by Charles R. Morris · 1 Jan 2012 · 456pp · 123,534 words
Champlain Denouement CHAPTER TWO - The Hyperpower A Very British Industrial Revolution The Longitude Problem The Quest for Truth The Millionth-of-an-Inch Measuring Machine Charles Babbage And It Worked The Portsmouth Block-Making Factory CHAPTER THREE - The Giant as Adolescent Affordable Clocks Samuel Slater Rips Off the British But Lowell Invents
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machine still pales beside the most audacious grasp at ultraprecise complexity. The ne plus ultra of regal overreaching was Charles Babbage’s calculating engines. Charles Babbage If there were a hall of fame of intelligent people, Charles Babbage (1791–1871) would surely have his own plaque. Born into a well-to-do family, he spent most
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ease the frictional pressures so the hand crank worked as envisaged—an altogether astonishing degree of foresight for a paper design. A modern realization of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2, a distant prototype for the modern computer. It was constructed at the London Science Museum over a six-year period
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Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 13, no. 1 (1852): 123–125, quote at 124. 23 Ibid., 124. 24 Doron Swade, The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer (New York: Viking, 2001), is the best modern account of Babbage and his calculating engines. 25
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Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1864), 68–96, is his own account of the struggle over funding.
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. 28 The description of number two and the rejection note are from Swade, Difference Engine, 173–176. 29 Ibid., 117–119. 30 Ibid., 121. 31 Charles Babbage, “On the Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery,” Philosophic Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 2, 1826, reprinted in
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Charles Babbage and His Calculating Machines, Philip Morrison and Emily Morrison, eds. (New York: Dover, 1961), 346–354, quote at 351, plates at 380–384. 32 Swade,
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team did not attempt to make Babbage’s printer, which was of the same size and complexity of the DE2 itself. 37 Ibid., 201. 38 Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturing (London: John Murray, 1846). 39 Joseph Bizup, Manufacturing Culture: Vindications of Early Victorian Industry (Charlottesville: University of Virginia
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in full in Huntington, Hall’s Breechloaders, 306–323, quotes at 311, 319–320, 323. 84 Gordon, “Simeon North,” 183; Doron Swade, The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer (New York: Viking, 2001), 229. 85 Green, Eli Whitney, 139. 86 John K. Mahon, History of the
by David Kahn · 1 Feb 1963 · 1,799pp · 532,462 words
of Mathematics at Cambridge, the pioneer who enunciated the principles on which today’s huge electronic computers are based and who himself built their prototypes: Charles Babbage. Most of his cryptologic work was never published and hence never played a role in the science, but it was astonishingly advanced. He was among
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person, the more intimate is his conviction. In my earliest study of the subject, I shared in this belief, and maintained it for many years. Charles Babbage uses mathematics to solve a cipher “In a conversation on that subject which I had with the late Mr. Davies Gilbert, President of the Royal
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, boring job, about as exciting as adding up columns of figures, and that they would rather be out on a date with a girl friend. Charles Babbage asserted that no man’s cipher was worth looking at unless the inventor had himself solved a very difficult cipher. This rule holds true in
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, 1960), III, 107, 115-116; William F. Friedman, “Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, Cryptologist,” Casanova Gleanings, IV (1961), 1-12. 153 solutions in early 1800s: by Charles Babbage, for example. See Babbage in text. 154 lesser writings: Sacco, §147. 154 Silvestri: Meister, Päpstlichen, 31-32; Sacco, §142; Sacco, Primato, 6; Wagner, XII, 1
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. 198 Laussedat: Kerckhoffs, 62-63. 198 “C.P.B.”: “Ciphers and Cipher-writing,” Macmillan’s Magazine, XXIII (1871), 328-338. C.P.B. may be Charles Babbage, though elsewhere he never used a middle initial. For a solution of the Wheatstone, see [William F. Friedman], Several Machine Ciphers and Methods for their
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lingue … (Roma: Bernabò, 1710). Unpaged. 203 Chase: DAB. 203 Chase ciphers: “Mathematical Holocryptic Cyphers,” The Mathematical Monthly, I (March, 1859), 194-196. 204 Babbage: DNB; Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines, eds. Philip Morrison and Emily Morrison (New York: Dover Publications, 1961), xi-xxxii. Quotations from Babbage are cited to this volume
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Charles Wheatstone, inventor of two important cipher systems; Lyon Play fair, First Baron Playfair, who gave his name to one of Wheatstone’s ciphers; and Charles Babbage, who solved many difficult ciphers Left, Confederate brass cipher disk; right, Edward S. Holden, one of the cryptanalysts of the electoral scandal telegrams of 1876
by George Zarkadakis · 7 Mar 2016 · 405pp · 117,219 words
as the ballets based on his stories, would later influence two of the most important heroes in the history of Artificial Intelligence, the English mathematician Charles Babbage and Lord Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace. These two would go on to invent the first general-purpose computer and write the first computer program
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computational machine that was designed and built by one of the most celebrated prodigies of Victorian England, the eminent mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer Charles Babbage (1791–1871). Arguably, this is a contentious proposition by the curators. If this were a section dedicated to evolutionary biology many scientists would be aghast
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means a foregone conclusion in the late eighteenth century. As it turned out, general-purpose computers had to be discovered twice. The wheels of industry Charles Babbage was the first person to produce an engineering design that distinguished between a program and the machine capable of executing it. For this he is
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refer to this period as the ‘first machine age’, when machines became an integral part of human society and changed it forever. By the time Charles Babbage came of age, Great Britain, the first country to industrialise, was the unchallenged imperial, economic and naval power. The coronation of young Queen Victoria in
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with artificial wings, studying the anatomy of birds and writing a book entitled Flyology in which she illustrated her ideas and findings. She first met Charles Babbage in 1833, and became fascinated with the Difference Engine. Babbage was also impressed by her mathematical acumen and used to call her the ‘Enchantress of
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the auto-mation of manual jobs. 1818: Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein. 1835: Joseph Henry invents the electronic relay that allows electrical automation and switching. 1842: Charles Babbage lectures at the University of Turin, where he describes the Analytical Engine. 1843: Ada Lovelace writes the first computer program. 1847: George Boole invents symbolic
by James Gleick · 1 Mar 2011 · 855pp · 178,507 words
the refuse of fish; fire has been sifted by the lamp of Davy; and machinery has been taught arithmetic instead of poetry. —Charles Babbage (1832)♦ NO ONE DOUBTED THAT Charles Babbage was brilliant. Nor did anyone quite understand the nature of his genius, which remained out of focus for a long time. What did
