Thrilling Adventure! Treasure Discovered!

This entry is part 5 of 11 in the series Meanwhile..

So here’s a little tale for you.  As it features ME, it is of course a gripping, hair-raising story of FUN and COOL and… okay, it’s a tale of.. LIBRARIES.

So I’ve been tromping all over London in search of a few bits and bobs of books on Babbage, and a public library catalogue search for “The Mathematical Work of Charles Babbage” took me down to the fine Upper Norwood Public Library (additional  geek note: I have a map of London in my head that consists of locations of Sherlock Holmes stories).

I couldn’t find the book on the shelves, so I asked the librarians; and one of them went down into the basement to see if it might be there.  The other librarian told me they used to have quite a few Babbage books there because he was born right around the corner, and had I seen the plaque?

I had not seen the plaque, so I ran out and looked at the Blue Plaque (it was blue! and a plaque!) and when I came back the librarian was emerging from the basement looking downcast and apologetic.  “I’m really sorry– I can’t find the books you’re looking for; we must have cleared them out.  This is the only book we have on Charles Babbage.”  And she hands me this:

passagescover

“Huh!”  I said, “It’s Babbage’s autobiography, Passages From the Life of a Philosopher! I had no idea there was a modern reprint!”  So I start flipping through it and then I say “Waaaaiit a minute.. I don’t think this IS a modern reprint..”

Call me crazy, but I think this is a first edition:

passagestitle

Click for larger, and to read the wildly inappropriate quotation from Byron’s “Don Juan”.

I could be wrong of course, but it certainly feels old, and there’s no other copyright in there.  Hilariously, inside that criminal modern binding it’s got the traditional little library flag with all the stamps.  It was last let out in 1972.

So I grabbed it and fled to Panama!

No no, of course not, I checked it out like a civilized person and THEN I fled to Panama.

Actually, it’s probably not worth THAT much, even if it is the real thing– copies in fair condition still in the original binding go for around 2000 pounds, so this one is… I dunno, a few hundred?  It’s pretty beat up, sadly. Anyways I figure if it IS a first edition, and if the library is cool with it, I might take a little whip-round here on the site and see if I can get it re-bound properly and maybe put on display or something, I don’t know… it seems wrong to just put it back in the basement.

addendum for those burning with anxiety: I did finally track down The Mathematical Work of Charles Babbage in another libarary.. so far I haven’t gotten even one good gag out of it, can you believe it!

Lovelace and Babbage Vs The Client Pt 3

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series The Client

My purpose in this episode is get all the computer gags out of the way.















This episode is dedicated to my husband, who keeps asking, “When are they going to FIGHT CRIME?”

Notes Bonanza!!

-Queen Victoria: totally took over the world!

-Charles Babbage: totally fought crime!

-Ada Lovelace: totally swore while debugging: “.. for it is damnably troublesome work, and plagues me.” Can I agree with the opinion of several biographers, that at the very least the Babbage-Lovelace letters during the writing of the Notes ought to be online, not least for its exceptional entertainment value?

-Did Charles Babbage actually design an error pop-up for the Analytical Engine that said ‘WRONG’? Come on I couldn’t make up something that funny in a MILLION YEARS! In the later description in his autobiography he adds a ‘loud and continuous’ bell for the full user experience.

-The punchline to the cheese story is, in fact, a chart.

-The Victorians invented cute pictures of kittens but it was up to the Edwardians to add the LOL caption.

-Charles Babbage once refused a knighthood unless it was specifically given for his work on the calculating engines. Babbage had a very strange streak of what looks like self-destruction; although he was famous for craving public honours and recognition, he tended to shoot them down when they were offered. Here’s a couple of anecdotes that give you, as it were, the Alpha and Omega of Babbage– the charming, entrancing genius, and the bitter, destructive egoist.

- Babbage’s speech is extracted from Reflections On the Decline of Science in England. Like everything Babbage wrote it’s extremely worth reading and still relevant, provided you are ready to skim the WTF? bits.

-The HAL gag (‘Just what do you think you are doing Lovelace’) is a reference to what Turing called “The Lovelace Objection”, denying the possibility of artificial intelligence.

I’m afraid that gag might be an instance of my having done way too much research, to the point that the jokes are getting a little obscure, and I’m definitely getting waaay too caught up in biography. It’s a convoluted, contentious, and ambiguous tale that really ought to consist of half-history, half-historiography; I’m trying to triangulate my way to an understanding here from a variety of sources none of which I find entirely satisfactory. I started to write out a little potted version, however it was turning out three times longer than the comic itself; and though it may have secured me Lasting Fame, I’ll spare you, except for what you need to get the gag:

Babbage and Lovelace’s spat there is quoted from their one-and-only relationship meltdown. From a letter from Lovelace to her mother:

“I am sorry to have to come to the conclusion that he is one of the most impracticable, selfish, & intemperate persons one can have to do with.”

(Lovelace had a habit of underlining words that I find either annoying or endearing depending on my mood.)

