The Difference Engine

The circular arrangement of the axes of the Difference Engine 'round large central wheels led to the most extended prospects. The whole of arithmetic now appeared within the grasp of mechanism. A vague glimpse even of an Analytical Engine opened out, and I pursued with enthusiasm the shadowy vision.

The drawings and the experiments were of the most costly kind. Draftsmen of the highest order were engaged, to economize the labor of my own head; whilst skilled workmen executed the experimental machinery.

In order to carry out my pursuits successfully, I had purchased a house with about a quarter of an acre of ground, in a very quiet locality in London. My coach-house was converted into a forge and foundry, whilst my stables were transformed into a workshop. I built other extensive workshops myself, and had a fire-proof building for my drawings and draftsmen.

The complicated relations amongst the various parts of the machinery would have baffled the most tenacious memory. I overcame that difficulty by improving and extending a language of signs, the Mechanical Notation, which in 1826 I had explained in a paper printed in the Philosophic Transactions of the Royal Society. By such means I succeeded in mastering a train of investigation so vast in extent that no length of years could otherwise have enabled me to control it. By the aid of the language of signs, the Engine became a reality.

–LORD CHARLES BABBAGE, Passages in the Life of a Philosopher, 1864.

[From The Mechanics Magazine, 1830.]

To judge by readers' letters we receive, certain among our public would doubt that political matters come within the province of this journal. But the interests of science and manufacturing are inextricably mixed with a nation's political philosophy. How then can we be silent?

We look with delight for a grand new age for Science, as well as to every other PRODUCTIVE interest of this country, from the election to Parliament of a man of Mr. Babbage's eminence in the scientific world, his tried independence of spirit, his very searching and business-like habits.

Therefore we say forthrightly to every elector of Finsbury who is a reader of this journal—go and vote for Mr. Babbage. If you are an inventor, whom the ubiquitous and oppressive TAX ON PATENTS shuts out from the field of fair competition, and desire to see that TAX replaced by a wise and deliberate system of PUBLIC SUBSIDIES—go and vote for Mr. Babbage. If you are a manufacturer, harassed and obstructed in your operations by the fiscal stupidities of the present Government—if you would see British industry become as free as the air you breathe—go and vote for Mr. Babbage. If you are a mechanic, and depend for your daily bread on a constant and steady demand for the products of your skill, and are aware of the influence of free trade on your fortunes—go and vote for Mr. Babbage. If you are a devotee of Science and Progress—principle and practice united as bone and sinew—then meet us today on Islington Green, and VOTE FOR MR. BABBAGE!

The results of the general election of 1830 made public feeling obvious. Byron and his Radicals had captured the tone of the day, and the Whig Party were an utter shambles. Lord Wellington's Tones, however, resenting the threat to aristocratic privilege posed by Radical proposals of "merit-lordship," took a hard line. The Commons procrastinated on the Radical Reform Bill, and on 8 October the Lords threw it out. The King refused to create new Radical peers who might force the Bill through; on the contrary, the Fitzelarences were ennobled instead, leading Byron to comment bitterly: "How much better it is to be a Royal bastard than a philosopher in England at present. But a mighty change is at hand."

Popular pressure mounted swiftly. In Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, the working-class, inspired by Babbage's ideals of union ownership and mutual co-operatives, took to the streets in massive torchlight parades. The Industrial Radical Party, disdaining violence, called for moral suasion and a peaceful mass-campaign for redress of legitimate grievances. But the Government remained stubborn, and events took an ugly turn. In a rising crescendo of random outrage, violent rural "Swing bands" and proletarian Luddites attacked aristocratic homes and capitalist factories alike. Mobs in London shattered the windows in the house of the Duke of Wellington and other Tory peers, and, cobblestones in hand, lay sullenly in wait for the passing carriages of the elite. The Anglican bishops, who had voted against Reform in the Lords, were burned in effigy. Ultra-radical conspirators, fired to frenzy by the furious polemics of the atheist R B. Shelley, attacked and looted Establishment churches.

On 12 December Lord Byron introduced a new Reform Bill, more radical yet, proposing outright disfranchisement of the hereditary British aristocracy, including himself. This was more than the lories could bear, and Wellington involved himself in covert planning for a military coup.

The crisis had polarized the nation. At this juncture, the middle-classes, terrified of the prospect of anarchy, made their own move and came down on the side of the Radicals. A tax-strike was declared, to force Wellington from office; there was a deliberate run on the banks, in which merchants demanded and hoarded gold specie, bringing the national economy to a grinding halt.

In Bristol, after three days of major riots, Wellington ordered the Army to put down "Jacobinism" by any means necessary. In the resulting massacre three hundred people, including three prominent Radical M.P.'s, lost their lives. When the news of the massacre reached him, a furious Byron, now calling himself "Citizen Byron," and appearing without coat or necktie at a London rally, called for a general strike. This rally was also attacked by Tory cavalry, with bloody results, but Byron eluded capture. Two days later the nation was under martial-law.

In future, the Duke of Wellington would turn his considerable military genius against his own countrymen. The first uprisings against the Tory Regime—as it must now be called—were swiftly and efficiently put down, while garrison troops ruled all major cities. The Army remained loyal to the victor of Waterloo, and the aristocracy, to their discredit, also threw in their lot with the Duke.

But the Radical Party elite had escaped apprehension, abetted by a well-organized covert network of Party faithful. By the spring of '31, any hope of a swift military solution was over. Mass hangings and deportations were answered by sullen resistance and vicious guerrilla reprisals. The Regime had destroyed any vestige of popular support, and England was in the throes of class-war.

–The Time of Troubles: A Popular History, 1912, BY W. E. PRATCHETT, Ph.D., F.R.S.