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off machinery in exhibitions. The shows that drew the biggest crowds featured automata—mechanical dolls, ingenious and delicate, with wheels and pinions mimicking life itself. Charles Babbage went with his mother to John Merlin’s Mechanical Museum in Hanover Square, full of clockwork and music boxes and, most interesting, simulacra of living
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were real, but it never was. It remained poised before its own future. Midway between his time and ours, the Dictionary of National Biography granted Charles Babbage a brief entry—almost entirely devoid of relevance or consequence: mathematician and scientific mechanician;… obtained government grant for making a calculating machine … but the work
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transposed according to a secret word agreed on by the correspondents and carried in their memories. But the most advanced cryptanalyst in Victorian England was Charles Babbage. The process of substituting symbols, crossing levels of meaning, lay near the heart of so many issues. And he enjoyed the challenge. “One of
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it was being called a “mechanical brain” or “thinking machine”; a typical headline declared: “Thinking Machine” Does Higher Mathematics; Solves Equations That Take Humans Months♦ Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine and Analytical Engine loomed as ancestral ghosts, but despite the echoes of nomenclature and the similarity of purpose, the Differential Analyzer owed
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clumsy to describe the possibilities with words; simpler to reduce them to symbols, and natural, for a mathematician, to manipulate the symbols in equations. (Charles Babbage had taken steps down the same path with his mechanical notation, though Shannon knew nothing of this.) “A calculus is developed for manipulating these equations
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of meaning. Anyone could verify a proof step by step, by following the rules, without understanding it. Calling this quality mechanical invoked the dreams of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, machines grinding through numbers, and numbers standing for anything at all. Amid the doomed culture of 1930 Vienna, listening to his
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suitcase, with a typewriter keyboard and signal lamps. The cipher had evolved from a famous ancestor, the Vigenère cipher, thought to be unbreakable until Charles Babbage cracked it in 1854, and Babbage’s mathematical insight gave Bletchley early help, as did work by Polish cryptographers who had the first hard years
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a “programme,” Turing explains, and constructing such a list may be called “programming.” The idea is an old one, Turing says, and he cites Charles Babbage, whom he identifies as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839—once so famous, now almost forgotten. Turing explains that Babbage “had
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as a prophet (“our heresiarch uncle,”♦ William Gibson says) by another generation of writers in the age of information. Long before Borges, the imagination of Charles Babbage had conjured another library of Babel. He found it in the very air: a record, scrambled yet permanent, of every human utterance. What a
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of 1873, 162–97, reprinted in Annals of the History of Computing 22, no. 4 (October–December 2000), 20. ♦ NOT “THE MANUAL LABOR OF ROWING”: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864), 37. ♦ “ ‘THE TALL GENTLEMAN IN THE CORNER’ ”: Ibid., 385–86. ♦
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“THOSE WHO ENJOY LEISURE”: Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 4th ed. (London: Charles Knight, 1835), v. ♦ HE COMPUTED THE COST OF EACH PHASE: Ibid., 146. ♦ “AT THE
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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
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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
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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
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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
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& 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 (
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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
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, “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
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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
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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
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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 …” ♦ “THE DISCOVERY OF THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE”: Quoted in Anthony
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Hyman, Charles Babbage, 185. ♦ “NOTIONS SUR LA MACHINE ANALYTIQUE”: Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, no. 82 (October 1842). ♦ NOT TO “PROCLAIM WHO HAS WRITTEN IT”: Ada to Babbage,
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♦ “ANY PROCESS WHICH ALTERS THE MUTUAL RELATION”: Note A (by the translator, Ada Lovelace) to L. F. Menabrea, “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage,” in Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines, 247. ♦ “THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE DOES NOT OCCUPY COMMON GROUND”: Ibid., 252. ♦ “THE ENGINE EATING ITS OWN TAIL”: H. Babbage, “The
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Analytical Engine,” paper read at Bath, 12 September 1888, in Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines, 331. ♦ “WE EASILY PERCEIVE THAT SINCE EVERY SUCCESSIVE FUNCTION”: Note D (by the translator, Ada Lovelace) to L. F. Menabrea, “
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Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage.” ♦ “THAT BRAIN OF MINE”: Ada to Babbage, 5 July 1843, in Betty Alexandra Toole, Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers, 147. ♦ “HOW MULTIFARIOUS AND HOW
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MUTUALLY COMPLICATED”: Note D (by the translator, Ada Lovelace) to L. F. Menabrea, “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage.” ♦ “I AM IN MUCH DISMAY”: Ada to Babbage, 13 July 1843, in Betty Alexandra Toole, Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers, 149. ♦ “I FIND THAT
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STORMS”: Ibid., 301. ♦ “A DIFFERENT SENSE OF ANACHRONISM”: Jenny Uglow, “Possibility,” in Francis Spufford and Jenny Uglow, Cultural Babbage, 20. ♦ “IF, UNWARNED BY MY EXAMPLE”: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 450. ♦ “THEY SAY THAT ‘COMING EVENTS’ ”: Ada to Lady Byron, 10 August 1851, in Betty Alexandra Toole, Ada
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“MESSAGE-ALPHABET”: Lewis Carroll, “The Telegraph-Cipher,” printed card 8 x 12 cm., Berol Collection, New York University Library. ♦ “ONE OF THE MOST SINGULAR CHARACTERISTICS”: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864), 235. ♦ POLYALPHABETIC CIPHER KNOWN AS THE VIGENÈRE: Simon Singh, The
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1949): 368. ♦ HE WAS WORKING ON AN IDEA FOR QUANTIZING SPEECH: J. C. R. Licklider, interview by William Aspray and Arthur Norberg, 28 October 1988, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, http://special.lib.umn.edu/cbi/oh/pdf.phtml?id=180 (accessed 6 June 2010). ♦ “MATHEMATICIANS ARE ALWAYS DOING THAT”: Heinz
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Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” in Labyrinths, 8. ♦ “OUR HERESIARCH UNCLE”: William Gibson, “An Invitation,” introduction to Labyrinths, xii. ♦ “WHAT A STRANGE CHAOS”: Charles Babbage, The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise: A Fragment, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1838), 111. ♦ “NO THOUGHT CAN PERISH”: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Power of Words” (1845