The spat was caused by Babbage trying to sneak in, at the last minute, one of what I’m starting call his ‘fund my difference engine you bastards!!’ essays as a preface to the Notes Lovelace was writing on the Analytical Engine– unsigned, which would give the impression that it had been written by same person who wrote the notes. Lovelace freaked, writing to him: “Be assured that I am your best friend; but that I never can or will support you in acting on principles which I conceive to be not only wrong in themselves, but suicidal.” Babbage was, quote, “furious”. Babbage published the essay himself anonymously (‘who could possibly have written this?’ the public asked themselves, ‘It’s so mysterious!!’) a month later- you can read it for yourself here. I report, you decide!

Babbage ‘refused all conditions’ in response to a gigantic and occasionally unhinged letter Lovelace sent him, saying, A- You’re the most annoying person in the world and no one could work with you in a million years, and B- Hey! Let’s work together to build an Analytical Engine, on condition that 1. I handle all public relations (she actually says, “relations with any fellow-creature or fellow-creatures”, LOL) 2. You become my Sen-Sei (give me your ‘intellectual assistance and supervision’), and 3. Myself and a board appointed by you take over the business side, leaving you to focus on that inventing thing you do so well. Babbage wrote “Saw A.A.L. and refused all conditions” in the margin.

I have to say as a personal note that while Babbage needed a business manager more desperately than anyone else in history, and few people besides Lovelace would have had enough obsession with the Engines to see the project through the inevitable calamities, Lovelace had problems of her own which would have hampered the achievement of the steam-powered information age. To the ‘Byron Devil’ I believe we can give the name of ‘manic-depression’, and immediately after the Notes thing she turned her attention with personal urgency to the field of brain chemistry. I have to say, respect to Ada for recognizing it as a neurological problem; one, however, that she really needed to be born 150 years later to study.

Anyways– this breach lasted for all of a couple of weeks, because they seem to be closer friends than ever after this- her husband describes him as “her constant intellectual companion” in the last years of her life and certainly their letters are trusting, affectionate, and sometimes cryptic in a way that provides a happy and fact-free field for speculation (although twenty years later, Babbage is still mad about the Notes thing.. I’m starting to get an inkling that Babbage had kind of an issue with not Letting Things Go).

After that.. well, Babbage kept tinkering with the designs for the Analytical Engine and went to war with the street musicians. Ada both tinkered, and went to war with, her own brain chemistry. Babbage had 28 years to live, Ada only 9; for the most part, they became more and more miserable, didn’t accomplish much else, and then they DIED. They fought crime and had adventures and LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER, DAMN IT!!

It may be a while before the next episode, and I have to devote myself to drawing up my Spectacular Spectacular for the ultra-cool Museum of the History of Science!!! However, I can guarantee that Babbage and Lovelace will fight crime..

Miscellany

philosopherwalk

Long renders and an itchy Google finger turn up a strange, sudden little window into the past:

So, what DID Babbage talk about when he talked about Ada? WHOA.

I found that little story amazing for a few reasons-

-I’m kind of staggered by the fact that Babbage is telling this stuff to a complete stranger, less than two years, I think it would be, after Ada’s death.

- Mere interrelated symbols in the form of ‘words’ are insufficient to convey how madly I love that Babbage thought Lovelace was the too-logical one. Through the comic I am Channeling the Higher Truths of the Universe!!

- Oh God, the image of Babbage teasing Lovelace with shaggy-dog stories is so overwhelmingly adorable it’s kind of choking me up a little.

I have a policy here of linking only to primary sources, and mainly stuff that’s funny; this automatically means I can link to pretty much nothing about Lovelace. She lived in the realm of private letters and private gossip, lots of which is contradictory and none of which is online. She herself had a personality that I still find, after reading her collected letters and three four! different biographies, incredibly opaque (certainly compared to Babbage!). Frankly Babbage’s view of her- a little over-thinkie, a little gullible, and with a lot of the ‘Byron Devil’- accords the closest to mine!

Ghu. Too much history! This is supposed to be my ‘learning comics’ blog!

So I think my main issue from the last episode was, as usual, panel flow.  I think I’ll have to drop Victoria’s font, or find a more legible substitute, because it’s massively disrupting the pacing is my feeling. The other big difficulty I ran into here was juggling so many characters and keeping a clear sense of space. Probably I should have staged this shot differently:

flow

If I had Babbage on the far side of Wellington to begin with, that cut would work better I think. I’m slowly figuring out that comics are different from storyboards in that you can effectively collapse several actions into one panel- my instinct, coming from film, is to think I need to draw all kinds of stuff that isn’t necessary– you can go from point A to point C without drawing in B, provided you compose A and C correctly.

Still depressed over Ada so to end on a lighter note:

You know you’ve arrived when some random sports mag calls somone “the Babbage of coursing writers”.

OMG BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE STOP STEALING MY GAGS!! I mean, I like my jokes to be extensively safety-tested, but a giant, crashy Difference Engine in 1851?! Now I’m worried about this material being fatigued…

Lovelace and Babbage Vs. The Client Pt 2

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series The Client

It’s actually taken this long for Minion to get through all of Queen Victoria’s titles..













On to The Client Part 3!

