April 19, 2018 Thursday
Bedtime story
Note A of Ada Lovelace - Part 12
Tonight we are continuing with the Note A
of Ada Lovelace wherein she is commenting on perhaps the most deciding point
concerning the two engines – the arrest in the physical construction of the
Difference engine.
Those who were conversant with the assembly
and endowment sanctioned for the Difference Engine project (17,000 British
Pounds of 1842 that would be roughly equal to 2 million US dollars of 2015)
sometimes blamed the Analytical Engine to be the reason for the incompletion of
the primary machine.
“The second of the misapprehensions above
alluded to relates to well-known suspension, during some years past, of all
progress in the construction of the Difference Engine.
Respecting the circumstances which have
interfered with the actual completion of their invention, we offer no opinion;
and in fact are not possessed of the data for doing so, had we the inclination.
But we know that some persons suppose these
obstacles (be they what they may) to have arisen in consequence of the
subsequent invention of the Analytical Engine while the former was in progress.
We have ourselves heard it even lamented
that an idea should ever have occurred at all, which had turned out to be
merely the means of arresting what was already in a course of successful
execution, without substituting the superior invention in its stead.
This notion was can contradict in the most
unqualified matter.
The progress of the Difference Engine has
long been suspended, before there were even the least crude glimmerings of any
invention superior to it.
Such glimmerings, therefore, and their
subsequent development, were in no way the original cause of that suspension;
although, where difficulties of some kind or other evidently already existed, it
was not perhaps calculated to remove or lessen them than an invention should
have been meanwhile thought of, which, while including all that the first
capable of, possesses powers so extended as to eclipse it altogether.
We leave it for the decision of each
individual (after he has possessed himself of competent information as to the
characteristics of each engine) to determine how far it ought to be matter of
regret that such an accession has been made to the powers of human science,
even if it has (which we greatly doubt) increased to a certain limited extent
some already existing difficulties that had arisen in the way of completing a
valuable but lesser work.
We leave it for each to satisfy himself as
to the wisdom of desiring the obliteration (were that now possible) of all
records of the more perfect invention, in order that the more comparatively
limited one might be finished.
The Difference Engine would doubtless
fulfill all those practical objects which it was originally destined for.
It would certainly calculate all the tables
that are more directly necessary for the physical purposes of life, such as
nautical and other compositions.
Those who incline to very strictly
utilitarian views may perhaps feel that the powers of the Analytical Engine
bear upon questions of abstract and speculative science, rather than upon those
involving everyday and ordinary human interests.”
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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