Comments on: Ada Lovelace Day!

By: Kaaz

Kaaz — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:51:17 +0000

New technical bookstore in Seattle: Ada’s Technical Books!
http://blog.seattletechnicalbooks.com/
w00t!

By: Ceridwen

Ceridwen — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:54:26 +0000

If she’s using a sextant for her coordinates she would have to be above deck.

By: lns

lns — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:15:10 +0000

Would the navigator actually have been above-decks, though? An indoor job, I’d have thought…

I do enjoy the way that each Ada and Babbage strip sends my brain thinking in half a dozen different directions…

lns

By: Ceridwen

Ceridwen — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:02:00 +0000

I just keep thinking that, on ship, she would have worn trousers. Who wants the navigator literally three sheets to the wind?

By: lns

lns — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:43:33 +0000

Debbie G’s idea, Ken, she gets the credit!

But yes, I am going to play around with some scraps in the next few weeks and let Ms Padua know how the results go. Ms Creesey with fully-reefable skirts!

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:09:16 +0000

This is wonderful work. The draftsmanship — on Babbage and Brunel in particular, but really in general — reminds me of late-period Eisner (and Eisner is my favorite cartoonist by a wide sea mile). Well done. Well done, indeed.

@lns, reef points in a full skirt — that’s funny right there.

By: Stephan Brun

Stephan Brun — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:09:29 +0000

I considered the problem of how to find out the name of the other woman who stayed in the Royal Meteorological Society. The obvious answer is of course primary sources. Googling, I found that the National Meteorological Library and Archive hold old membership records of the Society, in which the names of four women should be, as well as the dates of their joining and leaving. This is not meant as criticism, but rather a suggestion, as you read as a woman who does not like to leave stones unturned.

By: lns

lns — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:59:20 +0000

Chocolate chip cookies???

[sidles further over to the Geek side...]

Oh look, i *know* there’s no hope for me, trust me! I just /know/ that I shall end up producing sketches showing the design, construction and method of a reefable 1830s skirt…. I’ll consider myself ‘got off lightly’ if i don’t end up making and wearing it!!

By: Nexxo

Nexxo — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:32:18 +0000

^^^ Geek. Told you. There is no hope for you now. Join the Geek side (we have cookies).

By: lns

lns — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:44:18 +0000

Oh Debbie, that’s inspired! Ms Padua coudl draw her with those voluminous skirts but with reefing mechanisms built in so she could furl them when required!

From Tudor times one way to make full skirts stand out all round was to sew a channel horizontally around and push a thick rope through, like a hoop-petticoat. And the bustle skirt were adjustable to your own preference by means of channels sewn diagonally and vertically inside the very full skirt which had tapes in which you then drew up and tied on the inside, so you could have a more or less dramatic bustle.

It’s not a very far step in logic from those to a set of tapes to furl your skirts, is it?

Oh dear. You realise I’m now sitting working out sketches for the mechanism… sigh….

Set of three vertical tapes at the front to raise the skirt to knee-level but in that tripartite way that clippers’ sails had. Diagonals to bring the bulk at the sides back and under.

It could work. I can’t think why women didn’t have this reef-able skirt mechanism! We’d have been emancipated centuries earlier if we’d let a sailmaker sew our petticoats!

lns