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Creating a holy cow.
Whenever I think that the deification of Ada Lovelace can’t get anymore ridiculous somebody comes along and ups the ante. The latest idiocy was posted on Twitter by the comedian Stephen Fry (of whom...
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A double bicentennial – George contra Ada – Reality contra Perception
The end of this year sees a double English bicentennial in the history of computing. On 2 November we celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of mathematician and logician Georg Boole then...
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Christmas Trilogy 2015 Part 2: Understanding the Analytical Engine.
The Acolytes of the Holy Church of Saint Ada still persist in calling her a brilliant mathematician and the ‘first computer programmer’ despite the fact that both are provably wrong. In fact they have...
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Christmas Trilogy 2015 Part 3: Roll out the barrel.
The village master taught his little school The village all declared how much he knew, ‘Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, times and tides presage, And e’en the story...
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Boole, Shannon and the Electronic Computer
Photo of George Boole by Samuel Prout NewcombeSource: Wikimedia Commons In 1847, the self-taught English Mathematician George Boole (1815–1864), whose two hundredth birthday we celebrated last year,...
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Christmas Trilogy 2016 Part 2: What a difference an engine makes
Charles Babbage is credited with having devised the first ever special-purpose mechanical computer as well as the first ever general-purpose mechanical computer. The first claim seems rather dubious in...
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Journalists getting the facts wrong in the 19th century
One of the joys of having an extensive twitter stream is the unexpected titbits that it throws up from time to time. Recently Lee Jackson[1] (@VictorianLondon) posted this small newspaper cutting from...
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Juggling information
One of the parlour games played by intellectuals and academic, as well as those who like to think of themselves as such, is which famous historical figures would you invite to a cocktail or dinner...
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Christmas Trilogy 2017 Part 2: Charles takes a trip to Turin
Charles Babbage wrote a sort of autobiography, Passages From The Life of a Philosopher. One of its meandering chapters is devoted to his ideas about and work on his Analytical Engine. In one section he...
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The first calculating machine
Even in the world of polymath, Renaissance mathematici Wilhelm Schickard (1592–1635) sticks out for the sheer breadth of his activities. Professor of both Hebrew and mathematics at the University of...
View ArticleNO, SIMPLY NO!
I realise that in writing this blog post I am banging my head against a reinforced concrete wall, pissing against a hurricane, crying into the void and definitely not going to do my reputation any good...
View ArticleDon’t criticise what you don’t understand!
I was pleasantly surprised by the level of positive support my latest anti-Ada polemic received on Twitter, I had expected much more negative reaction to be honest. But I did receive two attacks that I...
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Christmas Trilogy 2018 Part 2: A danseuse and a woven portrait
I had decided some time ago to give up my attempts to rescue Charles Babbage’s reputation from the calumnies of the acolytes of Saint Ada, as a lost cause. However, the recent attempt by said acolytes...
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Christmas Trilogy 2019 Part 2: Babbage, Airy and financing the Difference...
Charles Babbage first announced his concept for his first computer, the Difference Engine, in a Royal Astronomical Society paper, Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical...
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Charles not Ada, Charles not Charles and Ada, just Charles…
The is an old saying in English, “if you’ve got an itch scratch it!” A medically more correct piece of advice is offered, usually by mothers in a loud stern voice, “Don’t scratch!” I have had an itch...
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When is an algorithm not an algorithm?
A word previously well known to mathematicians but probably not to the general public, algorithm had begun to seep into the general awareness during the early years of the computer age. As the...
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Christmas Trilogy 2023 Part 2: Charles the genial host
People writing about the history of science tend not to think of their subjects as party animals. Science is a serious topic, scientists are serious scholars, party time is not really considered as...
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HISCTSCI_HULK reporting for duty – A history of science and technology...
I don’t remember ever coming across half a paragraph of just nineteen lines that manages to cram in so many history of science and technology myths, errors, and falsehoods as the one that I recently...
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