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Primary Documents, evidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder, what's the difference?
Updated on 2009-12-12
Created on 2009-09-17
Category: Others
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The Southern review - Babbage on Lovelace
The most vivid of all period descriptions of Babbage, and the most candid report of his view of Lovelace-- an 1864 printing of a 1854 private letter in an obscure American Journal, it's my personal Staffordshire hoard. Thank you Google books.
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PUNCH - Babbage's Automatic Novelist, 1844
Punch STEALS ALL MY GAGS as usual.. bastards. Priceless comedy GOLD, baby.
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The astrologer and oracle of destiny- Vestiges authorship
From 1845, testament to the popular rumour that Ada had written "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation", a weird proto-evolutionary manifesto (she didn't). Born under the star of Hershel, eccentric and fond of curious studies, hah!
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A Century of mathematics in America - Sad story of elderly Babbage
"Then we went into the third room. There lay scattered bits of mechanism, but I saw no trace of any working machine. Very cautiously I approached the subject, and received the dreaded answer.
"It is not constructed yet, but I am working on it, and it will take less time to construct it altogether than it would have token to complete the Analytical Machine from the stage in which I left it." -
The ninth Bridgewater treatise: A Fragment
Amongst the many things Babbage was famous for was 'The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise"- a somewhat weird but influential collection of musings on the relation of Science to Theology. Babbage was a firm believer to the end of his life; with his God-the-Programmer view of the universe he seems to have settled the issue to his own satisfaction. There are many period reactions to this piece in this list.
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the mechanic's magazine Bridgewater review
Oh dear.. even the tireless Babbage-boosters at Mechanic's Magazine savage Bridgewater. "Some chapters have no end; many more have no beginning; and one at least may be fairly said to have no beginning, middle, or end."
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The Mechanics' magazine on Lovelace, 1852
A piece on the Analytical Engine leads to a mention of Lovelace, and then a little celebration of women in mathematics.
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A treatise on man-- Statistics!! - 1844 (orig. 1835)
Babbage meets a man after his own heart - actuarial tables and the gathering of random statistics.
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Some Excerpts from Lovelace's Letters to Babbage
There are plenty more of these-- Lovelace's can be found in the invaluable collected letters, Betty Toole's "Enchantress of Numbers" of course.
But by far the best source for the primary documents around the writing of the notes, as it also includes Babbage's replies and lots of other interesting documents, is this lengthy and expemplary article, sadly behind a paywall:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4639398
30 pages, nearly all of which are full reprintings of all the relevant primary docs, a smattering of necessary background, and a merciful absence of the heavy editorializing that wearisomely burdens nearly everything else written on this subject... worth all the biographies of Lovelace put together. /rant -
Breakfast with Babbage
Inventor of the 'self-calculating machine'.. with a penetrating eye, talking about boats.
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Scotch courtiers [a poem]-- 1842, with a little Babbage!
"To double their numbers and multiply more/ Babbage himself might exhaust all his lore/ As easily reckoned the leaves on the trees..." - Fun poem, certainly shows Babbage as a household name.
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Lady Lovelace, mathematician (cheers)
In some sort of suffarage meeting (?) from early 1852, "Lady Lovelace, the mathematician" shows up after "Mary Sommerville, the astronomer" in a list of exemplars showing women should have the vote.
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THE PENNY MAGAZINE- Babbage on Atmospherics
Little observation by Babbage analogizing the formation of 'mackerel clouds' to ripples in the sand
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Portrait of Ada Byron, 18
I haven't seen this portrait in any of the Ada books-- a little geeky, a little scary, and very Byronic.
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"As if men were a thing invented by Babbage" - Google Books
No preview and no other public version of this 1844 collection of commonplaces leaves me with just this one phrase-- one that sums up beautifully however the mechanistic anxiety caused by the engine.
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Life and Letters of William Bewick (artist).
Enter pg n256 -- sorry about the lack of page links on those archive.org formats. Lovelace's habit of not dating her letters irritates biographers; but her habit of not even signing them has probably led to a great many of them being accidentally lost. I can't find any reference in the biographies to any of the letters which this Dr Malcom seems to be profligately giving away, so I guess they're all gone! I would LOVE to read the one about Martineau's cow. Anyone stumbling across unsigned letters with lots of underlinings is to send them to me immediately.
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Rev. Sydney Smith- Babbage, Machinery, Elections
Babbage as an endless source of punchlines-- designs voting machine.
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Society for Useful Knowledge
Babbage proposes an inprovement to the zenith-sector telescope (described here: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=232300)
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Philosophical magazine - Babbage's Defence
The defense of his dealings with the government that Babbage wanted to preface the Lovelace notes.
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