Happy whatever-seasonal-celebrations you celebrate from 2dgoggles Amalgamated Comics Industries! I drew up this gag and then went looking for a nice Primary Document to wrap up as a present for the readers, when what should I find but this about Scottish Yuletide traditions:
Is there not one of my gags those danged Victorians won’t steal! Good lord. That’s the best Babbage/Christmas thing I could find, unless you count that time Babbage got naked on Christmas but that’s not quite the tone I’m looking to set (a ‘screw loose’ you say Babbage..).
So I’ll leave you with a a festive Difference Engine reference from 1867:
Happy holidays all and hope to have the next episode up soonish!
Comments
15 responses to “Merry Christmas!”
[…] From Sydney Padua HERE […]
I think his father was serious. Going by received knowledge, the bridge would need a support in the middle; going by current fashion, he suggested a pagoda design. I wonder what Papa Brunel would have thought about the Triads.
One imagines the comic above bridging the gap between the comment about the singing and the unclothed incident.
Happies and merries!
Thank you sooo much for this – you could, in future, draw Christmas cards for which I, at least, would be willing to pay Real Money :)! I have friends who would totally get the references, which would add joy to their lives, which is the whole meaning of these various ‘holidays,’ yes? Thanks also for the chibis – I must confuse to a weird obsession with chibis, thanks to my teenagers, and Chibi Babbage is superb!
Also, thank you Marion: “Alarms and alarums (and lots of
feathers everywhere)…” I can just *see* it, hee hee!
I wonder if Brunel’s father was pulling his leg.
Not related to this, but I’m in the Uk at the moment and
came across this fab Brunel story in the news this week
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8206625/Clifton-suspension-bridge-with-added-pagoda.html
I totally want to see Brunel’s father in on the action now
suggesting pagodas all over the place! Merry Christmas
A somewhat-related article appeared online in New Scientist
today – i’m sure a lot of you would like to contribute to the
cause?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827915.500-lets-build-babbages-ultimate-mechanical-computer.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
And I do really like finding out about how Babbage’s engine was commonly-known enough
Not necessarily. The St Gnat’s piece is by Mark Lemon, founder and editor of Punch, and he knew Babbage (Babbage and Lemon were part of same social circuit that also include Dickens and Thackeray). If you Google [“Mark Lemon” Babbage] you find Lemon made frequent reference to Babbage in Punch and other writings – a lot of them comment (sympathetically to Babbage) on Babbage’s altercations with street musicians.
Ohhh…. That remark about the number of turkey, geese and
chickens being too much even for the Difference Engine to count
should surely be rewarded with a little cartoon of its own, where
Babbage has created a Pocket Difference Engine (complete, of
course, with a humongous amount of cables and gears trailing from
his pocket) and showing his new creation off to Lovelace whilst
walking through a Christmas Market. Alarms and alarums (and lots of
feathers everywhere) are of course the result. *lolz*
I’ve tried very hard, honest I have, but I still can’t see
anything wrong with a picture of a naked Babbage at
Christmas…
And how long before someone publishes a copy of “A Christmas Carol…With Zombies”, for the Christmas Market …?
Tagline – “You were wondering why Zombie Jacob Marley has so many chains & restraints on him, when he visits Scrooge…?… Answer: It’s to stop him from going for Scrooge’s brains…!!!.
( If someone can publish a pastiche of Jane Austen’s works with Zombies within, then how long before someone does exactly the same with Charles Dickens’s works…Unless someone’s already done/doing (Delete as Applicable) it….).
BBC has already been there, sort of. There’s a Doctor Who episode where the Doctor teams up with Dickens to battle a hoard of the undead, complete with exploding gas-lamps.
Excellent cartoon. And I do really like finding out about how Babbage’s engine was commonly-known enough to be referred to in an offhand manner in pieces from the period describing something completely unrelated.
And a merry Bah! Humbug to you, too! Enjoy the holidays.
oh, cripes, Babbage and carol-singers.
That might even be /worse/ than usual…
(OH. Slightly relevant thing… due in part to this comic, I’m reading “The Difference Engine” by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Ada’s in it. And there are Engines EVERYWHERE, and it’s all very cool.)