So historically accurate IT’S PRACTICALLY A DOCUMENTARY!

-Babbage lists some of the annoying questions he got asked about his engines here.  He ascribes the question about the wrong numbers sometimes to ‘ladies’ and sometimes to ‘members of Parliament’;  having lost count of the number of times I’ve explained to people that I can still be an animator even  though ‘it’s all done with computers now’ I have no problem believing this was asked more than once.

- Charles Babbage’s many friends spent a lot of time kicking him in the shins, because every once in a while he seems to have enjoyed setting his career on fire in order to watch the pretty flames. His friend Herschel said he should be ‘slapped in the face’ for Dear Royal Society of Really Important People: You Are All Corrupt Idiots!; I particularly like the dedication- “I was going to dedicate this to some guy but now he’s frantically backpedalling for some reason!”

Oh Babbage. Babbage! What are you doing? You are CAUSING PAIN to even your devoted friends at The Chemical Record! By the way that review is excellent (I say that as a devoted Babbage fanatic), read in conjunction with Babbage’s Guide to the Exposition of 1851 it gives a good overview of the state of scientific societies at the time. If you’re into that sort of thing, I don’t know. It also gives a glimpse into what the placards in the Science Museum call Babbage’s ‘personality issues’.

- “The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.” I know Victoria’s font is really annoying but it’s actually called “The King and Queen Font” so I had to use it. Just this once.

- The debugging crowbar is the actual crowbar used to debug the Difference Engine rebuild!

-You can see the woven portrait of Jacquard in the background there, whose punchcard loom inspired Babbage with the idea for the Analytical Engine.

- Ladies and Gentlemen, The Cheese Story. It’s kiiind of like Flatland, but with.. more… cheese. Charles Babbage, what is that doing in your autobiography? As Babbage was a famous raconteur, and his autobiography is full of his greatest hits, I guess he had a good reaction to it at some point.. maybe it’s all in the timing.

I’ve got a lot more notes, but they’ll go on part 3.. I’ve drawn most of it so should it shouldn’t too long coming. Apologies are despicable and excuses more so, but in addition to the whole Giant Monsters thing I’ve been concurrently working on another commission. You may ask yourself, “what could possibly equal BBC Techlab in coolness?” OMG I’m not worthy!!

On to The Client Part 3!

Process

This entry is part 4 of 11 in the series Meanwhile..

Did I say two weeks?  Erm… here!  Look at some process art!

processpage

Please understand that at present my priories are necessarily:  1. Job 2. Pub 3. Comic 4. Food, laundry, etc.

I tend to do roughs while waiting for renders (that invaluable source of idleness in the visual effects industry).  Something else I do is Scholarship.  Some scholars search for Truth; here at 2dgoggles we search for Entertainment.  Something I was surprised to discover was that Charles Babbage was really, REALLY famous, back in the day, if by famous you mean, useful as a punchline in popular comedy.   A few highlights of my researches:

- Celebrity Chef fears Babbage’s army of steam-automota line-cooks!

- ‘Charles Babbage’ as useful shorthand for ‘really smart person’.  Nowadays you’d use Stephen Hawking for that kind of gag, who oddly enough holds Babbage’s old position of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge.

-Babbage the logarithmetical Frankenstein! :D

- How was Babbage’s autobiography received by his peers?  Yeeeeaahh.. that’s about right.

And I’m not even touching on the street music thing, which was HUGE.

Ada coverage from the period is far fewer and farther between, as a Lady only appears in the papers on her birth, her wedding, and her death, and that time they publish a huge paper on computer programming.  I did find an interesting entry in an 1860 encyclopedia (about 9 years after her death), which gets in the ever-popular horse-racing but also remarks on her as excelling in chess.   She turns up as a footnote in Hereditary Genius (with special section on Oarsmen, which are no insignificant part of the community!) under her father’s footnote of “strange, proud, passionate, and half-mad.”

Babbage AND Lovelace miscellany:

- Great little bunch of anecdotes about both them– she’s too mathematical for one guys taste, but Babbage ‘loved to talk of her’; kids made fun of Babbage at school– you just wait till I get my time machine you little bastards!

Babbage to Michael Faraday: Ada Lovelace is an enchanted math fairy! I can’t cope with the whole Enchantress thing, which is why I needed a stiff drink or twenty to get through much of her correspondence.

- The  motherlode of Babbage anecdotes! with special Lovelace cameo! A ‘Babbage’ search turns up, among plenty else, “Charles Babbage: Hot or Not?”, Babbage taking some ladies up to his place to see his etchings Ada Lovelace’s math, and proof that I’m PSYCHIC as his place is described as “crammed with books, papers, and apparatus in apparent confusion.”  Stereotypes: never wrong!

Man, when I read too much about Lovelace and Babbage’s unhappy ends I get so depressed I can hardly carry on with the comic.  However, I shall RESCUE THEM and keep them safe in a pocket dimension, where they will have a giant difference engine to play with in exchange for being made to do funny things.

Anyways– not too many more days until the Client Pt2, depending on how many gags I can throw overboard to lighten the load..