thaddeus Araman, head of the Division of Chronoscopy, his request is politely rejected. Araman explains that chronoscopy is an extremely delicate and costly process, that there is a long waiting list, and that decisions regarding priorities are processed by computer and cannot be arbitrarily altered. Frustrated but not defeated, Potterley begins to contemplate an idea that first frightens him and then fascinates him: if the government will not allow him to use its chronoscope, he will build one of his own.
The professor finds his opportunity when he meets Jonas Foster, a young physics instructor newly arrived at the university, specializing in hyperoptics and knowledgeable in artificial gravitational fields. Potterley discovers that Foster has never studied Neutrinics, the foundational science of chronoscopy, because the discipline is simply not taught at any university—not even at the prestigious MIT. When the historian begins pressing Foster with questions about Neutrinics, the young scientist initially resists, considering a historian’s interest in physics to be an unacceptable intellectual anarchy in a system where every scientist is required to remain within his own field of specialization.
However, Potterley’s persistence eventually awakens Foster’s curiosity, and despite his ethical reservations he begins to investigate on his own. He discovers that not only is Neutrinics not truly taught at universities, but there are also no accessible scientific texts that address it in depth. Furthermore, the historian reveals that through correspondence with other scholars he has gathered evidence suggesting that no one in the scientific community actually uses the chronoscope, despite the government’s monthly bulletin announcing supposed historical discoveries obtained through Time viewing. Foster realizes that something strange is going on: either the government is actively suppressing research in Neutrinics, or the chronoscope does not exist at all.
Foster turns to his uncle Ralph Nimmo, a successful science writer without a university degree, who prides himself on being a generalist capable of understanding and explaining any field. Nimmo confirms his nephew’s suspicions: in all his years of work he has never received a single paper on Neutrinics to edit, which is highly unusual. Nimmo manages to obtain for Foster an old, restricted copy of the fundamental text on Neutrinics by Sterbinski and LaMarr, literally stealing it from the New York Public Library, since the copy in the Library of Congress is classified.
Foster immerses himself in studying the text, working through entire nights in the Potterleys’ basement. Gradually he understands that Sterbinski, the original inventor of the chronoscope, used an indirect and expensive method to detect neutrinos. These particles, with neither mass nor charge, pass through the barrier of space-time, traveling through time as well as space. Sterbinski developed a method to stop and record the flow of neutrinos, interpreting the deflection patterns caused by all the matter they had traversed in their temporal journey. This made it possible to reconstruct images of the past and even detect air vibrations and convert them into sound.
Foster’s great discovery is that his own specialty in Pseudo-gravitic optics offers a far more efficient way to detect neutrinos using artificial gravitational fields. Had Sterbinski been familiar with this more recent science, he would have immediately seen the possibility. Foster realizes that he can build a small, portable chronoscope, much simpler and cheaper than the supposed five-story government apparatus.
When Foster finally builds his experimental device and activates it for Potterley, the news is devastating. The chronoscope works, but there is an absolute physical limit imposed by the uncertainty principle: the random thermal motion of subatomic particles creates “noise” in the neutrino signal that increases dramatically the farther back one tries to look. After about one hundred and twenty-five years into the past, the noise completely drowns out the image. There is no way to overcome this physical barrier. Carthage, ancient Rome, Egypt—all are permanently out of reach. The best Foster can show is a blurred, soundless image from the mid-twentieth century. Potterley is shattered; all his research and obsession have been in vain.
However, not everyone is disappointed by Foster’s discovery. Caroline, Potterley’s wife, who has been listening to the conversation, sees in it the possibility of recovering her daughter Laurel, who died twenty years earlier in a fire. Since then, Caroline has slowly wasted away, aging prematurely and never recovering from the tragedy. She sees in the chronoscope a way to recover her daughter, if only through an image. Potterley reacts with fury to his wife’s desire, warning her that she will go mad if she obsessively relives the three years Laurel lived, watching again and again a child who will never grow up. He warns her that she will repeatedly relive the fire that killed her daughter, futilely trying to prevent the inevitable, and that this will destroy her sanity. In a desperate outburst, Potterley destroys Foster’s chronoscope with a metal bar and forces him to leave, never to return.
Two days later, Potterley appears in Foster’s office with an apology and a desperate plea. His wife has been calling Foster, offering him money to build her a chronoscope. Potterley begs him not to do so and not to publish his discovery. He says he has come to understand the government’s reasons for suppressing Neutrinics. It is not merely a matter of a few politicians fearing that their secrets will be exposed, but that human society would collapse if everyone could observe the past. People would not use it for historical research, but to spy on their neighbors, spouses, employees, and competitors. Privacy would no longer exist. And worst of all, millions of people like Caroline would become neurotically trapped in the past, obsessively reliving moments with deceased loved ones.
In addition, Potterley reveals a very personal motive for blocking Caroline’s access to the chronoscope: he fears that his wife would discover that on the day Laurel died, he had entered her room smoking and does not remember whether he properly extinguished his cigarette. Deep down, Potterley believes he may have caused the fire that killed his daughter and is terrified that his wife might confirm it.
