The Information (82 page)

♦
TABLE OF CONSTANTS OF THE CLASS MAMMALIA
:
Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines: Selected Writings
, ed. Philip Morrison and Emily Morrison (New York: Dover Publications, 1961), xxiii.

♦
“LO! THE RAPTURED ARITHMETICIAN!”
: Élie de Joncourt,
De Natura Et Praeclaro Usu Simplicissimae Speciei Numerorum Trigonalium
(Hagae Comitum: Husson, 1762), quoted in Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
, 54.

♦
“TO ASTROLOGERS, LAND-MEASURERS, MEASURERS OF TAPESTRY”
: Quoted in Elizabeth L. Eisenstein,
The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 468.

♦
THIRTY-FOUR MEN AND ONE WOMAN
: Mary Croarken, “Mary Edwards: Computing for a Living in 18th-Century England,”
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
25, no. 4 (2003): 9–15; and—with fascinating detective work—Mary Croarken, “Tabulating the Heavens: Computing the Nautical Almanac in 18th-Century England,”
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
25, no. 3 (2003): 48–61.

♦
“LOGARITHMES ARE NUMBERS INVENTED”
: Henry Briggs,
Logarithmicall Arithmetike: Or Tables of Logarithmes for Absolute Numbers from an Unite to 100000
(London: George Miller, 1631), 1.

♦
“TAKE AWAY ALL THE DIFFICULTIE”
: John Napier, “Dedicatorie,” in
A Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithmes
, trans. Edward Wright (London: Nicholas Okes, 1616), 3.

♦
“NAPER, LORD OF MARKINSTON, HATH SET”
: Henry Briggs to James Ussher, 10 March 1615, quoted by Graham Jagger in Martin Campbell-Kelly et al., eds.,
The History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 56.

♦
A QUARTER HOUR OF SILENCE: “SPENT, EACH BEHOLDING OTHER”
: William Lilly,
Mr. William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times, from the Year 1602 to 1681
(London: Charles Baldwyn, 1715), 236.

♦
POLE STARRE, GIRDLE OF ANDROMEDA, WHALES BELLIE
: Henry Briggs,
Logarithmicall Arithmetike
, 52.

♦
“IT MAY BE HERE ALSO NOTED THAT THE USE OF A 100 POUND”
: Ibid., 11.

♦
“A SCOTTISH BARON HAS APPEARED ON THE SCENE”
: Ole I. Franksen, “Introducing ‘Mr. Babbage’s Secret,’ ”
APL Quote Quad
15, no. 1 (1984): 14.

♦
THE MAJORITY OF HUMAN COMPUTATION
: Michael Williams,
A History of Computing Technology
(Washington, D.C.: IEEE Computer Society, 1997), 105.

♦
“IT IS NOT FITTING FOR A PROFESSOR”
: Michael Mästlin, quoted in Ole I. Franksen, “Introducing ‘Mr. Babbage’s Secret,’ ” 14.

♦
“THIS LADY ATTITUDINIZED”
: Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
, 17.

♦
INSTALLED IT ON A PEDESTAL
: Simon Schaffer, “Babbage’s Dancer,” in Francis Spufford and Jenny Uglow, eds.,
Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention
(London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 58.

♦
FROM A SPECIALTY BOOKSELLER
: Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
, 26–27.

♦
“A SIN AGAINST THE MEMORY OF NEWTON”
: W. W. Rouse Ball,
A History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889), 117.

♦
“THE DOTS OF NEWTON, THE
D
’S OF LEIBNITZ”
:
Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines
, 23.

♦
“TO THINK AND REASON IN A NEW LANGUAGE”
: Ibid., 31.

♦
“A NEW KIND OF AN INSTRUMENT INCREASING THE POWERS OF REASON”
: C. Gerhardt, ed.,
Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
, vol. 7 (Berlin: Olms, 1890), 12, quoted by Kurt Gödel in “Russell’s Mathematical Logic” (1944), in
Kurt Gödel: Collected Works
, vol. 2, ed. Solomon Feferman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 140.

♦
“BY THE APPARENT IMPOSSIBILITY OF ARRANGING SIGNS”
: Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
, 25.

