The Difference Engine (56 page)

-
LORD
LISTON
, 1870.

Before the Rads

[The following testament is a sound-recording inscribed on wax. One of the earliest such recordings, it preserves the spoken reminiscences of Thomas Towler (b. 1790), grandfather of Edward Towler, inventor of the Towler Audiograph. Despite the experimental nature of the apparatus employed, the recording is of exceptional clarity. 1875.]

I remember one winter and it was a very long cold winter, and there was dire poverty in England then, before the Rads. Me brother Albert, he used to get some bricks and cover them with bird-lime, and set ‘em by the stables to catch sparrows. And he’d pluck them, clean them, him and me together, I helped him. Our Albert would make a fire and get the oven hot and we used to cook those little sparrows in Mother’s roasting-tin, with a big lump of dripping in it. And me mother’d make a big jug of tea for us and we’d have what we’d call a tea-party, eating those sparrows.

Me father . . . he went to all the shopkeepers on Chatwin Road and got scrap-meat. Bones, you know, lamb-bones, all sorts of things, dried peas, beans, and left-over carrots and turnips and . . . he got some oatmeal promised him and a baker gave him stale bread . . . Me father had a big iron boiler . . . that he used to make gruel for the horses and he cleaned it all out and they made soup in this big horse-boiler. I can remember seeing the poor people come. They came twice a week, that winter. They had to bring their own jugs. They was that hungry, before the Rads.

And Eddie, did you ever hear tell of the Irish Famine, in the forties? I thought not. But the ‘later crop failed then, two, three years in a row, and it looked mighty dire for the Irish. But the Rads, they wouldn’t stand for that, and declared an emergency, and mobilized the nation. Lord Byron made a fine speech, in all the papers . . . I signed aboard one of the relief-boats, out of Bristol. All day, all night, we’d load big gantry-crates, with bills-of-lading from the London Engines; trains come day and night from all over England, with every kind of food. “God Bless Lord Babbage,” the poor Irish would cry to us, with tears in their eyes, “Three cheers for England and the Rad Lords.” They have long memories, our own loyal Irish . . . they don’t never forget a kindness.

John Keats in Half-Moon Street

I was ushered by a man-servant into Mr. Oliphant’s study. Mr. Oliphant greeted me cordially, and noted that my telegram had mentioned my association with Dr. Mallory. I told Mr. Oliphant that it had been my pleasure to accompany Dr. Mallory’s triumphant lecture on the Brontosaurus with a highly advanced kinotropic program. The Monthly Review of the Steam Intellect Society had run a most gratifying review of my efforts, and I offered Mr. Oliphant a copy of the magazine. He glanced within it, but it seemed that his grasp of the intricacies of clacking was amateurish at best, for his reaction was one of polite puzzlement.

I then informed him that Dr. Mallory had led me to his door. In one of our private conversations, the great savant had seen fit to tell me of Mr. Oliphant’s daring proposal — to employ the Engines of the police in the scientific exploration of previously hidden patterns underlying the movements and occupations of the metropolitan population. My admiration for this bold scheme had brought me directly to Mr. Oliphant, and I stated my willingness to assist in the implementation of that vision.

He interrupted me, then, in a markedly distracted manner. We are numbered, he declared, each of us, by an all-seeing eye; our minutes, too, are numbered, and each hair upon our heads. And surely it was God’s will, that the computational powers of the Engine be brought to bear upon the great commonality, upon the flows of traffic, of commerce, the tidal actions of crowds — upon the infinitely divisible texture of His work.

I waited for a conclusion to this extraordinary outburst, but Mr. Oliphant seemed quite lost in thought, of a sudden.

I then explained to him, as nearly as possible in layman’s terms, how the nature of the human eye necessitates, in kinotropy, both remarkable speed and remarkable complexity. For this reason, I concluded, we kinotropists must be numbered among Britain’s most adept programmers of Enginery of any sort, and virtually all advances in the compression of data have originated as kinotropic applications.

At this point, he interrupted again, asking if I had indeed said “the compression of data,” and was I familiar with the term “algorithmic compression”? I assured him that I was.