Foster rejects these arguments and insists on an important principle: science must be free. Moral judgments cannot halt scientific progress; humanity has perverted every technological advance in history, but it has also had the ingenuity to prevent the worst abuses. He believes that people obsessed with the past will eventually grow tired of seeing their loved ones doing things they did not expect. Foster is willing to risk his career, his position, and even his freedom in order to publish his discovery and break the suffocating governmental control over research.
Potterley storms out of the office. Foster, feeling somewhat foolish but taking precautions, writes down the equations and construction diagrams for the chronoscope, seals them in an envelope addressed to Ralph Nimmo, and places them in a bank safe-deposit box with instructions to open it in the event of his death or disappearance. He spends the following nights sleepless, trying to decide how to publish data obtained in an unethical manner, since no respectable journal would accept a paper without the footnote indicating funding by the United Nations Research Commission.
The situation comes to a head when Foster arrives at his office and finds Potterley waiting for him along with Thaddeus Araman, head of the Division of Chronoscopy. Potterley has informed on Foster, taking full responsibility but insisting that the chronoscope must be suppressed. Araman confirms that not only can he destroy Foster’s career by denying him all grants and ordering his dismissal, but he can also imprison him indefinitely without trial if he refuses to promise to halt his research. When Foster protests that this is no longer the twentieth century and that such actions are impossible in a modern society, Araman coldly informs him that, in the case of chronoscopy, unauthorized research is a criminal offense.
Araman reveals crucial information: a government chronoscope does exist, but it has exactly the same limitations Foster discovered—it cannot see more than one hundred and twenty-five years into the past. The monthly bulletin announcing supposed discoveries of antiquity is a deliberate deception, designed to make chronoscopy appear to be a common and ordinary research tool, stripping it of the mystery that might provoke dangerous curiosity. Araman admits that he made a mistake in underestimating Potterley during their first interview, dismissing him as a mere history professor without checking his background. He also reveals how he verified Potterley’s and Foster’s story: by using the government chronoscope to observe key moments of their lives up to the present instant.
At that moment, the office door bursts open and a guard strikes an intruder with the butt of a gun, leaving him stunned. It is Ralph Nimmo. The writer explains that Foster had called him days earlier sounding as though he were in trouble and had mentioned the existence of important information in a safe-deposit box. Nimmo decided to help his nephew; realizing that Foster planned to publish his discovery illegally, he took the initiative to send the details of the portable chronoscope to half a dozen of his editorial contacts. He thought that by doing so all responsibility would fall on him, thus saving Foster’s career. He calculated that even if his license as a science writer were revoked, his exclusive possession of chronoscopic data would support him financially for life.
Araman is horrified. Nimmo has had the data for more than a day. His contacts will have called physicists to verify the information before publishing it, and those physicists will have contacted one another to share the news. Once scientists combine Neutrinics with Pseudo-gravitic optics, home-built chronoscopy will become obvious. Within a week, five hundred people will know how to build a small chronoscope. There is no way to stop the spread of knowledge.
Araman then explains the terrible truth that Foster, Potterley, and Nimmo failed to understand. They all spoke of the “dead past” as though it were something distant: Greece, Rome, Carthage, the Stone Age. But when does the past really begin? A year ago, five minutes ago, one second ago—the past begins an instant ago. If you focus the chronoscope on a hundredth of a second into the past, you are observing the present. The “dead past” is merely another name for the living present.
The implications are catastrophic. Once news of home-built chronoscopy spreads, people will eventually grasp its possibilities. The housewife will forget her dead mother and begin spying on her neighbor at home and her husband at the office. The businessman will watch his competitor; the employer, his employee. There will be no such thing as privacy. Every human being can be observed at all times by anyone. Even darkness will offer no escape, because the chronoscope can be adjusted to infrared to see human figures by their body heat. The images will be blurred and the surroundings dark, but that will only heighten the voyeuristic excitement.
Araman bitterly points out that this cannot be effectively legislated against. If humanity has been unable to eliminate heroin trafficking in a thousand years, how can it legislate against a device that can be built in a home workshop? The mixture of morbid curiosity and sexual prurience will exercise a dominion over humanity worse than any addiction. Nimmo recognizes his mistake in despair: there is no way to put the mushroom cloud back into the uranium sphere.
Araman stands up and, with elaborate formality, salutes each of the three men. He informs them that together they have created a new world. He congratulates them sarcastically: “Happy Goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone—and may each of you fry in hell forever.” With that, he lifts the arrest.
The story concludes with the realization that the world as they knew it has been destroyed. Until that moment, every custom, every habit, and every small aspect of human life had assumed some degree of privacy. But that is over forever. Humanity is about to enter an era in which every action, every word, and every private moment can be observed by anyone at any time. Foster’s well-intentioned attempt to free science, Potterley’s obsession with redeeming Carthage and escaping his guilt, and Nimmo’s rash action to protect his nephew have converged to create an unprecedented catastrophe: the absolute and irrevocable end of human privacy.