[This private letter of July 1855 conveys Benjamin Disraeli's eye-witness impressions of the funeral of Lord Byron. The text derives from a tape-spool emitted by a Colt & Maxwell Typing Engine. The addressee is unknown.]

Lady Annabella Byron entered on the arm of her daughter, looking very frail. She seemed a little dazed. Both mother and daughter were very worn and white, at the end of their forces. Then a funeral march was played—very fine—the panmelodium sounding splendid amid the somber melodies of the automatic organs.

Then the processions arrived. The Speaker first, proceeded by heralds with white staves but in mourning-dress. The Speaker was quite splendid. He walked slowly and firmly, very impassive and dignified; an almost Egyptianate face. The mace was carried before him, and he wore a gold-laced gown, very fine. Then the Ministers; Colonial Secretary, very dapper indeed. Viceroy of India looks quite recovered from his malaria. Chairman of the Commission on Free Trade looked the wickedest of the human race, as if writhing under a load of disreputable guilt.

Then the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor absolutely grotesque, and made more so by the tremendous figure of the Sergeant-at-Arms with a silver chain and large, white silk bows on his shoulders for mourning. Lord Babbage, pale and upright, most dignified. Young Lord Huxley, lean, light on his feet, very splendid. Lord Scowcroft, the shiftiest person I ever saw, in threadbare clothes like a sexton.

The coffin came solemnly along, the bearers holding feebly onto it. The Prince Consort Albert foremost among them, with the oddest gnawing look—duty, dignity, and fear. He was kept waiting, I hear, just in the doorway, and muttered in German about the Stink.

When the coffin entered, the widowed Iron Lady looked a thousand years old.

So now the world falls into the hands of the little men, the hypocrites and clerks.

Look at them. They have not the mettle for the great work. They will botch it.

Oh, even now I could set it all to rights, if only the fools would listen to sense, but I could never speak as you did, and they do not listen to women. You were their Great Orator, a puffed and painted mountebank, without one real idea in your head—no gift for logic, nothing but your posturing wickedness, and yet they listened to you; oh, how they did listen. You wrote your silly books of verse, you praised Satan and Cain and adultery, and every kind of wicked foolishness, and the fools could not get enough of it. They knocked down the bookshop doors. And women threw themselves at your feet, armies of them. I never did. But then, you married me.

I was innocent then. From the days of our courtship, some moral instinct in me revolted at your sly teasing, your hateful double-entendres and insinuations, but I did see qualities of promise in you, and ignored my doubts. How swiftly you revived them, as my husband.

You cruelly used my innocence; you made me a party to sodomy before I even knew the nature of that sin; before I learned the hidden words for the unspeakable. Pederastia, manustupration, fellatio—you were so steeped in unnatural vice that you could spare not even the marriage-bed. You polluted me, even as you had polluted your own hare-brained fool of a sister.

If society had learned the tenth of what I knew, you would have been driven from England like a leper. Back to Greece, back to Turkey and your catamites.

How easily, then, might I have ruined you, and very nearly did, to spite you, for it vexed me sorely that you did not know, or care to know, the depth of my conviction. I sought refuge in my mathematics, then, and kept to silence, wishing still to be a good wife in the eyes of society, for I had uses to which to put you, and great work to do, and no means with which to do it, save through my husband. For I had glimpsed the true path toward the greatest good for the greatest number, a good so great it made a trifle of my own humble wishes.

Charles taught it me. Decent, brilliant, unworldly Charles, your opposite in every way; so full of great plans, and the pure light of mathematical science, but so utterly impolitic, so entirely unable to suffer fools gladly. He had the gifts of a Newton, but he could not persuade.

I brought you together. At first you hated him, and mocked him behind his back, and me as well, for showing you a truth beyond your comprehension. I persisted; begged you to think of honor, of service, of your own glory, of the future of the child in my womb, Ada, that strange child. (Poor Ada, she does not look well, she has too much of you in her.)

But you cursed me for a cold-hearted shrew and retired in a drunken temper. For the sake of that greater good, I painted a smile on my face and descended open-eyed into the very Pit. How it pained me, that vile greasy probing and animal nastiness; but I let you do as you liked, and forgave you for it, and petted and kissed you for it, as if I liked it. And you wept like a child, and were grateful, and talked of love undying and united souls, until you tired of that sort of talk. And then, to hurt me, you told me dreadful, shocking things, to disgust me and frighten me away, but I would no longer allow you to frighten me; I was steeled to anything, that night. So I forgave you, forgave and forgave, until at last you could find no further confession even in the foulest dregs of your soul, and at last you had no pretense left, nothing left to say.

I imagine that after that night you became frightened of me, perhaps, a little frightened, and that did you a great deal of good, I think. It never hurt me so again, after that night. I taught myself to play all your "pretty little games," and to win them. That was the price I paid, to put your beast in harness.

If there is a Judge of Men in another world, though I no longer believe that, no, not in my heart, and yet at times, evil times, times like these—I fancy I sense a never-closing, all-embracing Eye, and feel the awful pressure of its dreadful comprehension. And if there be a Judge, milord husband, then do not think to gull him. No, do not boast of your magnificent sins and demand damnation—for how little you knew, over the years. You, the greatest Minister of the greatest Empire in history—you flinched, you were feeble, you dodged every consequence—

Are these tears?

We should not have killed so many…

We, I say, but it was I, I who sacrificed my virtue, my faith, my salvation, all burnt to black ashes on the altar of your ambition. For all your bold trumpery talk of Corsairs and Bonaparte, you had no iron in you; you wept even at the thought of hanging miserable Luddites, and could not bear to chain away vicious mad Shelley, until I forced your hand. And when reports came from our bureaux, hinting, requesting, then demanding the right to eliminate the enemies of England, it was I who read them, I who covertly weighed lives in the balance, and I who signed your name, while you ate and drank and joked with those men you called your friends.