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FORMULA”: Pierre-Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, trans. Frederick Wilson Truscott and Frederick Lincoln Emory (New York: Dover, 1951). ♦ “IN TURNING OUR VIEWS”: Charles Babbage, The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, 44. ♦ “THE ART OF PHOTOGENIC DRAWING”: Nathaniel Parker Willis, “The Pencil of Nature: A New Discovery,” The Corsair 1, no. 5
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Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. A Fragment. 2nd ed. London: John Murray, 1838. ———. Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864. ———. Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines: Selected Writings. Edited by Philip Morrison and Emily Morrison. New York: Dover Publications, 1961. ———. The Analytical Engine and Mechanical Notation. New
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York: New York University Press, 1989. ———. The Difference Engine and Table Making. New York: New York University Press, 1989. ———. The Works of Charles Babbage. Edited by Martin Campbell-Kelly. New York: New York University Press, 1989. Babbage, Henry Prevost, ed. Babbage’s Calculating Engines: Being a Collection of Papers
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Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1970. Buxton, H. W., and Anthony Hyman. Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage Esq., F.R.S. Vol. 13 of the Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988. Calude, Cristian S. Information and Randomness: An
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2002. Calude, Cristian S., and Gregory J. Chaitin. Randomness and Complexity: From Leibniz to Chaitin. Singapore, Hackensack, N.J.: World Scientific, 2007. Campbell-Kelly, Martin. “Charles Babbage’s Table of Logarithms (1827).” Annals of the History of Computing 10 (1988): 159–69. Campbell-Kelly, Martin, and William Aspray. Computer: A History of
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“Sight and Signalling in the Navy.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 55, no. 5 (1916): 400–14. Dubbey, J. M. The Mathematical Work of Charles Babbage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. The Mechanization of the Mind: On the Origins of Cognitive Science. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Princeton
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. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Horgan, John. “Claude E. Shannon.” IEEE Spectrum (April 1992): 72–75. Horsley, Victor. “Description of the Brain of Mr. Charles Babbage, F.R.S.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B 200 (1909): 117–31. Huberman, Bernardo A. The Laws of the Web
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, and Michael Wheeler, eds. The Mechanical Mind in History. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008. Huskey, Harry D., and Velma R. Huskey. “Lady Lovelace and Charles Babbage.” Annals of the History of Computing 2, no. 4 (1980): 299–329. Hyatt, Harry Middleton. Folk-Lore from Adams County, Illinois. 2nd and rev. ed
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F., with Lisa Wolverton. Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet. New York: Norton, 2008. Menabrea, L. F. “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage. With notes upon the Memoir by the Translator, Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace.” Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève 82 (October 1842). Also available online at http
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the Electric Telegraph in the Victorian Age.” British Journal of the History of Science 33 (2000): 455–75. Moseley, Maboth. Irascible Genius: A Life of Charles Babbage, Inventor. London: Hutchinson, 1964. Mugglestone, Lynda. “Labels Reconsidered: Objectivity and the OED.” Dictionaries 21 (2000): 22–37. ———. Lost for Words: The Hidden History of
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, Richard. The First Part of the Elementarie Which Entreateth Chefelie of the Right Writing of Our English Tung. London: Thomas Vautroullier, 1582. Mullett, Charles F. “Charles Babbage: A Scientific Gadfly.” Scientific Monthly 67, no. 5 (1948): 361–71. Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine. Vol. 2, The Pentagon of Power.
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Problem Solving.” IEEE Communications Magazine 22 (1984): 123–26. Pulgram, Ernst. Theory of Names. Berkeley, Calif.: American Name Society, 1954. Purbrick, Louise. “The Dream Machine: Charles Babbage and His Imaginary Computers.” Journal of Design History 6:1 (1993): 9–23. Quastler, Henry, ed. Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology
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They have been translated into more than twenty languages. His Web site is at www.around.com. ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 4.1 Photograph courtesy of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 6.1 The New York Times Archive/Redux 7.1 Copyright Robert Lord 7.2 Reprinted with permission from Journal
by George Dyson · 28 Mar 2012 · 463pp · 118,936 words
and all its parts.”14 This ambition was fulfilled, some 150 years later, by the English mathematician, engineer, and patron saint of the programmable computer, Charles Babbage (1791–1871). “By a new system of very simple signs I ultimately succeeded in rendering the most complicated machine capable of explanation almost without the
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must have had some other purpose before they were used to fly. U-boat commanders appropriated the Enigma machine first developed for use by banks. Charles Babbage envisioned using the existing network of church steeples that rose above the chaos of London as the foundation for a packet-switched communications net. According
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shift in computational identity as objects are referred to more by process than by place. Such a language falls somewhere between the mechanical notation of Charles Babbage, able to describe and translate the logical function of any conceivable machine, and the language of DNA, able to encode the construction of proteins in
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.Samuel Butler, “Lucubratio Ebria,” Canterbury Press, 29 July 1865; reprinted in Jones, Notebooks of Samuel Butler, 40. 69.Butler, Unconscious Memory, 57. CHAPTER 3 1.Charles Babbage, The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise: A Fragment, 2d ed. (London: John Murray, 1838), 33. 2.Leibniz to Hobbes, 13/23 July 1670, in Noel Malcolm, ed
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, 1929), 180. 8.Leibniz, letter, n.d., quoted in H. W. Buxton, 1871, Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage Esq. F.R.S. (MS, 1871), Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing, vol. 13 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 51, 381. 9.Leibniz, 1685, in Smith, Source
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, 342. 13.Ibid., 344. 14.Leibniz, supplement to a letter to Christiaan Huygens, 8 September 1679, in Loemker, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1, 384–385. 15.Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (London: Longman, Green, 1864), 142. Facsimile reprint, New York: A. M. Kelley, 1969. 16.Buxton, Babbage, 158. 17
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, (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1951), 393. 19.Babbage, Passages, 42. 20.Buxton, Babbage, 46. 21.Babbage, Passages, 118–119. 22.Doron D. Swade, “Redeeming Charles Babbage’s Mechanical Computer,” Scientific American 268, no. 2 (February 1993): 86. 23.Charles Darwin, 1876, in Nora Barlow, ed., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809
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version published by Francis Darwin in 1896. 24.Ada Augusta Lovelace, Note A to L. F. Menabrea’s “Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, Esq.,” Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs, vol. 3 (London: J. E. & R. Taylor, 1843), reprinted in Henry Provost Babbage, ed., Babbage’s Calculating Engines: Being a
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Collection of Papers Relating to them; their History, and Construction (London: E. and F. Spon, 1889), 25. Facsimile reprint, Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982). 25.Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, 97. 26.Ibid., vii. 27
