{"id":1331,"date":"2025-03-31T05:48:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-30T18:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/?p=1331"},"modified":"2025-12-13T10:44:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T23:44:33","slug":"background-6-1842-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/31\/background-6-1842-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Background 6 &#8211; 1842 &#8211; London"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>[This is written for my daughter Trinity, and my mother Katrina]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/CucumberSandwiches.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\" src=\"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/CucumberSandwiches.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1332\" srcset=\"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/CucumberSandwiches.jpeg 512w, https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/CucumberSandwiches-300x300.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/CucumberSandwiches-150x150.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/CucumberSandwiches-144x144.jpeg 144w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLady Ada &#8211; these cucumber sandwiches are a delight!\u201d<br><br>Ada looked at her earnestly, and then became thoughtful.<br>\u201cThanks you Miss Penny. How is the new job treating you?  Surely you like working as a com-putaire?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMiss Lovelace I don\u2019t mean to seem ungrateful. I am very thankful for this opportunity. But I trust,&nbsp; with you I can speak plainly. Oh it is drudgery! \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut you\u2019re out of the accounting office, you get to work using your brain &#8211; and get to use the mathematics you had worked so hard to master. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSomething is wrong with this Age, Miss Lovelace. Everyone seems to be working 14 hour days or more, at jobs that destroy our souls. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSurely making great books of logarithmic tables, that help our glorious empire span the globe, surely that is a noble cause worth labouring for?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh you don\u2019t see Miss Lovelace, the books have tens of thousands of logarithmic entries, each one taking an age to calculate. Then they complain they\u2019re full of mistakes. So we have to check and re-check every one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh dear, Miss Penny..\u201c<br><br>\u201cMiss Lovelace, after that they want copies for every ship, and so we are copying them over and over, and someone must check those for mistakes. It is such a frustrating task.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWell Mister Babbage is working on a steam-tabulator.  When he gets it working &#8211; it will churn out\u00a0 logarithmic tables by the dozen! He calls it &#8211; The Difference Engine!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut that will just put us out of a job!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI see what you mean.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ada paused for a moment.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI will speak to Lord Byron about it. He may have some ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[This is written for my daughter Trinity, and my mother Katrina] \u201cLady Ada &#8211; these cucumber sandwiches are a delight!\u201d Ada looked at her earnestly, and then became thoughtful.\u201cThanks you Miss Penny. How is the new job treating you? Surely &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/31\/background-6-1842-london\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1331"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1334,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions\/1334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}