And now these fools who bury you will brush me aside as if I were nothing, had accomplished nothing, simply because you are gone. You, their sounding-brass, their idol of paint and dyed hair. The truth, the dreadful slime-entangled roots of history, vanish now without trace. The truth is buried with your gilt sarcophagus.

I must stop thinking in this manner. I am weeping. They think me old and foolish. Was not every civil evil we committed repaid, repaid ten-fold for the public good?

Oh Judge, hear me. Oh Eye, search the depths of my soul. If I am guilty, then you must forgive me. I took no pleasure in what I had to do. I swear unto you: I took no pleasure in it.

The reddish glow of enfeebled gas-light. The rhythmic, echoing clank and screech of the Brunel Tunneling Torpedo. Thirty-six cork-screw teeth of best Birmingham steel gnaw with relentless vigor into a reeking seam of ancient London clay.

Master Sapper Joseph Pearson, at his ease at the mid-day meal, feeds himself a congealed wedge of gravy-thick meat-pie from a hinged tin box. "Aye, I met the great Mallory," he says, voice echoing from arching whale-ribs of riveted cast-iron. "We warn't exactly introduced, like, but he was Leviathan Mallory, right-enough, for I seen his phiz in the penny-papers. He stood as close to me as I am to you now, lad. 'Lord Jefferies?' the Leviathan says to me, all surprised and angry, 'I know Jefferies! The fookin' bastard should be censured for fraud!' "

Master Pearson grins in triumph, red light glinting from a gold earring, a gold tooth. "And damme if that savant Jefferies didn't catch every kind of hell, once the Stink had passed. Leviathan Mallory took a proper hand in that chastisement, sure enough. He's one of Nature's noblemen. Leviathan Mallory is."

"I seen that brontosaur," says 'Prentice David Waller, nodding, eyes bright. "That's a fine thing!"

"I myself was workin' the shaft in '54, when they dug up them elephant teeth." Master Pearson, rubber-booted feet dangling from the second-story platform of the excavation-shaft, shifts on his damp-proofed mat of coir and burlap, and yanks a split of champagne from a pocket of his excavation-gear. "French fizz, Davey-lad. Your first time down; ye got to have a taste of this."

"That ain't proper, is it, sir? 'Gainst the book."

Pearson wrenches the cork loose, no pop, no gush of foam. He winks. "Hell, lad, it's your first time down; won't never be another first time." Pearson tosses sugary dregs of strong tea from his tin cup, fills it to the brim with champagne.

"It's gone flat," 'Prentice Waller mourns.

Pearson laughs, rubbing a burst vein in his fleshy nose. "It's the pressure, lad. Wait till ye get topside. It goes off right inside yer. You'll fart like an ox."

'Prentice Waller sips, with some caution. An iron bell rings, above them. "Chamber coming down," Pearson says, hastily corking the bottle. He stuffs it back into a pocket, gulps the rest of the cup, wipes his mouth.

A bullet-shaped cage descends, passing with cloacal slowness through a membrane of heavy waxed leather. There are hisses, creaks, as the cage touches bottom.

Two men emerge. The Chief Foreman wears a helmet, digging-gear, and leather apron. With him, carrying a brass dark-lantern, is a tall, white-haired man in a black tailcoat and black satin cravat, a kerchief of black silk crepe about his polished top-hat. In the red light of the tunnel, a pigeon's-egg diamond, or perhaps a ruby, glints at the old man's throat. Like the Chief Foreman, his trousered legs are swathed in knee-high boots of india-rubber.

"The Grand Master Miner Emeritus," Pearson gasps in a single breath, and scrambles at once to his feet. Waller leaps up as well.

The two of them stand at attention as the Grand Master strolls beneath them, up the tunnel toward the Torpedo's massive digging-face. He does not glance up, takes no notice of them, but speaks with cool authority to the Foreman. He examines bolts, seams, and grouting with the stabbing beam of his bull's-eye lantern. The lantern has no handle, for the Grand Master carries the hot brass caught in a sleek iron hook which protrudes from an empty sleeve.

"But that's a queer way to dress, ain't it?" whispers young Waller.

"He's still in mourning," Pearson whispers.

"Ah," says the 'prentice. He watches the Grand Master walk on a bit. "Still?"

"He knew Lord Byron dead-familiar like, the Grand Master did. Knew Lord Babbage too! In the Time o' Troubles—when they was running from Wellington's Tory police! They warn't no Lordships then—not proper Rad Lords, anyway, just rebels and agitators, like, with a price on their heads. The Grand Master hid 'em out down a digging once—a reg'lar Party headquarters, it was. The Rad Lords never forgot the great favors he done for 'em. That's why we're the greatest of Radical unions."

"Ah."

"That's a great man, Davey! Master of iron, a great master of blasting-powder… They don't make 'em like him, today."

"So—he must be nigh eighty now, eh?"

"Still hale and hearty."

"Could we get down, sir, d'ye think—could I see him up close, like? Maybe shake his famous hook!"

"All right, lad—but on your dignity now. No bad words."

They climb down to the bare planks at the base of the tunnel.

As they follow the Grand Master, the gnawing rumble of the Torpedo changes abruptly. The Torpedo's crew leaps up, for such a change means trouble—quicksand, a vein of water, or worse. Pearson and his 'prentice break into a shuffling run toward the digging-face.

Shavings of soft black filth begin to pour from the sharp iron spirals of the thirty-six twisting teeth, falling in greasy clods to the flat-carts of the carriage-ramp. From within the black soil of the digging-face come little muffled pops of old embedded gas-pockets, weak as Pearson's enfeebled champagne-cork. No deadly rush of water, though; no slurry of quicksand. They inch forward warily, gazing after the sharp white beam of the Grand Master's lantern.