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.Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 4th ed., enlarged (London: Charles Knight, 1835), 273–276. 28.Babbage, Passages, 128. 29.George Boole, An Investigation
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Engine (ACE),” reprinted in B. E. Carpenter and R. W. Doran, eds., A. M. Turing’s A.C.E. Report of 1946 and Other Papers, Charles Babbage Reprint Series for the History of Computing, vol. 10 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), 20–105. 35.Hodges, Turing, 307. 36.Carpenter and Doran, Turing’s
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Personnel Security Board, 27 April 1954, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 655. 12.Ralph Slutz, interview by Christopher Evans, June 1976, OH 086, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 13.John von Neumann, “The Role of Mathematics in the Sciences and Society,” address to Princeton graduate alumni, June 1954
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for Advanced Study, RAND Corporation Memorandum P-377, 10 March 1953, 5–6. 20.Martin Schwarzschild, interview by William Aspray, 18 November 1986, OH 124, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 21.Richard Feynman, “Los Alamos from Below—Reminiscences of 1943–1945,” Engineering and Science 39, no. 2 (January–February 1976
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Neumann, n.d., Library of Congress, summarized in Aspray, von Neumann, 271. 38.Herman H. Goldstine, interview by Nancy Stern, 11 August 1980, OH 018, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 39.Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota, History of Computing, xvii. CHAPTER 6 1.Arthur Burks, Herman Goldstine, and John von Neumann
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, I Remember, 375. 17.Arthur W. Burks, interview by William Aspray, 20 June 1987, OH 136, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 18.Willis H. Ware, interview by Nancy Stern, 19 January 1981, OH 37, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 19.John von Neumann, “Governed,” review of Cybernetics, by Norbert Wiener
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Repercussions of Computers,” International Journal of Environmental Studies 1 (1970): 69. 24.Burks, interview. 25.Ralph Slutz, interview by Christopher Evans, June 1976, OH 86, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 26.Ware, interview. 27.Herman H. Goldstine, interview by Nancy Stern, 11 August 1980, OH 18
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, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 28.Norbert Wiener, I Am a Mathematician (New York: Doubleday, 1956), 242–243. 29.Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Norbert
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American Mathematics, 1776–1976 (Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1977), 119. 43.Martin Schwarzschild, interview by William Aspray, 18 November 1986, OH 124, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 44.Edmund C. Berkeley, Giant Brains (New York: John Wiley, 1949), 5. 45.John von Neumann, 1948, “The General and
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16 (1962): 122. 8.Barricelli, “Numerical Testing of Evolution Theories: Part 1,” 70. 9.James Pomerene, interview by Nancy Stern, 26 September 1980, OH 31, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 10.Nils A. Barricelli, “Symbiogenetic Evolution Processes Realized by Artificial Methods,” Methodos 9, nos. 35–36 (1957): 152. 11.Barricelli
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-11827, 2 May 1946, 2, 16. 42.RAND, The RAND Corporation, 23. 43.Paul Baran, interview by Judy O’Neill, 5 March 1990, OH 182, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 44.J. M. Chester, Cost of a Hardened, Nationwide Buried Cable Network, RAND Corporation Memorandum RM-2627-PR, 1 October
by Andrew L. Russell · 27 Apr 2014 · 675pp · 141,667 words
published in journals such as IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Enterprise & Society, and Information & Culture. Russell has been awarded fellowships from the Charles Babbage Institute, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Cambridge Studies in
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Warren, New Jersey; Marc Weber at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California; and Katie Charlet, Arvid Nelson, and Stephanie Crowe at the Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Technology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Archival research and historical scholarship are costly and time consuming, and the
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this book: the Adelle and Erwin Tomash Fellowship in the History of Information Processing and the Arthur L. Norberg Travel Fund, both administered by the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota; the Association for Computing Machinery History Committee; the American Society for Information Science & Technology History Fund; the John
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“Domestic and International Standards Activities for Distributed Systems,” September 28, 1978, SPARC/DISY 138, Box 18, Folder 12, Charles W. Bachman Papers (CBI 125), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota [hereafter “Bachman Papers”]. 33 Simon Nora and Alain Minc, The Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France (Cambridge
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7 (1965): 264–270. 48 Herbert S. Bright to Chairmen and Secretaries of X3 Subcommittees and Task Groups, January 31, 1961, Herbert S. Bright Papers, Charles Babbage Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Box 5, Folder 3 [hereafter, Bright Papers]. 49 Nathan Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of
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1951–2006 (PhD dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2006). 50 See “X3.2 Documents 100–599,” Honeywell, Inc., X3.2 Standards Subcommittee Records, Charles Babbage Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Box 1, Folder 21 [hereafter X3.2 Standards Subcommittee Records] and “Materials on proposed American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII),
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Bright Papers, Box 5, Folder 4; Business Equipment Manufacturers’ Association, Committee X3 Organization Manual (New York: American National Standards Institute, 1970), Charles A. Phillips Papers, Charles Babbage Institute, Minneapolis, Minnseota, Box 1, Folder 2. 57 Bryan Pfaffenberger, “The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution Was No
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very much intentional, since such a network would keep users from being captured by one of the vendors pictured. Source: Louis Pouzin.Courtesy of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. INWG Note #49, Louis Pouzin, “Network Architectures and Components,” Box 1, Alexander McKenzie Collection of Computer Networking Development Records
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international politics.93 1 Louis Pouzin, “Standards in Data Communications and Computer Networks,” March 1975, INWG 79, Alexander McKenzie Collection of Computer Networking Development Records, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis [hereafter, McKenzie Collection]. 2 Eli Noam, Telecommunications in Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 7–25. 3 Simon
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Public Interest (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971). 5 Louis Pouzin, oral history interview by Andrew L. Russell, April 2, 2012, Paris, France. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 6 ARPA was renamed DARPA (for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 1972; then ARPA again in 1993, before changing
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of defense. Ruina was ARPA director between February 1961 and September 1963. Jack Ruina, oral history interview by William Aspray, April 20, 1989, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 11 Howard Rheingold, Tools for Thought, 138. The evocative language of “religious conversion” also appears in J. C. R.
