Turing, Navia and Schildt

[Nick Keighley]

Neither she nor Babbage came close to conceptualizing "universal"
computability. Therefore, Ada Lovelace was writing "software" only in
the sense of "machine set-up".

I dodn't think you have to have a concpt of universal computing in
order to write software. You are making a distinction where none
exists. You are doing this merely to defend your untenable position.

 

[spinoza1111]

If you'd actually read any of her stuff you wouldn't say that.


she wasn't a machine tender as there was no machine. And Babagges
machines didn't have plug boards. They were mechanical!


they didn't have a working machine. Did Grace hopper use the machine
to design the machine?


the London Science Museum demonstarted that the manufacture of the
parts was well within the capabilities of the available technology.
If anything they were a little over engineered.

That is precisely what was NOT demonstrated by the London Science
Museum. It built the modern Difference engine with Victorian materials
but without modern computer-controlled machine tools. Its working
machine does not prove at all that Babbage could have built the
machine in the 19th century because at that date, machining to the
tolerances required was not possible because machine tools were hand-
held and hand-guided.

it amazes me what you can drag your bizzare social theories into.- Hide quoted text -

No, what's amazing is how ignorant technical people can be of the
social origins of technology, or its history...if British people are
learning at their science museums that they could have produced a real
working and full-scale Difference engine, they are being taught to
ignore the fact that technology doesn't work on its own, that it
requires a skilled and respected labor force.

You might consider reading FORCES OF PRODUCTION by technical historian
David Noble now at York University, who was a Smithsonian employee
until hounded out of his job by anti-labor Republicans: Noble
described how CNC numerically controlled machine tools were
introduced. The skill of the machinists was disregarded and punk
college boys prepared programs which according to Noble produced
pieces of scrap iron at high speed. It was only when management agreed
with the labor to allow the actual machinists to program the machines
that work got done.

Babbage had, it appears, nothing but contempt for actual workers and
for this reason would not have been able to retain machinists with
enough skill to create a working Difference Engine even if they had
existed. And, if there were Victorian machinists able to fabricate
parts to the tolerances Babbage needed, they probably get quiet about
it lest their employers force them to teach others their secrets...and
lay them off without a pension.

In my direct experience and in the historical record, "geniuses" are
usually the people who understand and can steal the work of others and
present it as their own. The Difference engine was indeed Babbage's
idea in the sense that after suggesting that astronomical calculations
be done with steam, Babbage worked on the the idea. But the idea
probably occured to others.

 

[spinoza1111]

If you'd actually read any of her stuff you wouldn't say that.


she wasn't a machine tender as there was no machine. And Babagges
machines didn't have plug boards. They were mechanical!


they didn't have a working machine. Did Grace hopper use the machine
to design the machine?

No, she used software to build software. I don't believe Ada Augusta
had the idea of using the Difference engine to translate equations
into a form more easily processed by the Difference engine.

 

[Nick Keighley]

That's a tiny snippet, of course. I would not like to cross
mathematical swords with [Ada Lovelace].
She thought math is all about numbers.

If you'd actually read any of her stuff you wouldn't say that.

the London Science Museum [demonstrated] that the manufacture of the
parts was well within the capabilities of the available technology.
If anything they were a little over engineered.

That is precisely what was NOT demonstrated by the London Science
Museum. It built the modern Difference engine with Victorian materials
but without modern computer-controlled machine tools.

I was under the impression LSM *did* use CNC technology to produce
their parts. And that the examples they had of parts made by Babbage's
machinist were of equal quality. Or at least good enough quality.

Its working
machine does not prove at all that Babbage could have built the
machine in the 19th century because at that date,

not in an absolute sense but certainly in an beyond-all-reasonable-
doubt sense

machining to the
tolerances required was not possible because machine tools were hand-
held and hand-guided.

here you denigrate the worker! Babbage's machinist was highly skilled
and quite capable of producing the parts to the required quality. I
can probably produce cites if I have to.

No, what's amazing is how ignorant technical people can be of the
social origins of technology, or its history...if British people are
learning at their science museums that they could have produced a real
working and full-scale Difference engine, they are being taught to
ignore the fact that technology doesn't work on its own, that it
requires a skilled and respected labor force.

Babbage *had* the skilled workforce (one man actually). You accuse me
of having a political agenda but your's is at least equal to mine.
19th century Britain couldn't build a Difference Engine because it
mistreated its workers.

You might consider reading FORCES OF PRODUCTION by technical historian
David Noble now at York University,

I might indeed give it a go. Does it mention the Difference Engine?

Babbage had, it appears, nothing but contempt for actual workers

Babbage and his machinist had an uneasy working relationship. I'm not
sure I'd go as far as to see it was based on contempt. So were the
parts impossible to manufacture because they were made by hand or
because Babbage was a bastard?

and
for this reason would not have been able to retain machinists with
enough skill to create a working Difference Engine even if they had
existed. And, if there were Victorian machinists able to fabricate
parts to the tolerances Babbage needed, they probably get quiet about
it lest their employers force them to teach others their secrets...and
lay them off without a pension.