Knobs of hardened yellow show amid greenish-black muck. "Bones, is it?" says a workman, wiping his nose at a smell of soured dust. "Fossils, like…"

Bones pour forth in a broken torrent as the Torpedo's hydraulics lurch in reaction, pressing it forward into the softening mass. Human bones.

"A cemetery!" Pearson cries. "We've hit a churchyard!"

But the tunnel is too deep for that, and there are too many bones, bones tangled thick as the branches of a fallen forest, in a deep promiscuous mass, and mixed of a sudden with a thin and deadly reek, of long-buried lime and sulphur.

"Plague pit!" the Chief Foreman cries in terror, and the men fall back, stumbling. There is a lurch, and a hiss of steam as the Foreman shuts down the Torpedo.

The Grand Master has not moved.

He stands quietly, regarding the work of the teeth.

He puts his lamp aside, and reaches into the heap of spoil. He dabbles in it with his shining hook, and has something up by one eyehole. A skull.

"Ah, then," he says, his deep voice ringing in the sudden utter silence, "ye poor damn' bastard."

"The Gaming Lady is bad luck to those that know her. When a poor night at the wagering-machines has emptied her purse, her jewels are carried privately into Lombard Street, and Fortune is tempted yet again with a sum from my lady's pawnbroker! Then she sells off her wardrobe as well, to the grief of her maids; stretches her credit amongst those she deals with, pawns her honor to her intimates, in vain hope to recover her losses!

"The passions suffer no less by this gaming-fever than the understanding and the imagination. What vivid, unnatural hope and fear, joy and anger, sorrow and discontent, burst out all at once upon a roll of the dice, a turn of the card, a run of the shining gurneys! Who can consider without indignation that all those womanly affections, which should have been consecrated to children and husband, are thus vilely prostituted and thrown away. I cannot but be grieved when I see the Gaming Lady fretting and bleeding inwardly from such evil and unworthy obsessions; when I behold the face of an angel agitated by the heart of a fury!

"It is divinely ordered that almost everything which corrupts the soul, must also decay the body. Hollow eyes, haggard looks, and pale complexion are the natural indications of a female gamester. Her morning sleeps cannot repair her sordid midnight watchings. I have looked long and hard upon the face of the Gaming Lady. Yes, I have watched her well. I have seen her earned off half-dead from Crockford's gambling-hell, at two o'clock in the morning, looking like a specter amid a flare of wicked gas-lamps—

"Pray resume your seat, sir. You are in the House of God. Is that remark to be taken as a threat, sir? How dare you. These are dark times, grave times indeed! I tell you, sir, as I tell this congregation, as I will tell all the world, that I have seen her, I have witnessed your Queen of Engines at her vile dissipations—

"Help me! Stop him! Stop him! Oh dear Jesus, I am shot! I am undone! Murder! Can none of you stop him?"

[At the height of the Parliamentary crisis of 1855, Lord Brunel assembled and addressed the members of his Cabinet. His remarks were recorded by his private secretary, using the Babbage shorthand notation.]

"Gentlemen, I cannot call to mind a single instance in which any individual in the Party or the Ministry has spoken, even casually, in my defense within the walls of Parliament. I have waited patiently, and I hope uncomplainingly, doing what little I could to protect and extend the wise legacy of the late Lord Byron, and to heal the reckless wounds inflicted on our Party by over-zealous juniors.

"But there has been no change in the contempt in which you honorable gentlemen seem to hold me. On the contrary, the last two nights have been taken up with a debate on a vote of want-of-confidence, directed, obviously and especially, against the head of the Government. The discussion has been marked with more than usual violence against my office, and there has been no defense from any of you—the members of my own Cabinet.

"How, under these circumstances, are we to successfully resolve the matter of the murder of the Reverend Alistair Roseberry? This shameful, atavistic crime, brutally perpetrated within a Christian church, has blackened the reputation of Party and Government, and cast the gravest doubts on our intentions and integrity. And how are we to root out the murderous dark-lantern societies whose power, and provocative daring, grows daily?

"God knows, gentlemen, that I never sought my present office. Indeed, I would have done anything, consistent with honor, to avoid assuming it. But I must be master in this House, or else resign my office—abandoning this nation to the purported leadership of men whose intentions are increasingly stark in their clarity. Gentlemen, the choice is yours."

Yes, sir, two-fifteen to be quite exact, sir—and no other way to be, as we're on the Colt & Maxwell system of patent punch-clocks.

Just a sort of dripping sound, sir.

For a moment I took it to be a leakage, forgetting the night was clear. Rain, I thought, and that was all my anxiety, sir, thinking the Land Leviathan would be damaged by damp, so I flung my lantern's beam up quick, and there the poor rascal hung, and blood all down the Leviathan's neck-bones, sir, and all on the—what d'ye call 'em?—the armatures, what hold the beast upright. And his head a bloody min, sir—no longer as you'd call a head at all. Dangling there by his ankles from this manner of harness, and I saw the ropes and pulleys going straight up, taut, into the dark of the great dome, and the sight struck me so, sir, that it wasn't till I'd sounded the alarm that I saw the Leviathan's head was missing too.

Yes, sir, I do believe that to be the case—the manner in which it was done. He was lowered down from the dome and did the job up there, in the dark, and paused when he'd hear my footsteps, and then continue his work. The work of some hours, for they'd had to rig their lines and pulleys. Likely I passed beneath them several times, on my watch. And when he'd got it free, the head, sir, someone else winched it up, and took it away through that panel they'd unbolted. But something must have given, sir, or slipped, for down he came, square into the floor, best Florentine marble that is. We found where his brains had been dashed, sir, though I'd as soon forget it. And I did then recall a sound, sir, likely of him striking, but no outcry.

