Babbage Computer Quotes & Sayings

The Industrial Revolution was based on two grand concepts that were profound in their simplicity. Innovators came up with ways to simplify endeavors by breaking them into easy, small tasks that could be accomplished on assembly lines. Then, beginning in the textile industry, inventors found ways to mechanize steps so that they could be performed by machines, many of them powered by steam engines. Babbage, building on ideas from Pascal and Leibniz, tried to apply these two processes to the production of computations, creating a mechanical precursor to the modern computer. His most significant conceptual leap was that such machines did not have to be set to do only one process, but instead could be programmed and reprogrammed through the use of punch cards. Ada saw the beauty and significance of that enchanting notion, and she also described an even more exciting idea that derived from it: such machines could process not only numbers but anything that could be notated in symbols. — Walter Isaacson

I want the public to know that it will be an honor for me to meet them and spend a few special moments with all those who helped me through my filmed career. — Tony Curtis

We laughed a lot and I grew warmer still, lovely and warm. I do realize that some of that warmth was due to the wine, but there was much more to it than that. There are two distinct aspects to Communion wine: one aspect is the wine itself, the other is the idea of communion. Wine is certainly warming, but communion is a great deal more so. — Franny Billingsley

I'd like to play live, but the thing I do now with my synthesizers, almost everything is vocoder-driven. — Kyle Parker

I don't doll myself up for TV because I want people to accept me for who I am. — John Cena

Babbage had most of this system sketched out by 1837, but the first true computer to use this programmable architecture didn't appear for more than a hundred years. — Steven Johnson

I'm still angry with Simpson for getting by with two murders. — Vincent Bugliosi

I have jobs that I've preferred more than others simply because I've gotten to meet and make friends with great people. I've pulled at least one very close friend from every project I've done. — Nathan Fillion

Mind easily mesmerized when frightened. — Toba Beta

Assigning invention in cases like this is difficult, and modern writings on technology recognize this. Says computing pioneer Michael Williams:

There is no such thing as "first" in any activity associated with human invention. If you add enough adjectives to a description you can always claim your own favorite. For example the ENIAC is often claimed to be the "first electronic, general purpose, large scale, digital computer" and you certainly have to add all those adjectives before you have a correct statement. If you leave any of them off, then machines such as the ABC, the Colossus, Zuse's Z3, and many others (some not even constructed such as Babbage's Analytical Engine) become candidates for being "first. — W. Brian Arthur

O love's a simple word to sayWith nature aiding and abetting — Jan Struther

I am content with what I have, little be it, or much. — John Bunyan

Mr. Herschel brought with him the calculations of the computers, and we commenced the tedious process of verification. After a time many discrepancies occurred, and at one point these discordances were so numerous that I exclaimed, "I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam," to which Herschel replied, "It is quite possible." — Charles Babbage

Political correctness is the fascism of the 90's, it is this rigid feeling that you have to keep your ideas and your way of looking at things within very narrow boundaries or else you'll offend someone. Certainly one of the purposes of journalism is to challenge just that way of thinking, and certainly one of the purposes of criticism is to break boundaries, that's also one of the purposes of art. — Roger Ebert

He learns that the form, in its current form, was originally called a formulary, and was invented by an Englishman named Charles Babbage, the same man who invented both an early kind of computer and the cow catcher, a device attached to the front of locomotives to clear debris from train tracks. He learns that Babbage once wrote to Alfred Tennyson to correct two lines from one of Tennyson's poems, which Babbage felt lacked scientific accuracy. This, thinks Jonas, tells you everything you need to know about both the man and the invention of forms. — Stephen Dau

Appearances matter - and remember to smile. — Nelson Mandela

The Master said, "A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present."
(Analects 2.11) — Confucius

A noise, and the past was chased away, dispersed into the shadows like smoke by the brighter, louder present. — Kate Morton

Human beings by nature want happiness and do not want suffering. With that
feeling everyone tries to achieve happiness and tries to get rid of suffering, and everyone has the basic right to do this. In this way, all here are the same, whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, Easterner or Westerner, believer or non-believer, and within believers whether Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and so on. Basically, from the viewpoint of real human value we are all the same. — Dalai Lama

Ghosts of the past still clutch at you in the present — Joanne Greenberg