In my direct experience and in the historical record, "geniuses" are
usually the people who understand and can steal the work of others and
present it as their own. The Difference engine was indeed Babbage's
idea in the sense that after suggesting that astronomical calculations
be done with steam, Babbage worked on the the idea. But the idea
probably occured to others.

name them

 

[Nick Keighley]

No, she used software to build software. I don't believe Ada Augusta
had the idea of using the Difference engine to translate equations
into a form more easily processed by the Difference engine.

ok, that is a good point

 

[Nick Keighley]

[...]

That's a tiny snippet, of course. I would not like to cross
mathematical swords with [Ada Lovelace].
She thought math is all about numbers.

If you'd actually read any of her stuff you wouldn't say that.

LOL. I suspect you will never, ever realise the beauty and perfect
comedy in that reply of yours.

and if you expect me to do so you'll have to explain

Hint: Leave it to Heathfield. He sounds a lot more pompous and able.

Now you've offended me. How dare you claim I'm not as pompous as
Heathfield!

 

[spinoza1111]

But Turing invented the concept of software.
Nonsense. Ada Lovelace was writing software years before Turing
wrote his papers.

That's a tiny snippet, of course. I would not like to cross
mathematical swords with [Ada Lovelace].
She thought math is all about numbers.
If you'd actually read any of her stuff you wouldn't say that.

the London Science Museum [demonstrated] that the manufacture of the
parts was well within the capabilities of the available technology.
If anything they were a little over engineered.

That is precisely what was NOT demonstrated by the London Science
Museum. It built the modern Difference engine with Victorian materials
but without modern computer-controlled machine tools.

I was under the impression LSM *did* use CNC technology to produce
their parts. And that the examples they had of parts made by Babbage's
machinist were of equal quality. Or at least good enough quality.

That's not the historical record, which indicates that the parts could
not be produced in Babbage's time to acceptable quality.

not in an absolute sense but certainly in an beyond-all-reasonable-
doubt sense

The machine was not built. The reason is that machine tools could not
produce the parts to the required tolerances.

here you denigrate the worker! Babbage's machinist was highly skilled
and quite capable of producing the parts to the required quality. I
can probably produce cites if I have to.

I don't think you can. And I'm not "denigrating" the worker, only
pointing out that it was not physically possible for the most skilled
Victorian machinist to hand guide cutting tools for each part at a
cost Babbage and the government were willing to pay.

Babbage *had* the skilled workforce (one man actually). You accuse me
of having a political agenda but your's is at least equal to mine.
19th century Britain couldn't build a Difference Engine because it
mistreated its workers.


I might indeed give it a go. Does it mention the Difference Engine?

Not as far as I recall.

Babbage and his machinist had an uneasy working relationship. I'm not
sure I'd go as far as to see it was based on contempt. So were the
parts impossible to manufacture because they were made by hand or
because Babbage was a bastard?

Perhaps for both reasons.

name them

They are nameless because as artisans it was in their self-interest to
keep their inventions to themselves.

 

[Clot Hears]

On Oct 22, 3:19 pm, Nick Keighley <[email protected]>
<ccc6974a-1cc2-49d8-b575-a60ae4232...@v15g2000prn.googlegroups.com
,
But Turing invented the concept of software.
Nonsense. Ada Lovelace was writing software years before Turing
wrote his papers.

That's a tiny snippet, of course. I would not like to cross
mathematical swords with [Ada Lovelace].

She thought math is all about numbers.

If you'd actually read any of her stuff you wouldn't say that.

the London Science Museum [demonstrated] that the manufacture of the
parts was well within the capabilities of the available technology.
If anything they were a little over engineered.

That is precisely what was NOT demonstrated by the London Science
Museum. It built the modern Difference engine with Victorian materials
but without modern computer-controlled machine tools.

I was under the impression LSM *did* use CNC technology to produce
their parts. And that the examples they had of parts made by Babbage's
machinist were of equal quality. Or at least good enough quality.

That's not the historical record, which indicates that the parts could
not be produced in Babbage's time to acceptable quality.

Spinny wrong as usual:

1) from the Difference Engine Wikipaedia entry. Referring to the Science
Museum machine it says: "Once completed, both the engine and its printer
worked flawlessly, and still do. The difference engine and printer were
constructed to tolerances achievable with 19th century technology,
resolving a long-standing debate whether Babbage's design would actually
have worked. (One of the reasons formerly advanced for the
non-completion of Babbage's engines had been that engineering methods
were insufficiently developed in the Victorian era.)"

2) A link at the bottom of that article also refers to a Difference
Engine built out of Meccano. See here http://www.meccano.us/ for more
information. As a child I built stuff out of Meccano so have personal
experience that none of it is particularly precise.

