Talk:Charles Babbage

Full quote
The "sourced" quote isn't really as interesting as listed. The full quote (from memory) is closer to; "Dear Mr Tennyson, in your poem "Vision of Sin" you state; 'for every moment that dies a man, another man is born' this is not accurate. If it were the case the population of the world would be at a standstill. The correct value is approximately 1:1.06178, but I believe 1 and 1/16th will be sufficiently accurate for use in poetry"

An interesting insight into a brilliant (yet poetically stunted) mind, I thought. --BlueNovember 23:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Richard H. Babbage & the pineapple quote
I'm trying to dig up more information on the source for the "pineapple" quote, listed here and elsewhere as coming from "The Work of Charles Babbage" by Richard H. Babbage. I found this paragraph, that provides some more context, but I'm still looking for more... JesseW (talk) 23:45, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The intellectual bond between Babbage and Aiken was publicly emphasized by the presence of Richard H. Babbage at Harvard's 1947 Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery. Babbage, a journalist from Canada, was a great-grandson of Charles Babbage. Attending the symposium on Aiken's express invitation, he contributed the opening technical paper, "The Work of Charles Babbage"; it consisted largely of selections from the published writings of his distinguished grandfather.
 * I. Bernard Cohen Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer, MIT Press, 2000 ISBN 9780262531795 p. 65

Found another, which cites the paragraph above:
 * Richard Babbage (1883-1971?) was born in Ireland, but made his career as a journalist in Canada, working for the Montreal Star and associated papers from 1922-1949. His interest in his famous ancestor led him to take part in the memorable Harvard 1947 Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery (Cohen 2000, 65). Babbage became a good friend of Chant’s, and gave him other scarce Babbage materials. There is a Richard H. Babbage fonds (MG55/29-No122) at the National Archives of Canada.
 * R.A. Rosenfeld, M. Tchelebon, J. Taylor Herschel, Babbage, and Isaac Newton’s Chair, The Journal of The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada; June 2009 p. 110

With this, I'll see if I can dig up more about his family connection to Charles. JesseW (talk) 00:03, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Found an address: "R. H. Babbage, editor, 241 St. James St. West, Montreal, Canada" in an announcement of the symposium: http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/S0025-5718-47-99592-6. JesseW (talk) 00:20, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

The quote is in the referenced Proceedings, as listed in this Hathi Trust entry, which unfortunately provides no previews, or even snippets. JesseW (talk) 03:19, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * And, 9 years later, the Internet Archive has made a scan available (thru Controlled Digital Lending), and I was able to find the quote! It is on page 20, and has slight wording differences to what we have (I'll correct that). I still need to better understand the context to figure out how it got from there back to Charles. JesseW (talk) 18:31, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

So, the quote in the Proceedings is a multi-page quote cited as being from Charles Babbage's The Exposition of 1851. Most of the quote is generally accurate (and starts on page 80), but this particular quote about the pineapple is NOT present along with the rest. The part where things begin to diverge is: "By such means it would be perfectly possible to make all calculations requiring tabular numbers, without the chance of error." After that sentence, the Proceedings move directly to the phrase: "The fourth of the apparent impossibilities to which I have referred" while the Exposition includes an additional paragraph. But it's after that in which things go really wrong: in the Exposition, that clause is followed by: "involves a condition of so extraordinary a nature that even the most fastidious inquirer into the powers of the Analytical Engine could scarcely require it to fulfil. Knowing the kind of objections that my countrymen make to this invention," while the Proceedings skips again, and instead continues: "concerns the kind of objections that my countrymen make to inventions." Then comes (in the Proceedings) the suspect quote, which is entirely missing from the Exposition, after which they converge again with "I proposed to myself this inquiry". I'm unable to find the suspect quote anywhere in (this edition of) the Exposition, and (unless it's present in some other edition), I'm left with the uncomfortable suspicion that Richard H. invented the quote out of whole cloth and illegitimately inserted it (back in 1947!) into the scholarly record. Wow. JesseW (talk) 20:28, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

It might also be from the first edition of The Exposition of 1851 -- apparently, the by far more widely available edition is the 2nd; but maybe Richard H. had access to a first edition, and was quoting from that. I may try and contact a local academic library and see if they can help me track down a copy of the first edition. If anyone else is motivated to do so, that would of course be wonderful. JesseW (talk) 00:17, 29 August 2022 (UTC)