If I may say, sir, what strikes me as vilest, in the whole business, must be the cool way they hauled him back up, quiet as spiders, and left him slung there, like a coney in a butcher's window, and stole away across the roof-top with their booty. There's a deal of meanness in that, isn't there?

–KENNETH REYNOLDS, night watchman, the Museum of Practical Geology, in deposition before Magistrate G. H. S. Peters, Bow Street, Nov. 1855.

–Ministerial letter to Charles Egremont, M.P., Dec. 1855.

On this occasion, our distinguished guest, the ex-President of the American Union, Mr. Clement L. Vallandigham, got as drunk as a fiddle. The eminent Democrat showed that he could be as profligate as any English Lord. He fumbled Mrs. A., kissed the shrieking Miss B., pinched the plump Mrs. C. black and blue, and ran at Miss D. with flagrant intent to ravish her!

Finally, after throwing our female guests into hysterics by behaving like an elephant in must, the noble beast was captured by main force, and carried upstairs, all four feet in the air, by our household staff. Within his room, Mrs. Vallandigham was awaiting him, in shift and mobcap. There and then, to our considerable amazement, this remarkable man satiated his baffled lust on the unresisting body of his legitimate spouse, and copiously vomited during the operation. Those who have seen Mrs. Vallandigham would not think this latter incredible.

News has now reached me that the former President of Texas, Samuel Houston, has died in Veracruz, in his Mexican exile. He was, I believe, awaiting any call to arms that might have brought him back to eminence; but the French alcaldes were likely too wily for him. Houston had his faults, I know, but he was easily worth ten of Clement Vallandigham, who made a shrinking peace with the Confederacy, and has allowed the vultures of Red Manhattan Communism to gnaw the carcass of his dishonored country.

–LORD LISTON, 1870.

[The following testament is a sound-recording inscribed on wax. One of the earliest such recordings, it preserves the spoken reminiscences of Thomas Towler (b. 1790), grandfather of Edward Towler, inventor of the Towler Audiograph. Despite the experimental nature of the apparatus employed, the recording is of exceptional clarity. 1875.]

I remember one winter and it was a very long cold winter, and there was dire poverty in England then, before the Rads. Me brother Albert, he used to get some bricks and cover them with bird-lime, and set 'em by the stables to catch sparrows. And he'd pluck them, clean them, him and me together, I helped him. Our Albert would make a fire and get the oven hot and we used to cook those little sparrows in Mother's roasting-tin, with a big lump of dripping in it. And me mother'd make a big jug of tea for us and we'd have what we'd call a tea-party, eating those sparrows.

Me father… he went to all the shopkeepers on Chatwin Road and got scrap-meat. Bones, you know, lamb-bones, all sorts of things, dried peas, beans, and left-over carrots and turnips and… he got some oatmeal promised him and a baker gave him stale bread… Me father had a big iron boiler… that he used to make gruel for the horses and he cleaned it all out and they made soup in this big horse-boiler. I can remember seeing the poor people come. They came twice a week, that winter. They had to bring their own jugs. They was that hungry, before the Rads.

And Eddie, did you ever hear tell of the Irish Famine, in the forties? I thought not. But the 'later crop failed then, two, three years in a row, and it looked mighty dire for the Irish. But the Rads, they wouldn't stand for that, and declared an emergency, and mobilized the nation. Lord Byron made a fine speech, in all the papers… I signed aboard one of the relief-boats, out of Bristol. All day, all night, we'd load big gantry-crates, with bills-of-lading from the London Engines; trains come day and night from all over England, with every kind of food. "God Bless Lord Babbage," the poor Irish would cry to us, with tears in their eyes, "Three cheers for England and the Rad Lords." They have long memories, our own loyal Irish… they don't never forget a kindness.

I was ushered by a man-servant into Mr. Oliphant's study. Mr. Oliphant greeted me cordially, and noted that my telegram had mentioned my association with Dr. Mallory. I told Mr. Oliphant that it had been my pleasure to accompany Dr. Mallory's triumphant lecture on the Brontosaurus with a highly advanced kinotropic program. The Monthly Review of the Steam Intellect Society had run a most gratifying review of my efforts, and I offered Mr. Oliphant a copy of the magazine. He glanced within it, but it seemed that his grasp of the intricacies of clacking was amateurish at best, for his reaction was one of polite puzzlement.

I then informed him that Dr. Mallory had led me to his door. In one of our private conversations, the great savant had seen fit to tell me of Mr. Oliphant's daring proposal—to employ the Engines of the police in the scientific exploration of previously hidden patterns underlying the movements and occupations of the metropolitan population. My admiration for this bold scheme had brought me directly to Mr. Oliphant, and I stated my willingness to assist in the implementation of that vision.

He interrupted me, then, in a markedly distracted manner. We are numbered, he declared, each of us, by an all-seeing eye; our minutes, too, are numbered, and each hair upon our heads. And surely it was God's will, that the computational powers of the Engine be brought to bear upon the great commonality, upon the flows of traffic, of commerce, the tidal actions of crowds—upon the infinitely divisible texture of His work.

I waited for a conclusion to this extraordinary outburst, but Mr. Oliphant seemed quite lost in thought, of a sudden.

I then explained to him, as nearly as possible in layman's terms, how the nature of the human eye necessitates, in kinotropy, both remarkable speed and remarkable complexity. For this reason, I concluded, we kinotropists must be numbered among Britain's most adept programmers of Enginery of any sort, and virtually all advances in the compression of data have originated as kinotropic applications.

At this point, he interrupted again, asking if I had indeed said "the compression of data," and was I familiar with the term "algorithmic compression"? I assured him that I was.

