Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen

Last updated
Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen
First appearance The Problem of Cell 13
Created by Jacques Futrelle
Portrayed by Douglas Wilmer
Paul Rhys
Tony Gardner
In-universe information
GenderMale
OccupationScientist, Amateur Detective
NationalityAmerican

Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., M.D., M.D.S. is a fictional character in a series of detective short stories and a novel by Jacques Futrelle, the best known being The Problem of Cell 13 . [1]

Contents

Biography

In the stories, Professor Van Dusen solves a variety of different mysteries with his friend and companion, Hutchinson Hatch, reporter of a fictional newspaper called The Daily New Yorker.

The professor is known as "The Thinking Machine", [2] solving problems by the remorseless application of logic. This nickname was given to him after his winning of a match against the fictional chess champion of the day, Tschaikowsky, in a demonstration to show the power of applying pure logic. He was able to win against the reigning champion, having only been taught the game the morning of the match. Many of his titles are actually honorary degrees awarded to him, serving only to amuse the universities and scientific institutions that crown him with those titles.

Van Dusen's catchphrases include, "Two and two always equal four," "Nothing is impossible" and "All things that start must go somewhere."

His first story gives numerous details about his background, physical appearance, and personality:

In appearance he was no less striking than in nomenclature. He was slender with the droop of the student in his thin shoulders and the pallor of a close, sedentary life on his clean-shaven face. His eyes wore a perpetual, forbidding squint—the squint of a man who studies little things—and when they could be seen at all through his thick spectacles, were mere slits of watery blue. But above his eyes was his most striking feature. This was a tall, broad brow, almost abnormal in height and width, crowned by a heavy shock of bushy, yellow hair. All these things conspired to give him a peculiar, almost grotesque, personality.

Professor Van Dusen was remotely German. For generations his ancestors had been noted in the sciences; he was the logical result, the master mind. First and above all he was a logician. At least thirty-five years of the half-century or so of his existence had been devoted exclusively to proving that two and two always equal four, except in unusual cases, where they equal three or five, as the case may be. He stood broadly on the general proposition that all things that start must go somewhere, and was able to bring the concentrated mental force of his forefathers to bear on a given problem.

Bibliography

Novels

Short stories

First Series

Second Series

Third Series

Fourth Series Cut short by Futrelle's death on the Titanic.

Collections

"The Golden Dagger," "The Problem of the Knotted Cord," "The Problem of the Organ Grinder," "The Problem of the Private Compartment," "The Problem of the Ghost Woman," "The Problem of Convict No. 97," and "Five Millions by Wireless" have never been reprinted in book form. "The Grinning God," "The Case of the Scientific Murderer," and "The Tragedy of the Life Raft" have been reprinted only in magazines and anthologies.

In other media

Television

The story "The Problem of Cell 13" was broadcast as "The Problem of Cell Block 13" on the American TV series Kraft Mystery Theater in 1962, with actor Claude Dauphin as the van Dusen character (but named Lowell in the episode). The program also featured Philip Pine and Vic Perrin. [3]

The professor appeared in two episodes of the 1970s Thames Television series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes . Douglas Wilmer portrayed Van Dusen in "Cell 13" and "The Superfluous Finger." [4] The 1981 Australian Broadcasting Commission series Detective dramatised "The Brown Coat" with John Hannan as Dusen.

Radio

Between 1978 and 1999 the German radio station RIAS produced and broadcast 79 radio plays based on the character. A few of them were based on original stories by Futrelle, but most of the scripts were new creations by German author Michael Koser. The role of Hutchinson Hatch is a lot more prominent in the radio plays than it was in the original; Hatch was made into the fictional narrator in the radio version. The series has been revived in 2015 with 37 new cases available via CD and downloads. Since 2010, the old radio plays are being remastered and made available on CD with comments by Koser, director Rainer Clute and former cast members.

In 2011, the BBC Radio 4 series The Rivals featured Paul Rhys as Professor Van Dusen in Chris Harrald's adaptation of "The Problem of Cell 13", which was directed by Sasha Yevtushenko. He returned for the first episode of the second series in 2013, in Chris Harrald's adaptation of "The Problem of the Superfluous Finger", produced by Liz Webb. In the fourth episode of the fourth series in 2016, "The Mystery of the Scarlet Thread", Van Dusen was played by Tony Gardner.

Comics

In 2013, the character appeared in Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's graphic novel Nemo: Heart of Ice ; the character aids explorer Janni Nemo in 1925 when she encounters H. P. Lovecraft's Elder Gods in Antarctica. He returns in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: The Tempest , the final part of the series; set in 2010. He has been resurrected as a sentient A.I., becoming a literal 'thinking machine.'

