Lovelace and Babbage- Period Documents

Blackwood's magazine - Great Exhibition

Mon Jul 27 22:30:46 +0000 2009

A giant Difference Engine that crashes noisily in 1851. Why do I even bother trying to come up with new Babbage jokes?

The Southern review - Babbage on Lovelace

Sat Oct 03 21:27:56 +0000 2009

The most vivid of all period descriptions of Babbage, and the most candid report of his view of Lovelace-- an 1864 printing of an 1854 private letter. Sometimes a crack opens in that impenetrable wall between the present and the past.. a marvellous and human glimpse of 19th century geeks, and my favorite of all these documents. (scroll up half a page for the beginning)

Tags: babbage lovelace

PUNCH - Babbage's Automatic Novelist, 1844

Mon Sep 21 13:27:25 +0000 2009

Punch STEALS ALL MY GAGS as usual.. bastards. Priceless comedy GOLD, baby.

Tags: babbage babbagefame comedy

The astrologer and oracle of destiny- Vestiges authorship

Mon Sep 21 22:45:13 +0000 2009

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!

Tags: lovelace

A Century of mathematics in America - Sad story of elderly Babbage

Sat Oct 03 18:23:35 +0000 2009

"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.\n\n"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." Sorry, screwed up the direct link-- do a 'Babbage' search, this block is the third one down I believe.

Tags: babbage

The Literary world - Lovelace Death notices

Sun Jul 12 17:03:24 +0000 2009

A couple of flowery reminiscinces-- 'an understanding thoroughly masculine in its solidity'. Also, why do poets not have many children?

Tags: lovelace

The ninth Bridgewater treatise: A Fragment

Mon Sep 28 21:33:29 +0000 2009

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.

Tags: babbage religion babbagewritings bridgewater

the mechanic's magazine Bridgewater review

Mon Jul 27 22:10:42 +0000 2009

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."

Tags: babbage bridgewater

A treatise on man-- Statistics!! - 1844 (orig. 1835)

Mon Sep 21 13:24:57 +0000 2009

Babbage meets a man after his own heart - Adolphe Quetelet, founder of 'social physics'-- actuarial tables and the reduction of everything possible to statistics. Quetelet is much impressed with Babbage's 'gigantic plan' to collect statistics on, well, everything.

Tags: Babbage science mathematics statistics

The Mechanics' magazine on Lovelace, 1852

Fri Sep 18 16:17:18 +0000 2009

A piece on the Analytical Engine leads to a mention of Lovelace, and then a little celebration of women in mathematics.

Tags: lovelace analyticalengine

Some Excerpts from Lovelace's Letters to Babbage

Sun Jul 12 18:49:39 +0000 2009

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 By genuine computer pioneer Harry Huskey. It's 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. With every sincerity I say it is worth all the rest of the books on Lovelace put together. /rant

Tags: lovelace

Lyon Playfair Memoirs-- Babbage, Alpha and Omega

Tue Aug 04 20:49:49 +0000 2009

Two anecdotes, illustrative of Babbage's tremendous charm, high reputation, and amazing ability to shoot himself in the foot. EDITED TO ADD: This book is now being occupied by the usual despicable copyright squatters on Google Books. Fortunately archive.org has a copy: http://www.archive.org/stream/memoirscorrespo00reid#page/154/mode/2up/

Tags: babbage

Breakfast with Babbage

Fri Sep 18 16:49:35 +0000 2009

Inventor of the 'self-calculating machine'.. with a penetrating eye, talking about boats.

Tags: babbage

Scotch courtiers [a poem]-- 1842, with a little Babbage!

Fri Sep 18 16:47:18 +0000 2009

"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.

Tags: babbage poetry statistics

Lady Lovelace, mathematician (cheers)

Fri Sep 18 15:43:43 +0000 2009

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.

Tags: lovelace

THE PENNY MAGAZINE- Babbage on Atmospherics

Fri Sep 18 16:38:14 +0000 2009

Little observation by Babbage analogizing the formation of 'mackerel clouds' to ripples in the sand

Tags: babbage science

Portrait of Ada Byron, 18

Mon Sep 21 22:38:24 +0000 2009

I haven't seen this portrait in any of the Ada books-- a little geeky, a little scary, and very Byronic.

Tags: lovelace

"As if men were a thing invented by Babbage" - Google Books

Fri Sep 18 16:13:17 +0000 2009

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.

Tags: differenceengine

Life and Letters of William Bewick (artist).

Mon Sep 21 22:55:04 +0000 2009

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.

Comments:

According to "Bride of Science", Dr Malcolm was the physician of some family friends who treated her for some kind of collapse in 1848-- the letters mentioned must be from after this. I totally agree with this guy, Ada's letters, what few remain, from this period are smart and funny and awesome. posted by sydneypadua

Tags: lovelace

Review of Ninth Bridgewater Treatise

Wed Sep 23 11:22:41 +0000 2009

Ouch.. harsh but kinda true. Clear, concise, and hard to argue with: Babbage is a genius and we love him, but, WTF?

Tags: babbage bridgewater religion