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Licklider, oral history interview by William Aspray and Arthur L. Norberg, October 28, 1988, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; and John A. N. Lee and Robert Rosin, “The Project MAC Interviews,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 14
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Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA. See also Paul Baran, oral history interview by Judy O’Neill, March 5, 1990, Menlo Park, California. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 17 Baran interview, IEEE History Center, 1999. 18 In this era, a “small” computer was about the size of a
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21, 22, 23, 24,” December 1972, INWG 11, McKenzie Collection. 35 Rémi Déspres, oral history interview by Valérie Schafer, May 16, 2012, Paris, France. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 36 Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn, “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication,” IEEE Transactions on Communications Com-22
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Magazine (November 2010): 40–46. 45 Jean-Louis Grangé, oral history interview by Andrew L. Russell, April 3, 2012, Paris, France. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Pouzin interview, Charles Babbage Institute. 46 Déspres, “X.25 Virtual Circuits.” 47 Rybczynski, “Commercialization of Packet Switching,” 26–31; Déspres, “X.25 Virtual Circuits”; Sirbu
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: AFIPS, 1976), 483–494. 53 Bernard Strassburg, interview by James Pelkey, Washington, D.C., May 3, 1988, courtesy of James Pelkey. 54 Pouzin interview, Charles Babbage Institute. 55 Louis Pouzin, “The Network Business – Monopolies and Entrepreneurs,” (n.d. 1976), INWG Legal/Political Note 6, McKenzie Collection. 56 Abbate, Inventing the
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INWG and the Conception of the Internet,” 67–69. 61 Robert E. Kahn, oral history interview by Judy O’Neill, April 24, 1990, Reston, Virginia. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 62 Vint Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine (1974), “Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program,” RFC 675, http://tools.ietf
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Innovation,” chapter 6. 78 Vinton Cerf, oral history interview by Judy O’Neill, April 24, 1990, Reston, Virginia. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 79 Cerf interview, Charles Babbage Institute, 1990. 80 Cerf interview, Charles Babbage Institute, 1990. 81 Vint Cerf, “Report on TC-6 Meeting in Sao Paulo, October 1975,” December 1, 1975,
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WG 6.1,” March 16, 1976, INWG 110, McKenzie Collection. 82 Michel Gien, oral history interview by Andrew L. Russell, April 3, 2012, Paris, France. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; McKenzie, “INWG and the Conception of the Internet,” 70. 83 Pouzin, INWG 106. 84 Pouzin, “The Network Business – Monopolies
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and Entrepreneurs.” 85 Dépres interview, Charles Babbage Institute; John Day, interview with James Pelkey, July 11, 1988, Canton, Massachusetts, courtesy of James Pelkey; Najah Naffah, oral history interview by Andrew L. Russell
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, April 2, 2012, Paris, France. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 86 Derek Barber, “Meeting in Toronto, August 1976,” (n.d., 1976), INWG 128, McKenzie Collection; Louis Pouzin, “Cyclades ou
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Nora and Minc, The Computerization of Society; Valérie Schafer, “Appropriating Packet Switching Networks, Making Cyclades Network”; Schafer, La France en Reseaux; Després interview, Charles Babbage Institute; Pouzin interview, Charles Babbage Institute. 87 Vint Cerf, quoted in Ian Peter, “Separating TCP and IP,” September 30, 2004, available from http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history
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5 (1974): 16. 3 “Resolution 11. Establishing Subcommittee 16 – Open System Interconnection,” Box 19, Folder 1, Charles W. Bachman Papers, 1951–2007, CBI 125, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis [hereafter, Bachman Papers]. 4 Martin Libicki, Information Technology Standards: Quest for the Common Byte (Boston: Digital Press, 1995), 11. 5
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National Standards Institute, 1970). 13 Louis Pouzin, “TC 6 Contributions to ISO,” June 15, 1976, INWG 122, Alexander McKenzie Collection of Computer Networking Development Records, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis [hereafter, McKenzie Collection]; Louis Pouzin, “Virtual Circuits vs. Datagrams: Technical and Political Issues,” January 1976, INWG 106, McKenzie Collection;
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31 (2009): 42–54; “Facts on the Reorganization of ANSI Standards Committee X3,” December 1969, Box 1, Folder 2, Charles A. Phillips Collection, CBI 39, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 20 “Charter: Study Project on Distributed Systems,” July 20, 1977, Bachman Papers, Box 19, Folder 1. 21 Robert M.
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8; Richard N. Langlois, “External Economies and Economic Progress: The Case of the Microcomputer Industry,” Business History Review 66 (1992): 1–50. 62 Levilion interview, Charles Babbage Institute. 63 Harold C. Folts, “Scanning the Issue,” Proceedings of the IEEE 71 (1983): 1331–1333; Richard des Jardins, “Afterword: Evolving Towards OSI,” Proceedings
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California Press, 1992). 68 Louis Pouzin, “Ten Years of OSI – Maturity or Infancy?” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 23 (1991): 14. 69 Levilion interview, Charles Babbage Institute. 70 For numerous articles on GOSIP (Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile) and the progress of OSI more generally, see the collection of Connexions: The
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Interoperability Report that spans 1987–1996, hosted by the Charles Babbage Institute and available from http://www.cbi.umn.edu/hostedpublications/Connexions. 71 “U.S. Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile,” U.S. Federal Information Processing
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of OSI,” IBM Systems Journal 31 (1992): 313–335; David A. Mills, oral history interview by Andrew L. Russell, February 26, 2004, Newark, Delaware. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Piscitello and Chapin, Open Systems Networking, 3–29; John S. Quarterman, “The Demise of GOSIP,” Matrix News 4 (October 1994
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in the United Kingdom when they wrote their book. 74 Gérard Le Lann, oral history interview by Andrew L. Russell, April 3, 2012, Paris, France. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. 75 Day, Patterns in Network Architecture, 358. 76 John Aschenbrenner, “Report of Second Meeting of ISO/TC97/SC16,” July 18,
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/images/PSOC-MovingBeyondTCP.pdf (accessed November 22, 2012). 11 Robert Kahn, oral history interview by Judy E. O’Neill, April 24, 1990, Reston, Virginia. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 12 Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
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were just a committee down here that solves configuration problems.” David A. Mills, oral history interview by Andrew L. Russell, February 26, 2004, Newark, Delaware. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 14 Vint Cerf (1989), “The Internet Activities Board,” RFC 1120, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1120 (accessed September 25,