He rose, then, and going to a bureau near at hand, he brought out what I took to be a wooden box of the sort used to transport scientific instruments, though this was partially covered, it seemed, with remnants of white plaster. And would I be so kind, he requested, as to examine the cards within, copy them for safekeeping, and privately report to him upon the nature of their content?

He had no idea of their astonishing import, you see, no idea whatever.

-
JOHN
KEATS
, quoted in an interview conducted by H. S. Lywood, for The Monthly Review of the Steam Intellect Society, May 1857.

The Grand Panmelodium Polka

Oh! Sure the world is all run mad,

The lean, the fat, the old, the Rad,

All swear such pleasure they ne’er had,

As the Grand Panmelodium Polka.

First cock up your right leg so,

Balance on your left great toe,

Stamp your heels and off you go,

The Grand Panmelodium Polka.

Quadrilles and waltzes all give way,

Machine-made music bears the sway.

The chimney-sweeps on the first of May,

In London dance the Polka.

If a pretty girl you meet,

With sparkling eyes and rosy cheek,

She’ll say, young man we’ll have a treat,

If you can dance the Polka.

Professors swarm in every street,

To hear the Panmelodium sweet,

And every friend you chance to meet,

Asks if you dance the Polka.

And so the row-de-dow we dance,

And in short skirts and brass-heels prance,

Ladies won’t you spare a glance,

For the boys what spin the Polka.

The Tatler

We learn with mingled regret and amazement of the recent departure, aboard the Great Eastern, of the well-liked and many-talented Mr. Laurence Oliphant — author, journalist, diplomat, geographer, and friend of the Royal Family — for America, with the stated intention of residing in the so-called Susquehanna Phalanstery established by Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth, thereby to pursue the Utopian doctrines espoused by these worthy expatriates!

-” ‘
ROUND
TOWN
,” a column, September 12, 1860.

A London Playbill, 1866

THE
GARRICK
THEATRE
, Whitechapel, Newly Rebuilt and Refurbished, Under the Management of J. J.
TOBIAS
, Esq., presents

The First Nights of a New Kinotropic Drama

Monday, Nov. 13 and During the Week

The performance will commence with (
FIRST
TIME!) an entirely new national, local, characteristic, metropolitan, melodramatic, kinotropic drama of the day, in five acts, correctly exhibiting modern life and manners in innumerable novel and interesting phases, called the

CROSSROADS
OF LIFE!!

or

THE
CLACKERS
OF
LONDON

The Groundwork of the drama founded on the celebrated play, “Les Fils de Vaucanson,” now attracting the attention of all France, and applied to the circumstances and realities of the present moment.

With kinotropic scenery by MR. JJ
TOBIAS
and Assistants

The New Flash Medley Orchestra, led by MR.
MONTGOMERY

The Action of the Piece arranged by MR. CJ
SMITH

The Dresses by
MRS
.
HAMPTON
and
MISS
BAILEY

The Whole Produced Under the Direction of MR. JJ
TOBIAS

Dramatis Personae

Mark Riddley, alias Fox Skinner, (a swell cove, and King of the London Clackers) ........ MR. H.L.
MARSTON
.

Mr. Dorrington (a wealthy Liverpool Merchant, on a visit to London)................... MR. J.
ROMER
.

Frank Danvers (a British Naval Officer, just arrived from the Indies) ................... MR. WM.
BIRD
.

Robert Danvers (his younger brother, a ruined roue, pigeoned by the clackers) .............. MR. L.
MELVIN
.

Mr. Hawksworth Shabner (Principal Proprietor of a West-End Clacking-Hall, Bill-Discounter, and Anythingarian where there is Anything to be Got) . . . MR. P.
WILLIAMS
.

Bob Yorkner (a Duffer, tired of the Lay) . . . MR. W.
JONES
.

Ned Brindle (the Magsman, a half-and-half cove)

........................ MR C.
AUBREY
.

Tom Fogg, alias Old Deady, alias The Animal, (a laudanum fiend suffering under delirium-tremens) MR. A.
CORENO
.

Joe Onion, alias The Crocodile, (a bully-rock, and creature of Shabner’s). .............. MR. G.
VELASCO
.

Dickey Smith (the Wakeful Bird, a young Engine-clerk in no ways particklar, pecking out a living as best he can) ....................... MR. G.
MASKELL
.

