Historical Notes:

The Bank of England has been throwing its weight against out-of-control economic models for a very long time– though not as long as the US government which pretty much started out with a bank bail-out. Here’s a cartoon from 1890 showing the ‘Old Grey Lady’ bailing out some bankers, by Alice-in-Wonderland illustrator John Tenniel. If you can’t read it the caption is, “Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, “You’ve got yourselves in a nice mess with your precious ‘speculation!’ Well– I’ll help you out of it, — for this once!!””

The bank being bailed out there is none other than Barings! which went about another hundred years before before its cataclysmic collapse in 1995, an event from which banking learnt, as usual, precisely nothing.

Sorry if it’s kind of fuzzy, it’s a picture I took on an Important Research Expedition to the pretty nifty Bank of England Museum. Incidentally if you go at the moment you can see not only “Banknotes Come Alive!” (false advertising- they totally don’t) but a whole interactive exhibit on Inflation featuring this gadget after my own heart:

Lovelace’s notion of stimulus infrastructure spending is about 100 years ahead of its time– the true originator is of course John Maynard Keynes. He’s been in the news a lot for some reason.

The railway bubble of the 1840s neatly proves this economic hypothesis.

What else… Babbage’s ‘experimental engine’ is mentioned in his autobiography, although I can’t find any description of it anywhere so I’m going to assume it was insane–CORRECTION- Duh, it’s right there! There is no engine, by his ‘train’ he was referring to the experimental carriage. So, there was no point to this whole episode actually.– Typically, although he designed the first cowcatcher there is no indication that it was ever built. In the fabulous anecdote where the experimental engine appears (it’s only a page.. read it. READ IT!!!), Brunel actually says he will ‘put on all the steam he can command’ (in theory). He can get away with saying cheesy things like that because he’s ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL, pal. He narrowly missed out on being voted the Greatest Briton to a last-minute Winston Churchill counterattack, to the great resentment of the Brunel Museum. The guys there will helpfully snigger with you about his Wapping Shaft. Don’t tell them I sent you.

Hahaha look at him, he’s all, “Alpha Dog, gentlemen.” The reason this episode took so long is because he didn’t originally appear in it but suddenly I had to draw him for some reason.

I have no idea whether Brunel and Lady Lovelace ever met, although I guess probably they did, as they would have gone to a lot of the same parties assuming Brunel ever did anything but eat, sleep, and engineer. Their relationship in the comic is an allusion to the traditional antipathy between mathematicians and engineers, and in fact this whole episode could just be a really, really long-winded way of telling this joke. If you put an animator in that joke they would say, “Hey, you know what would be funnier…”

Did you know that the whole internet was invented in order to distribute mathematician vs engineer jokes?

Anyways, this concludes my ‘difficult second album’ phase. Lessons learnt: I will never again start a comic without having some notion of how I intend to end it.

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More after the jump INTO HYPERSPACE..

ON TO ECONOMIC MODEL PART 3!

Historical Notes of Interest

–The Difference Engine: Is a very cool thing indeed, but of course it was not meant to be anywhere near that big. The biggest model in the Science Museum is roughly the size of a van. In theory, you could keep connecting together engines to have more and more functions– Babbage’s later obsession, the Analytical Engine, was based on this idea. The machine in the comic is, properly speaking, an Analytical Engine as it runs on punchcards; but ‘Difference Engine’ sounds way cooler. This should have been explained to Babbage and then maybe he could have gotten his funding!

Someone utterly devastated me by informing me that the Giant Difference Engine has already been done, in “The Difference Engine” (which I haven’t read) no less. I hate it when people from the past travel forward through time and steal my ideas!! In my defense I should say the idea is pretty irresistibly suggested to anyone pressing a camera up against the glass to take reference photos. In any case now I’m stuck doing at least one other episode because I want to draw Ada climbing around in the engine to fix a bug, like Scotty in the Jeffries Tubes:

–The Gaussian Cupola is apparently the formula that devastated our present economy; I read about in Wired like everyone else. It is not, of course, Babbage’s!

–The economic model was inspired by the crazy MONIAC machine, a water-based economic model located almost directly across from the Difference Engine in the Science Museum. Terry Pratchett fans might recognize it from “Making Money”– it is, in fact, an actual thing. This comic does not take any stance on actual economic policy; I don’t know anything about economics. Of course, it seems neither do economists, HAH!

What else… I’m worried I’m poking a little too much fun at Charles Babbage, a brilliant man who did in fact know a great deal about economics. He did though have an outsized personality and if nothing else, I’m glad doing this comic gave me a chance to meet him.

ON TO ECONOMIC MODEL PART 3!

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Historical Notes: True: The Panic of 1837! Ada’s dialogue on the subject is stolen from a 1888 biography of Van Buren, quoted extensively in the Wikipedia entry. The resemblance to the present ructions is uncanny!

True:  That is an actual horse race handicapping algorithm (with some modifications).

Not true: Wellington was only Prime Minister until 1830; it is however true that he is much funnier than Robert Peel, so in this alternate history he gets to stay in office.

Truthy: Lovelace’s gambling addiction gets mentioned occasionally in the slim background I have on her; it’s in dispute but I like it as a trait in a Mathematical Genius. Babbage may or may not have built a drink-serving Mechanical Woman– vague references but nothing solid.EDITED TO ADD:  This was when I was just skimming Babbage’s autobiography, rather than avidly devouring it. She’s in there! Although she doesn’t serve drinks… I intend to Improve that.  Also in that section: one of Babbage’s puns, with helpful chart.

This blog is, as the title says, dangerous experiments in comics.. it’s a learn-as-you-go excercise for me so any feedback on presentation (images– too big? too small? scrolliness good, or would you rather click-thru a series?), drawing (pacing okay? compositions confusing?), or content is appreciated.  Something I learned already:  it should go, character designs, THEN comic, not comic then character designs… Also– this blog is under construction kind of on the fly, so things might move around..

ON TO LOVELACE AND BABBAGE VS THE ECONOMY, PART 2

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