[This is written for my daughter Trinity, and my mother Katrina. ]
“Lady Ada I really must rush, I’ve got a meeting with the Navy about continuing the funding for the Difference Engine. We must really get it pumping out those log tables!”
“Charles I’ve just had the most extraordinary conversation with Lord Byron – and I had to tell you about it right away.”
“Oh really? That useless poet? They’re going to run him out of London you know,” Charles picked up a cog sitting on the mantlepiece and tossed it in the air.
“Well, be that as it may, I was telling him about how the Difference Engine will knit numbers together to make log tables.”
“And he said we should make the numbers knit themselves.”
Charles looked at her firmly in the eye, “Say that again Ada.”
“That we should make the numbers knit themselves.”
Charles gazed at the cog in his hand, transfixed.
Ada paused for a moment, and then looked at Charles, concerned. “Charles, didn’t you say you needed to get to that meeting with the Navy?”
“No, no, this new idea is too important.”
“Charles, if you don’t finish your project, you won’t have funding for anything!”
“But we must do it the best way Ada! If we spend more time it can be even better!”
“Charles, You will be known as a laughingstock. Charles Babbage – the man who thought of the Difference Engine – but never got it working!”
—
[Charles Babbage never did get his Difference Engine working. They built a model of it for the London Science Museum in 2002 to prove it could work. Charles Babbage is now taught in University Engineering courses as an example of what happens when you have great ideas but don’t deliver.]