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2013). 15 Robert Taylor, oral history interview by William Aspray, February 28, 1989, San Francisco, California. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 16 L. Roberts, ”Expanding AI Research and Founding ARPANET,” in Thomas C. Bartee, ed., Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence:
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, IN: Howard W. Sams & Company, 1988), 229. 17 Lawrence G. Roberts, oral history interview by Arthur L. Norberg, April 4, 1989, San Francisco, California. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Vint Cerf, quoted in Stephen Segaller, Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet (New York: TV Books
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Larry Roberts, and Stephen Wolff, “A Brief History of the Internet,” http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml (accessed September 25, 2013); Kahn interview, Charles Babbage Institute; Vinton Cerf (1990), “The Internet Activities Board,” RFC 1160, http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1160 (accessed September 25, 2013); Ed Krol (1993), “FYI
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on ‘What Is the Internet?’” RFC 1462, http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1462 (accessed September 25, 2013). 27 Mills interview, Charles Babbage Institute. 28 IETF Proceedings are available from http://ietf.org/meetings/past.meetings.html. 29 See James Pelkey, “Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of
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, 1994, 2001, and 2006. 70 Gérard Le Lann, oral history interview by Andrew L. Russell, April 3, 2012, Paris, France, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Mills interview, Charles Babbage Institute; Abbate, Inventing the Internet, 181–220; Shane Greenstein, “The Emergence of the Internet: Collective Invention and Wild Ducks,” Industrial and Corporate
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Association, 1929), 84. 16 “Resolution 11. Establishing Subcommittee 16 – Open System Interconnection,” Box 19, Folder 1, Charles W. Bachman Papers, 1951–2007, CBI 125, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 17 John Day, interview by James Pelkey, July 11, 1988, courtesy of James Pelkey. 18 Jacques Pelkmans, “The GSM Standard
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and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Bibliography Manuscript Collections Alex McKenzie Collection of Computer Networking Development Records (CBI 123), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. American Engineering Standards Committee Minutes, American National Standards Institute, New York, New York. AT&T Archives and History Center,
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Warren, New Jersey. AT&T Archives and History Center, San Antonio, Texas. Charles W. Bachman Papers (CBI 125), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Commerce Papers Series, The Papers of Herbert Hoover, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa. Herbert S. Bright Papers (
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Oral history interview by James Pelkey, May 3, 1988, Washington, DC. Taylor, Robert. Oral history interview by William Aspray, February 28, 1989, San Francisco, California. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Zimmermann, Hubert. Oral history interview by James Pelkey, May 25, 1988. Zimmermann, Hubert. Oral history interview with Mariann Unterluggauer, July
by Nathan L. Ensmenger · 31 Jul 2010 · 429pp · 114,726 words
ACM Ad-hoc Committee on Private EDP Schools,” (January 20, 1970), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 21, Folder 38, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 113. Hans A. Rhee, Office Automation in Social Perspective: The Progress and Social Implications of Electronic Data Processing (Oxford:
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no. 5 (1959): 4. 29. “The Certificate and Undergraduate Program,” (1959), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 1, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 30. “RAND Symposium, 1959” (1959). 31. George DiNardo, “Software Management and the Impact of Improved Programming Technology,” in Proceedings of
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Minneapolis. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. “Six Measures of Professionalism,” (1962), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 21, Folder 40, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 47. “Local Chapter CDP Publicity,” (1964), CBI 46, “John K. Swearingen Papers, 1936–1993,” Box 1, Folder 17, Archives of
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the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 48. “Letter Re: Four Year Degree Requirement,” (1970), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box
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University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 50. “Notes on ACM/DPMA merger” (1964), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 2, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; “Correspondence re: ACM/DPMA liason,” (1966), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 1, Archives of the
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Minutes of the Third Annual Meeting, Jan. 17–18, 1964,” (1964), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 3, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 53. “DPMA Certification Council minutes, 23rd meeting, April 1-4, 1970,” (1970) CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer
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At All Possible,” Computerworld (1971), found in CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1, Folder 30, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Alan Taylor; “Taylor Replies,” Computerworld (1971), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1,
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Folder 30, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; William Claghorn, “Rough draft of a reply to Alan Taylor,” (1971), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 18
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, Folder 47, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; “Letter to the editors of Computerworld,” (1971, unpublished), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 18, Folder 47,
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Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 59. Alan Taylor. “Members Look More Like Markets From Park Ridge.” Computerworld (April 14, 1971). CBI 116, “Institute for Certification
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of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1, Folder 30, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 60. “SCDP Draft Legislation,” (1974), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 11, Folder
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42, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 61. Ross, “Certification and Accreditation”; T.D.C. Kuch, “Unions or Licensing? or Both? or Neither?” Infosystems 20, no.
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66. “DPMA Board of Directors, 12th Meeting, 1967 Las Vegas,” (1967), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 8, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 67. Ibid. 68. Malcolm Smith, “Complaint about Boston exam,” (1969), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records,
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1960–1993,” Box 1, Folder 19, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 69. “The Certificate and Undergraduate Program,” (1959); “The Certificate and Undergraduate Program,” (1959), CBI 46, “John K. Swearingen Papers,
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CDP Requirements ‘Unduly Harsh’ Professionals Protest,” (1970), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1, Folder 27, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 79. Alex Orden, “The Emergence of a Profession,” Communications of the ACM 10, no. 3 (1967): 145–146. 80.