He rose, then, and going to a bureau near at hand, he brought out what I took to be a wooden box of the sort used to transport scientific instruments, though this was partially covered, it seemed, with remnants of white plaster. And would I be so kind, he requested, as to examine the cards within, copy them for safekeeping, and privately report to him upon the nature of their content?

He had no idea of their astonishing import, you see, no idea whatever.

–JOHN KEATS, quoted in an interview conducted by H. S. Lywood, for The Monthly Review of the Steam Intellect Society, May 1857.

We learn with mingled regret and amazement of the recent departure, aboard the Great Eastern, of the well-liked and many-talented Mr. Laurence Oliphant—author, journalist, diplomat, geographer, and friend of the Royal Family—for America, with the stated intention of residing in the so-called Susquehanna Phalanstery established by Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth, thereby to pursue the Utopian doctrines espoused by these worthy expatriates!

–" 'ROUND TOWN," a column, September 12, 1860.

THE GARRICK THEATRE, Whitechapel, Newly Rebuilt and Refurbished, Under the Management of J. J. TOBIAS, Esq., presents The First Nights of a New Kinotropic Drama Monday, Nov. 13 and During the Week

The performance will commence with (FIRST TIME!) an entirely new national, local, characteristic, metropolitan, melodramatic, kinotropic drama of the day, in five acts, correctly exhibiting modern life and manners in innumerable novel and interesting phases, called the

CROSSROADS OF LIFE!!

or THE CLACKERS OF LONDON

The Groundwork of the drama founded on the celebrated play, "Les Fils de Vaucanson," now attracting the attention of all France, and applied to the circumstances and realities of the present moment.

With kinotropic scenery by MR. JJ TOBIAS and Assistants

The New Flash Medley Orchestra, led by MR. MONTGOMERY

The Action of the Piece arranged by MR. CJ SMITH

The Dresses by MRS. HAMPTON and MISS BAILEY

The Whole Produced Under the Direction of MR. JJ TOBIAS

Dramatis Personae

Mark Riddley, alias Fox Skinner, (a swell cove, and King of the London Clackers)… MR. H.L. MARSTON.

Mr. Dorrington (a wealthy Liverpool Merchant, on a visit to London)… MR. J. ROMER.

Frank Danvers (a British Naval Officer, just arrived from the Indies)… MR. WM. BIRD.

Robert Danvers (his younger brother, a ruined roue, pigeoned by the clackers)… MR. L. MELVIN.

Mr. Hawksworth Shabner (Principal Proprietor of a West-End Clacking-Hall, Bill-Discounter, and Anythingarian where there is Anything to be Got)… MR. P. WILLIAMS.

Bob Yorkner (a Duffer, tired of the Lay)… MR. W. JONES.

Ned Brindle (the Magsman, a half-and-half cove)… MR C. AUBREY.

Tom Fogg, alias Old Deady, alias The Animal, (a laudanum fiend suffering under delirium-tremens)… MR. A. CORENO.

Joe Onion, alias The Crocodile, (a bully-rock, and creature of Shabner's)… MR. G. VELASCO.

Dickey Smith (the Wakeful Bird, a young Engine-clerk in no ways particklar, pecking out a living as best he can)… MR. G. MASKELL.

Ikey Bates (Landlord of Rat's Castle, proprietor of two-penny dabs and a scandalous bagatelle board, having cut the bumblepuppy as too low!)… MR. GOTOBED.

Waiter at the Cat-and-Bagpipes Tavern… MR. SMITHSON.

The Bow Street Special Inspector… MR. FRANKS.

Louisa Truehait (the Victim of an ill-requited attachment)… MISS CAROLINE BARNETT.

Charlotte Willers (a young lady with her cat from the country)… MISS MARTHA WELLS

DRESS CIRCLE, 3S. BOXES, 2S. PIT, 5D. GALLERY, 2D.

BOX OFFICE OPEN DAILY FROM TEN O'CLOCK UNTIL FIVE.

[Mori Yujo, a samurai and classical scholar of Satsuma Province, wrote the following ceremonial poem upon his son's departure for England, in 1854. it is translated from Sinicized Japanese.]

As always, I searched that day for land, in all four directions, but could still find none. How melancholy it was! Then by chance, with the Captain's permission, I climbed up one of the masts. From the great height, with sails and smokestack far below me, I was amazed to make out the coast of Europe—a mere hair's-breadth of green, above the watery horizon. I shouted down to Matsumura: "Come up! Come up!" And up he came, very swiftly and bravely.

Together atop the mast, we gazed upon Europe. "Look!" I told him. "Here is our first proof that the world is really round! While we were standing down there on deck we could not see a thing; but up here, land is distinctly visible. This is proof that the surface of the sea is curved! And if the sea is curved, why, then, so is the whole earth!"

Matsumura exclaimed, "It's fantastic—it's just the way you say! The Earth indeed is round! Our first real proof!"

–MORI ARINORI, 1854.

Modus

It seemed that Her Ladyship had been ill-served by the Paris publicists, for the lecture-hall, modest as it was, was less than half-filled.

Dark folding-seats, in neat columnar rows, were precisely dotted by the shiny pates of balding mathematicians. Here and there among the savants sat shifty-eyed French clackers in middle-age, the summer linen of their too-elegant finery looking rather past the mode. The last three rows were filled by a Parisian women's club, fanning themselves in the summer heat and chattering quite audibly, for they had long since lost the thread of Her Ladyship's discourse.

Lady Ada Byron turned a page, touched a gloved finger to her bifocal pince-nez. For some minutes, a large green bottle-fly had been circling her podium. Now it broke the intricacy of its looping flight to alight on the bulging archipelago of Her Ladyship's padded, lace-trimmed shoulder. Lady Ada took no apparent notice of the attentions of this energetic vermin, but continued on gamely, in her accented French.

