home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Xref: sparky comp.arch:8864 alt.folklore.computers:12465
- Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
- Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!cujo!cc.curtin.edu.au!zrepachol
- From: zrepachol@cc.curtin.edu.au (Paul Repacholi)
- Subject: Re: Babbage books (was: Proposal: Computer History Project)
- Message-ID: <1992Aug13.014927.1@cc.curtin.edu.au>
- Lines: 19
- Sender: news@cujo.curtin.edu.au (News Manager)
- Organization: Curtin University of Technology
- References: <1351@eouk9.eoe.co.uk> <BsJ7xy.40L@pgroup.com> <1992Aug6.141925.9517@csi.on.ca> <1992Aug6.165351.8708@pollux.lu.se> <1992Aug7.175715.24828@geovision.gvc.com> <4023@novavax.UUCP> <samw.713392337@bucket> <phillips.713439392@infs4>
- Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 16:49:27 GMT
-
- In article <phillips.713439392@infs4>, phillips@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au (Christopher Phillips) writes:
- > samw@bucket.rain.com (Sam Warden) writes:
- >>
- >>I'm amazed that educated, technical people can perpetuate the
- >>myth that Babbage failed due to `limited technology'. Clockwork
- >>was a thoroughly mature art and certainly `computationally
- >>universal', and Babbage himself was one of the founders of
- >>modern machine tooling, as someone has mentioned. I'm as
-
- His workshop foreman for some years was a gent by the name of Wittworth, the
- 1/2"x13tpi curse of mechanics for centuries. The Babbage workshop was the 1800's
- equivelent of the MIT nano-tech group. The problems were more organizational and
- the lack of any other extant example of 'abstract' machines for the mugs in
- Whitehall and the houses of parlement to have a 'mind feel' for what could be
- done. Who was it in the 60s who was ridiculed for saying that games would be one
- of the most important uses of computers?
-
- ~Paul
-
-
