Babbage Engine Quotes & Sayings

My balance is really bad. I just hope my clumsiness doesn't show through. — Kim Kardashian

Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies imagine that because the business of [Babbage's Analytical Engine] is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly. — Ada Lovelace

I find no flaw in your reasoning about the Analytical Engine; I admire it; but you are aware that it rests entirely on the hypothesis that I care for the 'whole human race. — Charles Babbage

You shouldn't be a big shot about your fate. I'm an enemy of Destiny, I'm not a Greek, I'm a Berliner. — Alfred Doblin

In the future, fast-fashion retailers might change their philosophy toward real efforts to create a world of their own. One can only hope. — Hedi Slimane

Life's tallest order is to keep the feelings up, to make two dollars' worth of euphoria go the distance. And life can't do that. So fiction does. — Stanley Elkin

The more we do this, the more the audio-drama format is opening up to us in new ways. So I think there's an experimental element, or at least an confidence in experimenting, that's running though our work now - and it wasn't there in the first season. — Glenn McQuaid

Turing knew of Babbage's work, and the universal Turing machine can be seen as a reincarnation of Difference Engine No. 2. In fact, Turing had gone much further, and provided computing with a solid theoretical basis, — Simon Singh

If you are going to have less things, they have to be great things. — John Maeda

Caring has the gift of making the ordinary special. — George R. Bach

I'm psychotically involved in every tiny little aspect. That's just the way I've been about everything my whole life. — Rob Zombie

Give yourself up to this moment. Dare to see it. Now look down at your feet; slip out of those invisible tethers. Then ask: Where would you take yourself right this moment if you walked toward your most heartfelt dream? What would your life look like? What would your body look and feel like? What level of energy would you have? What might be your favorite activity? What would your daily life include? Imagine happiness - the sweet glow of inner contentment, the way it tastes and smells and feels. — Chris Downie

It is a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract. — Alan Shepard

some lipstick on his dipstick?" I — Sarina Bowen

If I am a better person, and if I try harder every day, perhaps all of this will work out. — Jennifer Lynch

Life is short. Life goes fast. And what I really want to do in my life is to bring something new, something beautiful and something filled with light into the world. I try to think of that every day so that I can remember why I am coming to my studio. — Ross Bleckner

The Difference Engine stands - for a replica works today, in the Science Museum in London - as a milestone of what could be achieved in precision engineering. In the composition of its alloys, the exactness of its dimensions, the interchangeability of its parts, nothing surpassed this segment of an unfinished machine. Still, it was a curio. And it was as far as Babbage could go. — James Gleick

As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of the science. Whenever any result is sought by its aid, the question will then arise - by what course of calculation can these results be arrived at by the machine in the shortest time? — Charles Babbage

Sometimes God calms the storm. Sometimes He lets the storm rage and He calms you — Nicky Gumbel

Never throw mud. You may miss your mark, but you will have dirty hands. — Dorothy Parker

The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery ... As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science. — Charles Babbage

'You might think of combinatorics as a machine too', the major says. 'A different sort of machine, though. Have you heard of Babbage's analytic engine? He never built it ... I have an analytic machine of my own-right here.' He taps his own skull. — David Leavitt

Babbage's Three Laws of Difference Engines
First Law: A difference engine must have at least six cogs.
Second Law: A difference engine must be able to operate a loom.
Third law: A difference engine must be able to kill a man, should the mood so take it. — Gideon Defoe

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

You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it. — Charles Babbage