♦
“THE DOT-AGE OF THE UNIVERSITY”
:
Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines
, 25.

♦
“WE HAVE NOW TO RE-IMPORT THE EXOTIC”
: Charles Babbage,
Memoirs of the Analytical Society
, preface (1813), in Anthony Hyman, ed.,
Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 15–16.

♦
“THE BROWS OF MANY A CAMBRIDGE MODERATOR”
: Agnes M. Clerke,
The Herschels and Modern Astronomy
(New York: Macmillan, 1895), 144.

♦
“EVERY MEMBER SHALL COMMUNICATE HIS ADDRESS”
: Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
, 34.

♦
“I AM THINKING THAT ALL THESE TABLES”
: Ibid., 42.

♦
“WHETHER, WHEN THE NUMBERS”
: Ibid., 41.

♦
“WE MAY GIVE FINAL PRAISE”
: “
Machina arithmetica in qua non additio tantum et subtractio sed et multipicatio nullo, divisio vero paene nullo animi labore peragantur
,” trans. M. Kormes, 1685, in D. E. Smith,
A Source Book in Mathematics
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1929), 173.

♦
“INTOLERABLE LABOUR AND FATIGUING MONOTONY”
: Charles Babbage,
A Letter to Sir Humphry Davy on the Application of Machinery to the Purpose of Calculating and Printing Mathematical Tables
(London: J. Booth & Baldwain, Cradock & Joy, 1822), 1.

♦
“I WILL YET VENTURE TO PREDICT”
: Babbage to David Brewster, 6 November 1822, in Martin Campbell-Kelly, ed.,
The Works of Charles Babbage
(New York: New York University Press, 1989) 2:43.

♦
“CONFUSION IS WORSE CONFOUNDED”
: Dionysius Lardner, “Babbage’s Calculating Engine,”
Edinburgh Review
59, no. 120 (1834), 282; and Edward Everett, “The Uses of Astronomy,” in
Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1870), 447.

♦
250 SETS OF LOGARITHMIC TABLES
: Martin Campbell-Kelly, “Charles Babbage’s Table of Logarithms (1827),”
Annals of the History of Computing
10 (1988): 159–69.

♦
“WOULD AFFORD A CURIOUS SUBJECT OF METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION”
: Dionysius Lardner, “Babbage’s Calculating Engines,” 282.

♦
“IF PAPA FAIL TO INFORM HIM”
: Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
, 52.

♦
“IF THIS COULD BE ACCOMPLISHED”
: Ibid., 60–62.

♦
“IT IS SCARCELY TOO MUCH TO ASSERT”
: Babbage to John Herschel, 10 August 1814, quoted in Anthony Hyman,
Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 31.

♦
“IT IS WITH NO INCONSIDERABLE DEGREE OF RELUCTANCE”
: David Brewster to Charles Babbage, 3 July 1821, quoted in J. M. Dubbey,
The Mathematical Work of Charles Babbage
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 94.

♦
“LOGARITHMIC TABLES AS CHEAP AS POTATOES”
: Babbage to John Herschel, 27 June 1823, quoted in Anthony Hyman,
Charles Babbage
, 53.

♦
“PROPOSITION TO REDUCE ARITHMETIC TO THE DOMINION OF MECHANISM”
: Dionysius Lardner, “Babbage’s Calculating Engines,” 264.

♦
“THE QUESTION IS SET TO THE INSTRUMENT”
: “Address of Presenting the Gold Medal of the Astronomical Society to Charles Babbage,” in
Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines
, 219.

♦
LARDNER’S OWN EXPLANATION OF “CARRYING”
: Dionysius Lardner, “Babbage’s Calculating Engines,” 288–300.

♦
IN 1826 HE PROUDLY REPORTED TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY
: Charles Babbage, “On a Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
116, no. 3 (1826): 250–65.

♦
“I NEED HARDLY POINT OUT TO YOU THAT THIS CALCULATION”
: Quoted in
Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines
, xxiii. The Morrisons point out that Tennyson apparently did change “minute” to “moment” in editions after 1850.