Ikey Bates (Landlord of Rat’s Castle, proprietor of two-penny dabs and a scandalous bagatelle board, having cut the bumblepuppy as too low!) .........MR.
GOTOBED
.

Waiter at the Cat-and-Bagpipes Tavern . . . MR.
SMITHSON
.

The Bow Street Special Inspector ….... MR.
FRANKS
.

Louisa Truehait (the Victim of an ill-requited attachment)...................
MISS
CAROLINE
BARNETT
.

Charlotte Willers (a young lady with her cat from the country) ....................
MISS
MARTHA
WELLS

DRESS
CIRCLE
, 3S.
BOXES
, 2S.
PIT
, 5D.
GALLERY
, 2D.

BOX
OFFICE
OPEN
DAILY
FROM
TEN
O’CLOCK
UNTIL
FIVE
.

A Poem of Farewell

[Mori Yujo, a samurai and classical scholar of Satsuma Province, wrote the following ceremonial poem upon his son’s departure for England, in 1854. it is translated from Sinicized Japanese.]

My child rides the unfathomable deep,

In pursuit of noble ambition;

Far must he sail — ten thousand leagues —

Outpacing the breezes of spring.

Some say that East and West

Have naught in common;

But I say the same heaven

Overarches both.

His own life he risks, on command of his han.

Braving great danger to learn from far places;

For family’s sake, he spares no effort,

Seeking for wisdom in face of great hardship.

He travels far beyond

The fabled rivers of China;

His scholarly labors shall someday

Bear fruit in splendid achievement.

A Letter Home

As always, I searched that day for land, in all four directions, but could still find none. How melancholy it was! Then by chance, with the Captain’s permission, I climbed up one of the masts. From the great height, with sails and smokestack far below me, I was amazed to make out the coast of Europe — a mere hair’s-breadth of green, above the watery horizon. I shouted down to Matsumura: “Come up! Come up!” And up he came, very swiftly and bravely.

Together atop the mast, we gazed upon Europe. “Look!” I told him. “Here is our first proof that the world is really round! While we were standing down there on deck we could not see a thing; but up here, land is distinctly visible. This is proof that the surface of the sea is curved! And if the sea is curved, why, then, so is the whole earth!”

Matsumura exclaimed, “It’s fantastic — it’s just the way you say! The Earth indeed is round! Our first real proof!”

-
MORI
ARINORI
, 1854.

Modus

It seemed that Her Ladyship had been ill-served by the Paris publicists, for the lecture-hall, modest as it was, was less than half-filled.

Dark folding-seats, in neat columnar rows, were precisely dotted by the shiny pates of balding mathematicians. Here and there among the savants sat shifty-eyed French clackers in middle-age, the summer linen of their too-elegant finery looking rather past the mode. The last three rows were filled by a Parisian women’s club, fanning themselves in the summer heat and chattering quite audibly, for they had long since lost the thread of Her Ladyship’s discourse.

Lady Ada Byron turned a page, touched a gloved finger to her bifocal pince-nez. For some minutes, a large green bottle-fly had been circling her podium. Now it broke the intricacy of its looping flight to alight on the bulging archipelago of Her Ladyship’s padded, lace-trimmed shoulder. Lady Ada took no apparent notice of the attentions of this energetic vermin, but continued on gamely, in her accented French.

The Mother said:

“Our lives would be greatly clarified if human discourse could be interpreted as the exfoliation of a deeper formal system. One would no longer need ponder the grave ambiguities of human speech, but could judge the validity of any sentence by reference to a fixed and finitely describable set of rules and axioms. It was the dream of Leibniz to find such a system, the Characteristica Universalis . . .

“And yet the execution of the so-called Modus Program demonstrated that any formal system must be both incomplete and unable to establish its own consistency. There is no finite mathematical way to express the property of ‘truth.’ The transfinite nature of the Byron Conjectures were the ruination of the Grand Napoleon; the Modus Program initiated a series of nested loops, which, though difficult to establish, were yet more difficult to extinguish. The program ran, yet rendered its Engine useless! It was indeed a painful lesson in the halting abilities of even our finest ordinateurs.