Legacy

Gene Weingarten, twice Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist at The Washington Post , named his MacBook Pro "Augustus Van Dusen" after the character. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1900s</span> Decade of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1909)

The 1900s was a decade that began on January 1, 1900, and ended on December 31, 1909. The Edwardian era (1901–1910) covers a similar span of time. The term "nineteen-hundreds" is sometimes also used to mean the entire century from January 1, 1900, to December 31, 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baroness Orczy</span> Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright

Baroness Emma Orczy, usually known as Baroness Orczy or to her family and friends as Emmuska Orczy, was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright. She is best known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, the alter ego of Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop who turns into a quick-thinking escape artist in order to save French aristocrats from "Madame Guillotine" during the French Revolution, establishing the "hero with a secret identity" in popular culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SOS</span> International Morse code distress signal

SOS is a Morse code distress signal, used internationally, originally established for maritime use. In formal notation SOS is written with an overscore line, to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of "SOS" are transmitted as an unbroken sequence of three dots / three dashes / three dots, with no spaces between the letters. In International Morse Code three dots form the letter "S" and three dashes make the letter "O", so "S O S" became a common way to remember the order of the dots and dashes. IWB, VZE, 3B, and V7 form equivalent sequences, but traditionally SOS is the easiest to remember.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Locked-room mystery</span> Subgenre of detective fiction

The "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery is a type of crime seen in crime and detective fiction. The crime in question, typically murder, is committed in circumstances under which it appeared impossible for the perpetrator to enter the crime scene, commit the crime, and leave undetected. The crime in question typically involves a situation whereby an intruder could not have left; for example the original literal "locked room": a murder victim found in a windowless room locked from the inside at the time of discovery. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Futrelle</span> American mystery writer (1875–1912)

Jacques Heath Futrelle was an American journalist and mystery writer. He is best known for writing short detective stories featuring Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, also known as "The Thinking Machine" for his use of logic. He died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Le Queux</span> Anglo-French journalist and writer

William Tufnell Le Queux was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat, a traveller, a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available; his claims regarding his own abilities and exploits, however, were usually exaggerated. His best-known works are the anti-French and anti-Russian invasion fantasy The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and the anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910 (1906), the latter becoming a bestseller.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acme (automobile)</span> Defunct American motor vehicle manufacturer

The Acme was a make of American automobiles made in Reading, Pennsylvania from 1903 to 1911. They were the successor of the Reber which was made from 1902 to 1903 by Reber Manufacturing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Fillmore (Unity Church)</span> American mystic, co-founder of Unity Church

Charles Sherlock Fillmore was an American religious leader who founded Unity, a church within the New Thought movement, with his wife, Myrtle Page Fillmore, in 1889. He became known as an American mystic for his contributions to spiritual interpretations of Biblical Scripture. Fillmore promoted vegetarianism for three decades of his life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larz Anderson Auto Museum</span> United States historic place

Larz Anderson Auto Museum is located in the Anderson Carriage House on the grounds of Larz Anderson Park in Brookline, Massachusetts and is the oldest collection of motorcars in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A. M. Williamson</span> American-English author (1858–1933)

Alice Muriel Williamson, who published chiefly under names the "C. N. and A. M. Williamson" and "Mrs. C. N. Williamson," was an American-English author.

Everett Franklin Bleiler was an American editor, bibliographer, and scholar of science fiction, detective fiction, and fantasy literature. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he co-edited the first "year's best" series of science fiction anthologies, and his Checklist of Fantastic Literature has been called "the foundation of modern SF bibliography". Among his other scholarly works are two Hugo Award–nominated volumes concerning early science fiction—Science-Fiction: The Early Years and Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years—and the massive Guide to Supernatural Fiction.

The St John's Short Course was a road-racing street circuit used for the Isle of Man TT held between 1907 and 1910.

Detroit Auto Vehicle Company was a short-lived early automobile manufacturer established in the summer of 1904 with a capital stock of US$150,000. Based in Detroit in the old Detroit Novelty Machine Company building, it also had a foundry in Romeo, Michigan. It ceased operation in October 1907 following bankruptcy.

"The Problem of Cell 13" is a short story by Jacques Futrelle. It was first published in 1905 and later collected in The Thinking Machine (1907), which was featured in crime writer H. R. F. Keating's list of the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. Science fiction and mystery author Harlan Ellison recalled that this story was his selection for "Lawrence Block's Best Mysteries of the Century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. N. Williamson</span> British writer and journalist (1859–1920)

Charles Norris Williamson (1859–1920) was a British writer, motoring journalist and founder of the Black and White Magazine who was perhaps best known for his collaboration with his wife, Alice Muriel Williamson, in a number of novels and travelogues.

Thinking machine or thinking machines may refer to:

Arthur John McCormack, CBE, (1866–1936) was an English businessman and patent holder. He is principally associated with Vickers' Wolseley Motors Limited where he was MD from 1911 to 1923 when Wolseley was Britain's largest motor manufacturer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">May Futrelle</span> American novelist

Lily May Futrelle was an American writer.

References

  1. Ousby, Ian (1997). Guilty Parties. Thames & Hudson. p. 70. ISBN   0-500-27978-0.
  2. Tucker, Neely (July 13, 2023). "Crime Classics Returns: "The Thinking Machine"". Library of Congress . Retrieved September 22, 2023.
  3. "Edgar Search". Mystery Writers of America. Archived from the original on 2008-01-15. Retrieved 2008-02-11.
  4. "Douglas Wilmer". The Journal of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London Website. Retrieved 2008-02-11.
  5. Weingarten, Gene. "Gene Weingarten: R.I.P., dear friend. Like me, you were old and out of it, but you stubbornly soldiered on". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on June 14, 2019. Retrieved September 22, 2023.