Comments on: Thrilling Adventure! Treasure Discovered!

By: Alice

Alice — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:15:03 +0000

You are so lucky! I live in Canada (specifically in Edmonton, Alberta, where buildings constructed in the 80s are considered ‘modern’ and buildings constructed in the 70s are considered ‘heritage sites’) and the chances of just walking into a library here and stumbling on a first edition of anything worth reading are about equal to the chances of Babbage funding a street performer’s festival. Heck, the chances of finding ANY edition of anything worth reading are fairly slim.

Why is England such a superlative place, anyway? Thank goodness for the internet and websites like yours, that’s all I have to say.

By: Burra Peg

Burra Peg — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:13:35 +0000

> (additional geek note: I have a map of London in my head
> that consists of locations of Sherlock Holmes stories).

Sydney, are you familiar with the wonderful series of introductory programming books written a few decades ago by a Dr. Henry Ledgard, whose whole premise was the use of the analytical engine by Sherlock Holmes for crime solving where large amounts of date were involved? There were a number of books and stories by him along these lines but I recall the titles of two were ‘Elementary Pascal’ and ‘Elementary BASIC’. Of course, BASIC and other languages have no actual historic application to Babbage’s machine (or to Holmes) but the books were very well written, by Watson of course, and quite charming. There were quaint old illustrations of Holmes with the engine, etc. I thought them very well done and quite in the spirit of the original tales. Here are a couple of quick google hits.

http://www.schoolandholmes.com/ledgard.html

http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Pascal-Henry-Ledgard/dp/0394524241

By the way, I love ‘Lovelace and Babbage’. Cheers, and keep up the good work, Stew

By: sydney

sydney — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:07:41 +0000

This is fantastic information– many thanks! Someday I mean to go down to Totnes where Babbage grew up– might be a little more atmospheric than Elephant and Castle…

A line of descent with several kinks is surely the most appropriate way to be descended from Byron!

By: David Singmaster

David Singmaster — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:12:03 +0000

I’m pleased to find Babbage/Lovelace enthusiasts. The birthplace of Babbage was unknown until Anthony Hyman investigated baptismal records near Elephant and Castle and found the baptismal entry for Babbage at St. Mary Newington and deduced that he must have been born at his father’s house on the Walworth Road. He published this in a letter in 1976 and in his biography of Babbage. Sometime in the 1980s, I was giving a course for local teachers and students in history of mathematics and I posed the problem of determining just where Babbage’s house and Clement’s workshop had been. One group went off to the Walworth Library and examined the rate books for the period and found the Babbage family house and determined that it was actually where the Library is today. where Larcom Street meets Walworth Road. I wrote to Southwark Council and urged them to put up a plaque, and Anthony Hyman had also written. They erected a Historic Southwark plaque on the site in 1991. Though sometimes called Blue Plaques, I would describe the colour as aqua.
The church of St. Mary Newington was also where Michael Faraday was baptised. Examination of maps from the 1790s shows it was where Churchyard Row meets Newington Butts and there is some old wall there which may have been part of the church. It was rebuilt a short way down the road toward Clapham and that was bombed in WW2 and then rebuilt.
My interest in Babbage extended to Ada Lovelace. I suggested a Blue Plaque be erected at her birthplace, Lord Byron’s house, 13 Piccadilly Terrace, now 139 Piccadilly, but English Heritage deemed that this house had been changed so much that it wasn’t the best place. They choose the Lovelace house at 12 St. James’ Square which they had done up shortly after their marraige and was still pretty much as they had left it. A Blue Plaque was unveiled on 12 October 1992 by John Barnes, Chairman of Ada UK and a major developer of the ADA language. I was privileged to be present. The current occupant of the house is some sort of financial institution and showed us around their trading rooms, etc. Ada died at 6 (now 32) Great Cumberland Place, just north of Marble Arch. I have been told that the building was destroyed in WW2. At present it appears to be the Marble Arch Synagogue. Her husband, Lord Lovelace, had her buried in the Byron family vault at Hucknall Torquard, about 6 miles north of Nottingham, near Newstead Abbey where Byron was born and raised. Her coffin was placed touching that of the father she had never known.
A few years later I was attending a meeting of the Byron Society where Betty Toole was speaking on her book based on Ada’s letters and I was introduced to Lord Byron – he doesn’t look much like the poet and he explained that the line of descent had several kinks.

By: Bella Green

Bella Green — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:48:02 +0000

So, I was re-reading “The Economic Model”, and I find that I need a tee shirt of Ada in panel six of part one, where she says, “I’m beginning to be of the opinion that we require mental stimulation.” It’s brilliant!! It fits most of the social situations in which I find myself these days. Pretty-please?

By: John

John — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:29:53 +0000

I’ve never been to Panama, myself, but a friend who has described a similar sound that turned out to be what passed for plumbing where she lived. So that might not be guilt. And you might want to find a better hovel before the book gets wet.

And ditto on the Mozart comic. Sydney has a very active style, but I also read XKCD, so a sufficiently good idea can certainly overcome “substandard” (whatever that may mean) visual arts.

By: sydney

sydney — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:33:53 +0000

LOL, you should totally do that comic! I wouldn’t worry too much about style- I’ve seen great comics drawn with all kinds of looks, it just depends on how you deploy your resources.

By: Smallpotato

Smallpotato — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:10:25 +0000

I’ve checked the Leiden University Library (my own university *beams proudly*), and it contains the complete works of Charles Babbage (eleven volumes), which were, apparently, reprinted in 1989.
There were 37 books that popped up when I randomly typed ‘Babbage’ in the library’s search engine (this included the 11 books by Babbage, the rest were *about* him), but weirdly only two books about Ada Lovelace! Scandalous!

BTW, I totally get your squee-ing. I found, through the Royal Library at The Hague, books from 1837 in which my beloved Emmanual Schikaneder was a character (apparantly the author had knows Schikaneder in his youth and it was an accurate description of the man – squee!). It was a penny dreadful, but it had Emanuel Schikaneder in it!!
You have Lovelace and Babbage, I obsess about Mozart and Schikaneder. Twenty years ago, I vowed I would make a comic about them, one day. I never did, because, although I’m a pretty good artist, I’m way out of your league. But, apart from giving me pleasure in itself, your Lovelace and Babbage webcomic has given me hope. Who knows… One day… *dreams on*

By: bruce

bruce — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:54:58 +0000

“I have a map of London in my head that consists of locations of Sherlock Holmes stories”

Marry me.
No, seriously.
XD

By: Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:29:11 +0000

There actually is a modern reprint of some sort – a paperback thingy which is basically a scan of the original. There’s also an edition from the 60s which is unprepossessing, but slightly more interesting than the scanned version…

IwannafirsteditionwannawannawannaHOWMUCH?!

Anyway…

Make more of the pictures with the Babbage man and the Lovelace lady happen!