The Mother said:

"Our lives would be greatly clarified if human discourse could be interpreted as the exfoliation of a deeper formal system. One would no longer need ponder the grave ambiguities of human speech, but could judge the validity of any sentence by reference to a fixed and finitely describable set of rules and axioms. It was the dream of Leibniz to find such a system, the Characteristica Universalis…

"And yet the execution of the so-called Modus Program demonstrated that any formal system must be both incomplete and unable to establish its own consistency. There is no finite mathematical way to express the property of 'truth.' The transfinite nature of the Byron Conjectures were the ruination of the Grand Napoleon; the Modus Program initiated a series of nested loops, which, though difficult to establish, were yet more difficult to extinguish. The program ran, yet rendered its Engine useless! It was indeed a painful lesson in the halting abilities of even our finest ordinateurs.

"Yet I do believe, and must assert most strongly, that the Modus technique of self-referentiality will someday form the bedrock of a genuinely transcendent meta-system of calculatory mathematics. The Modus has proven my Conjectures, but their practical exfoliation awaits an Engine of vast capacity, one capable of iterations of untold sophistication and complexity.

"Is it not strange that we mere mortals can talk about a concept—truth—that is infinitely complicated? And yet—is not a closed system the essence of the mechanical, the unthinking? And is not an open system the very definition of the organic, of life and thought?

"If we envision the entire System of Mathematics as a great Engine for proving theorems, then we must say, through the agency of the Modus, that such an Engine lives, and could indeed prove its own life, should it develop the capacity to look upon itself. The Lens for such a self-examination is of a nature not yet known to us; yet we know that it exists, for we ourselves possess it.

"As thinking beings, we may envision the universe, though we have no finite way to sum it up. The term, 'universe,' is not in fact a rational concept, though it is something of such utter immediacy that no thinking creature can escape a pressing knowledge of it, and indeed, an urge to know its workings, and the nature of one's own origin within it.

"In his final years, the great Lord Babbage, impatient of the limits of steam-power, sought to harness the lightning in the cause of calculation. His elaborate system of 'resistors' and 'capacitors,' while demonstrative of the most brilliant genius, remains fragmentary, and is yet to be constructed. Indeed, it is often mocked by the undiscerning as an old man's hobby-horse. But history shall prove its judge, and then, I profoundly hope, my own Conjectures will transcend the limits of abstract concept and enter the living world."

Applause was thin and scattered. Ebenezer Fraser, watching from the shelter of the wings, in the shadow of ropes and sandbags, felt his heart sink. But at least it was over. She was leaving the podium to join him.

Fraser opened the nickeled catches of Her Ladyship's traveling-bag. Lady Ada dropped her manuscript within it, followed it with her kid gloves and her tiny ribboned hat.

"I think they understood me!" she said brightly. "It sounds quite elegant in French, Mr. Fraser, does it not? A very rational language, French."

"What next, milady? The hotel?"

"My dressing-room," she said. "This heat is rather fatiguing… Will you hail the gurney for me? I'll join you presently."

"Certainly, milady." Fraser, the bag in one hand, his sword-cane in another, led Lady Ada to the cramped little dressing-room, opened the door, bowed her within, set her bag at her neatly slippered feet, and closed the door firmly. Within the room, he knew. Her Ladyship would seek the consolation of the silvered brandy-flask she had hidden in the left-hand lower drawer of her dressing-table—wrapped, with pathetic duplicity, in a shroud of tissue-paper.

Fraser had taken the liberty of providing seltzer-water in a bucket of ice. He hoped she would water the liquor a bit.

He left the lecture-hall by a rear door, then circled the building warily, from old habit. His bad eye ached below the patch, and he made some use of the stag-handled sword-cane. As he had fully expected, he saw nothing resembling trouble.

There was also no sign of the chauffeur for Her Ladyship's hired gurney. Doubtless the frog rascal was nursing a bottle somewhere, or chatting-up a soubrette. Or he might, perhaps, have mistaken his instructions, for Fraser's French was none of the best. He rubbed his good eye, examining the traffic. He would give the fellow twenty minutes, then hail a cab.

He saw Her Ladyship standing, rather uncertainly, at the lecture-hall's rear door. She had put on a day-bonnet, it seemed—and forgotten her traveling-bag, which was very like her. He hurried, limping, to her side. "This way, milady—the gurney will meet us at the corner…"

He paused. It was not Lady Ada.

"I believe you mistake me, sir," the woman said in English, and lowered her eyes, and smiled. "I am not your Queen of Engines. I am merely an admirer."

"I beg your pardon, madame," Fraser said.

The woman glanced down shyly at the intricate Jacquard patterning of her white-on-white skirt of fine muslin. She wore a jutting French bustle, and a stiff high-shouldered walking-jacket, trimmed with lace. "Her Ladyship and I are dressed quite alike," she said, with a wry half-smile. "Her Ladyship must shop at Monsieur Worth's! That's quite a tribute to my own taste, sir, n'est-ce pas?"

Fraser said nothing. A light tingle of suspicion touched him. The woman—a trim little blonde, in her forties perhaps—wore the dress of respectability. Yet there were three gold-banded brilliants on her gloved fingers, and showy little stems of filigreed jade dangled at her delicate earlobes. There was a killing beauty-patch—or a black sticking-plaster—at the corner of her mouth, and her wide blue eyes, for all their look of seasoned innocence, held the gleam of the demi-mondaine—a look that somehow said, I know you, copper.

"Sir, may I wait for Her Ladyship with you? I hope I will not intrude if I request her autograph."

