The Information - James Gleick [211]
♦ “TO ASTROLOGERS, LAND-MEASURERS, MEASURERS OF TAPESTRY”: Quoted in Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 468.
♦ THIRTY-FOUR MEN AND ONE WOMAN: Mary Croarken, “Mary Edwards: Computing for a Living in 18th-Century England,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 25, no. 4 (2003): 9–15; and—with fascinating detective work—Mary Croarken, “Tabulating the Heavens: Computing the Nautical Almanac in 18th-Century England,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 25, no. 3 (2003): 48–61.
♦ “LOGARITHMES ARE NUMBERS INVENTED”: Henry Briggs, Logarithmicall Arithmetike: Or Tables of Logarithmes for Absolute Numbers from an Unite to 100000 (London: George Miller, 1631), 1.
♦ “TAKE AWAY ALL THE DIFFICULTIE”: John Napier, “Dedicatorie,” in A Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithmes, trans. Edward Wright (London: Nicholas Okes, 1616), 3.
♦ “NAPER, LORD OF MARKINSTON, HATH SET”: Henry Briggs to James Ussher, 10 March 1615, quoted by Graham Jagger in Martin Campbell-Kelly et al., eds., The History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 56.
♦ A QUARTER HOUR OF SILENCE: “SPENT, EACH BEHOLDING OTHER”: William Lilly, Mr. William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times, from the Year 1602 to 1681 (London: Charles Baldwyn, 1715), 236.
♦ POLE STARRE, GIRDLE OF ANDROMEDA, WHALES BELLIE: Henry Briggs, Logarithmicall Arithmetike, 52.
♦ “IT MAY BE HERE ALSO NOTED THAT THE USE OF A 100 POUND”: Ibid., 11.
♦ “A SCOTTISH BARON HAS APPEARED ON THE SCENE”: Ole I. Franksen, “Introducing ‘Mr. Babbage’s Secret,’ ” APL Quote Quad 15, no. 1 (1984): 14.
♦ THE MAJORITY OF HUMAN COMPUTATION: Michael Williams, A History of Computing Technology (Washington, D.C.: IEEE Computer Society, 1997), 105.
♦ “IT IS NOT FITTING FOR A PROFESSOR”: Michael Mästlin, quoted in Ole I. Franksen, “Introducing ‘Mr. Babbage’s Secret,’ ” 14.
♦ “THIS LADY ATTITUDINIZED”: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 17.
♦ INSTALLED IT ON A PEDESTAL: Simon Schaffer, “Babbage’s Dancer,” in Francis Spufford and Jenny Uglow, eds., Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 58.
♦ FROM A SPECIALTY BOOKSELLER: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 26–27.
♦ “A SIN AGAINST THE MEMORY OF NEWTON”: W. W. Rouse Ball, A History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889), 117.
♦ “THE DOTS OF NEWTON, THE D’S OF LEIBNITZ”: Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines, 23.
♦ “TO THINK AND REASON IN A NEW LANGUAGE”: Ibid., 31.
♦ “A NEW KIND OF AN INSTRUMENT INCREASING THE POWERS OF REASON”: C. Gerhardt, ed., Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, vol. 7 (Berlin: Olms, 1890), 12, quoted by Kurt Gödel in “Russell’s Mathematical Logic” (1944), in Kurt Gödel: Collected Works, vol. 2, ed. Solomon Feferman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 140.
♦ “BY THE APPARENT IMPOSSIBILITY OF ARRANGING SIGNS”: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 25.
♦ “THE DOT-AGE OF THE UNIVERSITY”: Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines, 25.
♦ “WE HAVE NOW TO RE-IMPORT THE EXOTIC”: Charles Babbage, Memoirs of the Analytical Society, preface (1813), in Anthony Hyman, ed., Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 15–16.
♦ “THE BROWS OF MANY A CAMBRIDGE MODERATOR”: Agnes M. Clerke, The Herschels and Modern Astronomy (New York: Macmillan, 1895), 144.
♦ “EVERY MEMBER SHALL COMMUNICATE HIS ADDRESS”: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 34.
♦ “I AM THINKING THAT ALL THESE TABLES”: Ibid., 42.
♦ “WHETHER, WHEN THE NUMBERS”: Ibid., 41.
♦ “WE MAY GIVE FINAL PRAISE”: “Machina arithmetica in qua non additio tantum et subtractio sed et multipicatio nullo, divisio vero paene nullo