 

[spinoza1111]

On Oct 22, 3:19 pm, Nick Keighley <[email protected]>
<ccc6974a-1cc2-49d8-b575-a60ae4232...@v15g2000prn.googlegroups.com
,
But Turing invented the concept of software.
Nonsense. Ada Lovelace was writing software years before Turing
wrote his papers.
<snip>
That's a tiny snippet, of course. I would not like to cross
mathematical swords with [Ada Lovelace].
She thought math is all about numbers.
If you'd actually read any of her stuff you wouldn't say that.
<snip>
the London Science Museum [demonstrated] that the manufacture of the
parts was well within the capabilities of the available technology.
If anything they were a little over engineered.
That is precisely what was NOT demonstrated by the London Science
Museum. It built the modern Difference engine with Victorian materials
but without modern computer-controlled machine tools.
I was under the impression LSM *did* use CNC technology to produce
their parts. And that the examples they had of parts made by Babbage's
machinist were of equal quality. Or at least good enough quality.

That's not the historical record, which indicates that the parts could
not be produced in Babbage's time to acceptable quality.

Spinny wrong as usual:

1) from the Difference Engine Wikipaedia entry. Referring to the Science
Museum machine it says: "Once completed, both the engine and its printer
worked flawlessly, and still do. The difference engine and printer were
constructed to tolerances achievable with 19th century technology,
resolving a long-standing debate whether Babbage's design would actually
have worked. (One of the reasons formerly advanced for the
non-completion of Babbage's engines had been that engineering methods
were insufficiently developed in the Victorian era.)"

Patriotic British nonsense, meant to send the message "we could have
done it then and we can do it now, hip hip hooray and Rule, Britannia:
it matters nought that our children can't read and are preggers at
fourteen because we prefer to ignore them, and celebrate a man who
failed at a critical juncture. We're all right, Jack, we never had it
so good, and Britons never ever shall be slaves."

Etc.

You see, the machine in the Science museum WAS constructed to
Victorian tolerances. The point being: why WAS it constructed today
and NOT constructed in Babbage's time? The answer being that it's duck
soup for (American, German, and Japanese-designed) CNC machine tools
to engineer to Victorian tolerances whereas in Babbage's time, as
Babbage's own pompous "Life of a Philosopher" and posts here confirm,
he was working AT THE LIMIT of Victorian engineering tolerances, as
well as AT THE LIMIT of the patience of the British government and his
machinist. The machine could have been produced but was not for the
same reason a high-way bridge can be constructed across Bering's
Strait and is not: COST.

The Science Museum, like most mega-museums, has jettisoned its
scholarly function and prefers to pander to crowds of ignorant people
who, like similar crowds worldwide, want on their holiday to be
reassured that their country is the greatest thing since sliced bread
and that it has, can and will produce "geniuses" who will at the
crisis invent their collective way out of the mess they're in, created
by the neglect, in America and Britain, of education for actual
children.

The public relations prose fooled you into believing that Babbage's
machine was buildable in Victorian times, and it's a short hop for the
deluded to believe that it was, or would have been had his bloody
machinist had not been some sort of Chartist bloody sod standing in
the way of Progress because he chose not to go blind by machining
hundreds of parts to the limits of Victorian tolerance.

Patriotic sentiment, denial of Britain's actual lack of technical and
scientific progress relative to Germany, America and even Japan (a
sclerosis which set in during Babbage's life time) cause the Science
Museum puff piece to be read by the typical holiday-maker not "could
have worked" but "did work".

Which it did not. Had Babbage migrated to America or Germany it may
have. As it happens, mechanization of calculation made the most rapid
advance in the USA after Babbage because by then the USA was a land of
free labor wherein machinists could hope to own their home and start
their own firms: my (German-American) great grandfather was still
working as a machinist during WWII in his eighties. They did not in
America have to contend with the vagaries of a pompous and self-
seeking self-professed "philosopher" and the vapourings of a dyspeptic
daughter of away-with-the-fairies Byron. They proceeded to mechanize
calculation in practical, usable ways, as did the Germans and
Japanese.

The difference Engine was an expensive curio which wasn't worth
building at the limit of Victorian tolerances because:

(1) Many rising, if lower middle class, men and boys, and not a few
Victorian women, were skilled and fast at computation, and preferred
doing this tedious work to being the body servants of milords, mad
bishops, self-proclaimed philosophers and dyspeptic daughters of rowdy
poets.

(2) In the related area of "word processing" (which Babbage machine
was able in a limited sense to do, since it prepared neat columns of
numbers) other rising spirits were willing to copy documents in a fair
hand, this again being preferable to domestic service.

(3) In the 1870s, the Americans and Germans automated calculation
using special-purpose machines based not on Babbage but on Pascal of
all people: Blaise Pascal had shown the world how to mechanize base 10
calculation in the 17th century.

(4) Using much the same machining technology, the Americans and
Germans invented...the typewriter.

It made more sense to provide Babbage functionality a la carte because
of its considerable expense. And note that wages for machinists in
America were much higher than wages for machinists in Britain in the
late 19th century; it was nonetheless easier to retain skilled
machinists in America willing to work for Henry Ford because the Yank
machinists were treated with more fairness and dignity.

Britain (like America today) did not participate with enough
enthusiasm in these developments, preferring (like America today)
speculation and whacking colonial peoples when it had clear
superiority in arms over Fuzzie Wuzzies. No amount of retrospective
celebration of men who like Babbage had tendencies to shoot themselves
in the foot, or who like Turing were despised in their lifetime as
poofters, can change this.