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(1968): 33. 85. “Executive Meeting Summary” (1966), CBI 46, “John K. Swearingen Papers, 1936–1993,” Box 1, Folder 3, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 86. Charles Babbage Institute Archives, box 88, folder 18, file 28. 87. “Correspondence re: Improper Use of CDP Initials,” (1966), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management
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Association records,” Box 18, Folder 22, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 88. “Correspondence re: Academic and Experience Req’s,” (1966), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 18, Folder 22
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, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 89. Canning, “The DPMA Certificate in Data Processing.” 90. Ibid.; “Letter from Jack Yarbrough,” CBI 46, Box 1, Folder
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Editors of Computerworld, March 1, 1972” (1972), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1, Folder 30, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 96. John Seitz, “Should DPMA Control Certification Process?” (letter to the editor), Computerworld (1971), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification
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University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “The Certificate and Undergraduate Program” (1959) CBI 46, “John K. Swearingen Papers, 1936–1993,” Box 1, Folder 13, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “The Certificate and Undergraduate Program” (1959), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 1, Archives of the
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Claghorn, William. “Rough draft of a reply to Alan Taylor,” (1971), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 18, Folder 47, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Clippinger, Richard F. A Logical Coding System Applied to the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). Technical report. Ballistic Research
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(7) (1958): 2. “Correspondence re: Academic & Experience Req’s” (1966), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 18, Folder 22, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “Correspondence re: ACM/DPMA Liason” (1966), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 1, Archives of the
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of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “Correspondence re: Improper Use of CDP Initials” (1966), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 18, Folder 22, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Cortada, James W. “Commercial Applications of the Digital Computer in American Corporations, 1945–1995.” IEEE Annals of the History of
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“DPMA Board of Directors, 9th Meeting, March 11–12, 1966” (1966), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 7, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “DPMA Board of Directors, 10th Meeting, March 11–12, 1966” (1966), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22
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, Folder 7, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “DPMA Board of Directors, 12th Meeting, 1967 Las Vegas” (1967), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder
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, 23rd meeting, April 1-4, 1970,” (1970) CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960-1993,” Box 1, Folder 26, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “DPMA Revises CDP Test Requirements.” Data Management (1967): 34– 35. Dwyer, John. “Analysts Couched” (letter to the editor) Datamation
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Business History Review 33 (1959): 345–364. 11th RAND Symposium (1969), CBI 78, “RAND Symposia on Computing Transcripts,” Box 3, Folder 4, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Elliot, Richard. “Thinking Big: In Computer Software, the Reach Frequently Exceeds the Grasp.” Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly
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of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Higgins, Robert. “Letter to the DPMA.” (1973) CBI 46, “John K. Swearingen Papers, 1936–1993,” Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Hirsch, Rudolph. “Programming Performance: Monitoring, Maximization, and Prediction.” In Special Interest Group on Computer Personnel Research Annual Conference, 26–36
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. “Letter Re: Four Year Degree Requirement” (1970), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960-1993,” Box 1, Folder 27, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Levy, Steven. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1984. Lewis, Ralph. “Never Overestimate the
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.C. Elliot re: unauthorized use of CDP initials.” (October 26, 1970) CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 18, Folder 22, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Madden, Don. “The Population Problem: Inexperience Will Dominate.” Datamation 8 (1) (1962): 26. Madden, J. D. “Letter to Calvin
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CDP Requirements 'Unduly Harsh' Professionals Protest” (1970) CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960-1993,” Box 1, Folder 27, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “Notes on ACM/DPMA merger” (1964), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 22, Folder 2, Archives of
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Minnesota, Minneapolis. “Response to Business Automation article on CDP” (1964), CBI 46, “John K. Swearingen Papers, 1936–1993,” Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Rhee, Hans A. Office Automation in Social Perspective: The Progress and Social Implications of Electronic Data Processing. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
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(1963): 48–50. “SCDP Draft Legislation” (1974), CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 11, Folder 42, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Schnaars, Steven P., and Sergio Carvalho. “Predicting the Market Evolution of Computers: Was the Revolution Really Unforeseen.” Technology in Society
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?” (letter to the editor) Computerworld (1971). CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1, Folder 30, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 17th RAND Symposium: Problems of the AFIPS Societies Revisited (1975), CBI 78, “RAND Symposia on Computing Transcripts,” Box 3, Folder
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7, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Shannon, Claude, and Warren Weaver. A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949. Shapiro, Stuart. “Splitting
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Science 157 (3795) (1967): 1373–1374. “Six Measures of Professionalism” (1962), CBI 88, “Data Processing Management Association records,” Box 21, Folder 40, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Smith, Malcolm. “Complaint about Boston exam” (1969) CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1
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, Folder 19, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “Social Science Notes.” Science News 91 (13) (1967): 312. “Software Gap: A Growing Crisis for Computers.” Business Week 127 (November
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Now, If At All Possible.” (Computerworld, 1971). CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1, Folder 30, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Taylor, Alan. “Members Look More Like Markets From Park Ridge.” Computerworld (April 14, 1971). CBI 116, “Institute for Certification
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of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1, Folder 30, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Taylor, Alan. “Taylor Replies.” (Computerworld, 1971). CBI 116, “Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals Records, 1960–1993,” Box 1,
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Folder 30, Archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. “The Thinking Machine.” Time Magazine, January 23, 1950: 54–60. “The Thoughtless Information Technologist.” Datamation 12 (8) (1966): 21–22
by M. Mitchell Waldrop · 14 Apr 2001
a way to automate those calculations. Unlike most of the oth- ers, however, Aiken was familiar with the work of the nineteenth-century English inventor Charles Babbage, who had designed a series of computational devices that culminated in the 1830s with his "Analytical Engine," a general-purpose, program- mable calculator that could
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. Moreover, Babbage's surviving designs show that his Analytical Engine would indeed have worked; today, Ada Lovelace is widely honored as the first programmer, and Charles Babbage is like- wise revered as the spiritual father of modern computing. It is certainly true that Howard Aiken, who had come across Babbage's biography
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program managers through a "wire-brushing," in his words. "DARPA was like a big cashier booth," he would say in a 1991 interview with the Charles Babbage Institute, "and my feeling was that the program managers did not have the kind of understanding of the pro- grams that I felt comfortable with
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still have unfolded pretty much the way it did? Maybe. On the one hand, as Lick himself pointed out in his 1988 interview with the Charles Babbage Institute, the pieces were already in place in 1962. Time-sharing experiments were already under way at MIT, BBN, Dartmouth, and elsewhere. DEC was already
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York: William Morrow, 1988), 200. 18. Ibid., 228. 19. Ibid., 229. 20. Hiltzik, Dealers of LIghtnIng, 369. 21. Ibid., 359. BIBLIOGRAPHY ORAL HISTORIES FROM THE CHARLES BABBAGE INSTITUTE A pnceless resource for any historian of computing IS the collection of oral history interviews gathered over the past two decades by the University
