Stories by Stanley W. Angrist

Over the past 400 years numerous inventors have proposed marvelous ways of getting something for nothing. All these proposals have foundered on either the first or the second law of thermodynamics

They perform the operations of amplification and switching mechanically rather than electrically. For some purposes they are more reliable than their electronic counterparts

Discovered in the 19th century, these phenomena (which involve the interaction of a magnetic field and an electric or thermal current) have recently begun to find technological applications