♦
“THE PROS AND CONS IN PARALLEL COLUMNS”
: Harriet Martineau,
Autobiography
(1877), quoted in Anthony Hyman,
Charles Babbage,
129.

♦
“IF YOU SPEAK TO HIM OF A MACHINE FOR PEELING A POTATO”
: Quoted in Doron Swade,
The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer
(New York: Viking, 2001), 132.

♦
“I THINK IT LIKELY HE LIVES IN A SORT OF DREAM”
: Quoted in ibid., 38.

♦
FOR A GUINEA, SHE COULD SIT
: Advertisement in
The Builder
, 31 December 1842,
http://www.victorianlondon.org/photography/adverts.htm
(accessed 7 March 2006).

♦
“THE CHILD OF LOVE,…—THOUGH BORN IN BITTERNESS”
: Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” canto 3, 118.

♦
“IS THE GIRL IMAGINATIVE?”
: Byron to Augusta Leigh, 12 October 1823, in Leslie A. Marchand, ed.,
Byron’s Letters and Journals
, vol. 9 (London: John Murray, 1973–94), 47.

♦
“I AM GOING TO BEGIN MY PAPER WINGS”
: Ada to Lady Byron, 3 February 1828, in Betty Alexandra Toole,
Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age
(Mill Valley, Calif.: Strawberry Press, 1998), 25.

♦
“MISS STAMP DESIRES ME TO SAY”
: Ada to Lady Byron, 2 April 1828, ibid., 27.

♦
“WHEN I AM WEAK”
: Ada to Mary Somerville, 20 February 1835, ibid., 55.

♦
AN “OLD MONKEY”
: Ibid., 33.

♦
“WHILE OTHER VISITORS GAZED”
: Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan,
Memoir of Augustus De Morgan
(London: Longmans, Green, 1882), 89.

♦
“I DO NOT CONSIDER THAT I KNOW”
: Ada to Dr. William King, 24 March 1834, in Betty Alexandra Toole,
Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers
, 45.

♦
“GEM OF ALL MECHANISM”
: Ada to Mary Somerville, 8 July 1834, ibid., 46.

♦
“PUNCHES HOLES IN A SET OF PASTEBOARD CARDS”
: “Of the Analytical Engine,” in
Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines
, 55.

♦
“HOW THE MACHINE COULD PERFORM THE ACT OF JUDGMENT”
: Ibid., 65.

♦
“I AM AT PRESENT A CONDEMNED SLAVE”
: Ada to Mary Somerville, 22 June 1837, in Betty Alexandra Toole,
Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers
, 70.

♦
“THE ONLY OTHER PERSON WAS A MIDDLE-AGED GENTLEMAN”
: Ada to Lady Byron, 26 June 1838, ibid., 78.

♦
“I HAVE A PECULIAR
WAY
OF
LEARNING
”
: Ada to Babbage, November 1839, ibid., 82.

♦
“YOU KNOW I AM BY NATURE A BIT OF A PHILOSOPHER”
: Ada to Babbage, 16 February 1840, ibid., 83.

♦
“AN ORIGINAL MATHEMATICAL INVESTIGATOR”
: Augustus De Morgan to Lady Byron, quoted in Betty Alexandra Toole, “Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, an Analyst and Metaphysician,”
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
18, no. 3 (1996), 7.

♦
“I
HAVE
DONE IT BY TRYING”
: Ada to Babbage, 16 February 1840, in Betty Alexandra Toole,
Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers
, 83.

♦
“OF CERTAIN SPRITES & FAIRIES”
: Ada to Augustus De Morgan, 3 February 1841, ibid., 99.

♦
“WE TALK
MUCH
OF IMAGINATION”
: Untitled essay, 5 January 1841, ibid., 94.

♦
“I HAVE ON MY MIND MOST STRONGLY”
: Ada to Woronzow Greig, 15 January 1841, ibid., 98.

♦
“
WHAT
A MOUNTAIN I HAVE TO CLIMB”
: Ada to Lady Byron, 6 February 1841, ibid., 101.

♦
“IT WILL ENABLE OUR CLERKS TO PLUNDER US”
:
Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines
, 113. He added: “possibly we might send lightning to outstrip the culprit …”