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of Minnesota's Charles Babbage Institute, a center de- voted to the history of Information processing. The memones recounted in these conversations are what makes history come alIve. The CBl
by Robert Elliott Smith · 26 Jun 2019 · 370pp · 107,983 words
be used for number processing well into the twentieth century. A form of Pascaline mechanism, including Leibniz’s innovations, would in time be incorporated into Charles Babbage’s 1822 mechanical calculator, the Difference Engine, and then into the first ‘general purpose’ computing devices that followed in its wake. Through general purpose computation
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was partially inspired by an automaton not unlike those created by Vaucanson decades before. In the last year of the eighteenth century, eight-year-old Charles Babbage saw a silver automaton of a naked woman in a Covent Garden amusement shop. When writing his autobiography over sixty years later, Babbage recalled the
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moment he first saw The Silver Lady, saying that the automaton‘attudinized in a most fascinating manner. Her eyes were full of imagination, and irresistible’. Charles Babbage grew to become a mathematician and mechanical engineer whose accomplishments are vast and span everything from modern economics to the pricing of postage stamps, but
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, fame, position and intellect gave her access to many of the great scientists, technologists and thinkers of the day, including Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens and Charles Babbage. At the time of their meeting, in 1833, Babbage was forty-two and already one of the most famous inventors in England, while Ada was
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’s journey. And, in the same way, the story of Ada Lovelace would make a fine Hollywood hero’s journey with Ada as Luke Skywalker, Charles Babbage as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Byron’s Romantic image as a sort of psychological Darth Vader. The unprecedented success of the film series led to
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become a complex system, performing in ways that are hard to comprehend and control, while also manifesting all the flaws and biases discussed. Ironically, when Charles Babbage constructed his Analytical Engine to eliminate the mass production of human errors in logarithm tables he little suspected that we would one day reach a
by Richard Holmes · 15 Jan 2008 · 778pp · 227,196 words
years before, as one of the defining moments of the age. Although combining many sources of inspiration (it is possible that Keats may have attended Charles Babbage’s 1815 ‘Lectures on Astronomy’ at the Royal Institution), the poem itself was written in less than four hours. Keats was twenty, and attending a
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the first Prizes without exception’.21 Caroline had remained in his confidence. She was eagerly introduced to his glittering Cambridge friends, among them the mathematician Charles Babbage, future Lucasian Professor, and the Lancashire geologist William Whewell, future Master of Trinity. She had been a guest of honour at his twenty-first birthday
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Banks was trying to hold back a tide of history. It was no coincidence that it was the young men from Cambridge, John Herschel and Charles Babbage, who were leading the astronomers away from the Royal Society. The increasing separation and professionalisation of the individual scientific disciplines had begun at the universities
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younger men was shown in several ways. He made attempts to befriend John Herschel (now twenty-eight) over Park Street dinners, and voted money for Charles Babbage’s first prototype of his famous ‘difference engine’, or calculating machine. In 1821 he made sure that the annual Copley Medal was awarded to young
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-to John’s admiration and amazement-to sustain long nights in the shed beneath the telescope scaffolding. When he formed the Royal Astronomical Society with Charles Babbage in 1820, their first Honorary Member was his aunt Caroline, and this gesture sealed the bond between them. John had strong views about science being
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Forty-Foot is yours.’74 On 16 October there was a final reception for her at Bedford Square, London, hosted by Lady Herschel and John. Charles Babbage rode down from Cambridge, arriving at the very last minute. Caroline’s parting message to him, an unspoken one, was about John. ‘I could find
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had John Herschel appointed as one of the two Society Secretaries in 1824, but then undermined the reformist implications of this by refusing to have Charles Babbage elected as the other. The irascible Babbage accused Davy of temporising and trimming, while Davy let it be known that the combination of two Cambridge
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the sciences, and that ‘to study it was to catch the ultimate forces of nature itself’ at work.138 It was frequently referred to by Charles Babbage, John Herschel and Charles Darwin. Though clearly fitting into a recognisable pattern, in which a highly rational man develops intense mystical longings towards the end
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the personalities and administration of science, quite unlike anything his father had experienced. The unworldly Michael Faraday could not be persuaded to stand. The mercurial Charles Babbage was regarded as unreliable and unsuitable. Both Wollaston and Thomas Young were dead, while the aristocratic candidate was the charming but ineffective Duke of Sussex
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placate his rival. If so, it did not have the desired effect. Between 1829 and 1831 a series of publications by John Herschel, his friend Charles Babbage and the Scottish science writer David Brewster (who had done fine research work on polarised light) pursued the emotive theme of the supposed ‘decline of
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same time as the national self-questioning reflected in the violent political debates surrounding the Great Reform Bill. 2 The first salvo was fired by Charles Babbage, when he released a slim but carefully targeted volume, provocatively entitled Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, in the spring of 1830. Two
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included almost all those who would soon become the rising stars in the firmament of early Victorian science: Michael Faraday, Sir John Herschel, John Dalton, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell, Thomas Chalmers, Thomas Malthus and William Somerville. The only notable absentee was Charles Darwin, just then botanising in
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all profits.42 Reading Buckland on geology, Mary Somerville mournfully observed: ‘facts are such stubborn things’. Faraday, a lifelong Sandemanian, refused to make any comment. Charles Babbage threatened to write a ninth and scathing last treatise, but he never finished it.43 On a more whimsical note, William Sotheby, Coleridge’s old
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carefully edited with pious footnotes pointing out where Davy’s views were theologically unorthodox, and suggesting proper corrections. The work was referred to extensively by Charles Babbage and John Herschel in their own books. In his Preface to his Principles of Geology, Lyell mentioned Davy’s scientific speculations, but argued that the
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already the pioneers. The first official woman member of the BAAS was not accepted until 1853, though this was not entirely through want of trying. Charles Babbage wrote archly, before the Oxford meeting of 1832: ‘I think that ladies ought to be admitted at some kind of assembly: remember the dark eyes
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that declaration as, for thirty years, he struggled with the implication of evolution by natural selection. With Henslow he read and discussed the papers of Charles Babbage and John Herschel, becoming aware of the subtle implications of the inductive philosophy, and also of the rumbling dissatisfactions with the Royal Society. Inspired by
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Royal Society. In 1788 he presented them with a beautiful Shelton long case astronomical clock, with brass compensated pendulum (private archive, John Herschel-Shorland, Norfolk). CHARLES BABBAGE, 1791-1871. FRS 1816. Brilliant young mathematician, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, close friend of Herschel’s son and Caroline’s nephew John Herschel
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Ritter: Romantic Physics in Germany’, in Romanticsm and the Sciences, edited by Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, CUP, 1990 Sorcerer and Apprentice; and Young Scientists Charles Babbage, The Decline of Science in England, 1830 David Brewster, Life of Isaac Newton, Murray’s Family Library, 1831 The British Association for the Advancement of
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, 49, 1829, pp439-59; and Hamilton, p270 3 Thomas Carlye, Sartor Resartus, 1833 4 Anthony Hyman, ‘Charles Babbage: Science and Reform’, in Cambridge Scientific Minds, edited by Peter Harman and Simon Mitton, CUP, 2002 5 Charles Babbage, The Decline of Science in England, 1830, p102 6 Ibid., p152 7 Ibid., p44 8 Ibid., p102
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from the printed Introduction by her publisher John Murray 42 James Secord, Vestiges of Natural Creation, Chicago UP, 2000, p47 43 ‘Fragment of Bridgwater Treatise’, Charles Babbage, Collected Works, vol 11 44 William Sotheby’s poem is reprinted in Tim Fulford (editor), Romanticism and Science, 1773-1833 45 The Times, 4 September
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