Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine Number Five

the long version

Another episode of the Danny Dunn series, a popular science fiction series. Danny is the son of a housekeeper of a university professor and as such is exposed to many of the professor's experiments and research which is conducted in the basement of his home. The professor has built an early version of the electronic computer and shows Danny how it is programmed and operated. When the professor is out of town, Danny and his two friends, gloomy Joe and brainy Irene work out a system to use the computer to do their homework. A suspicious classmate (Eddie) who has a crush on Irene but unable to gain her attention finds out what they're doing and sabotages the computer. Their homework then becomes erratic. Upon solving the problem, the three friends eventually realize that in order for the computer to produce their homework, it had to be programmed with the subject matter which required that they learn the lessons anyway.