"At the corner," Fraser nodded. "The gurney." He offered her his left arm, tucked the sword-cane in the pit of his right, his hand resting easy on the handle. It would not hurt to get a bit of distance down the pavement, before Lady Ada approached; he wanted to watch this woman.

They stopped at the corner, beneath an angular French gas-lamp. "It's so good to hear a London voice," said the woman, coaxingly. "I have lived so long in France that my English has grown quite rusty."

"Not at all," Fraser said. Her voice was lovely.

"I am Madame Tournachon," she said, "Sybil Tournachon."

"My name is Fraser." He bowed.

Sybil Tournachon fidgeted with her kid-skin gloves, as though her palms were perspiring. The day was very hot. "Are you one of her paladins, Mr. Fraser?"

"I'm afraid I fail to take your meaning, madame," Fraser said politely. "Do you live in Paris, Mrs. Tournachon?"

"In Cherbourg," she said, "but I came all that way, by the morning express, simply to see her speak." She paused. "I scarcely understood a word she said."

"No harm in that, madame," Fraser said, "neither do I." He had begun to like her.

The gurney arrived. The chauffeur, with a bold wink at Fraser, hopped from behind the wheel and whipped a dirty chamois from his pocket. He applied it to the tarnished trim of a scalloped fender, whistling.

Her Ladyship emerged from the lecture-hall. She had remembered her hand-bag. As she approached, Mrs. Tournachon went a bit pale with excitement, and took a lecture-program from her jacket.

She was quite harmless.

"Your Ladyship, may I present Mrs. Sybil Tournachon," Fraser said.

"How do you do?" Lady Ada said.

Mrs. Tournachon curtsied. "Will you sign my program? Please."

Lady Ada blinked. Fraser, adroitly, handed her the pen from his notebook. "Of course," Lady Ada said, taking the paper. "I'm sorry—what was the name?"

" 'To Sybil Tournachon.' Shall I spell it?"

"No need," said Her Ladyship, smiling. "There's a famous French aeronaut named Tournachon, isn't there?" Fraser offered his back to the flourish of Her Ladyship's pen. "A relation of yours, perhaps?"

"No, Your Highness."

"I beg your pardon?" Lady Ada said.

"They call you Queen of Engines…" Mrs. Tournachon, smiling triumphantly, plucked the inscribed program from Her Ladyship's unresisting fingers. "The Queen of Engines! And you're just a funny little grey-haired blue-stocking!" She laughed. "This lecture-gull you're running, dearie—does it pay at all well? I do hope it pays!"

Lady Ada regarded her with unfeigned astonishment.

Fraser's grip tightened on the cane. He stepped to the curb, swiftly opened the gurney door.

"One moment!" The woman tugged with sudden energy at one gloved finger, came up with a gaudy ring. "Your Ladyship—please—I want you to have this!"

Fraser stepped between them, lowering the cane. "Leave her alone."

"No," Mrs. Tournachon cried, "I've heard the tales, I know she needs it…" She pressed against him, stretching out her arm. "Your Ladyship, please take this! I shouldn't have wounded your feelings, it was low of me. Please take my gift! Please, I do admire you, I sat through that whole lecture. Please take it, I brought it just for you!" She fell back then, her hand empty, and smiled. "Thank you. Your Ladyship! Good luck to you. I shan't trouble you again. Au revoir! Bonne chance!"

Fraser followed Her Ladyship into the gurney, shut the door, rapped the partition. The chauffeur took his post.

The gurney pulled away.

"What a queer little personage," Her Ladyship said. She opened her hand. A fat little diamond gleamed in its filigreed setting. "Who was she, Mr. Fraser?"

"I should guess an exile, ma'am," Fraser said. "Very forward of her."

"Was it wrong of me to take this?" Her breath smelled of brandy and seltzer. "Not really proper, I suppose. But she would have made a scene, otherwise." She held the gem up, in a sheet of dusty sunlight through the window. "Look at the size of it! It must be very dear."

"Paste, Your Ladyship."

Swift as thought. Lady Ada pinched the ring in her fingers like a bit of chalk, and ran the stone along the gurney's window. There was a thin grating shriek, almost inaudible, and a shining groove appeared across the glass.

They sat in companionable silence, then, on their way to the hotel.

Fraser watched Paris through the window and recalled his instructions. "You may let the old girl drink as she likes," the Hierarch had told him, with his inimitable air of mincing irony, "talk as she likes, flirt as she likes, saving open scandal, of course… You may take your mission as fulfilled if you can keep our little Ada from the wagering-machines." There had been small chance of that disaster, for her purse held nothing but tickets and small-change, but the diamond had rather changed matters. He would have to keep a closer eye, now.

Their rooms in the Richelieu were quite modest, with a connecting-door he had not touched. The locks were sound enough, and he had found and plugged the inevitable spyholes. He kept the keys.

"Is there anything left of the advance?" Lady Ada asked.

"Enough to tip the chauffeur," Fraser said.

"Oh dear. That little?"

Fraser nodded. The French savants had paid little enough for the pleasure of her learned company, and her debts had swiftly eaten that. The meager takings at the ticket-booth would scarcely have paid their passage from London.

Lady Ada opened the curtains, frowned at summer daylight, closed them again. "Then I suppose I shall have to take on that tour in America."

Fraser sighed, inaudibly. "They say that continent boasts many natural wonders, milady."

"Which tour, though? Boston and New Philadelphia? Or Charleston and Richmond?"

Fraser said nothing. The names of the alien cities struck him with a leaden gloom.

"I shall toss a coin for it!" Her Ladyship decided brightly. "Have you a coin, Mr. Fraser?"

"No, milady," Fraser lied, searching his pockets with a muted jingle, "I'm sorry."

"Don't they pay you at all?" Her Ladyship inquired, with a hint of temper.

"I have my police pension, milady. Quite generous, promptly paid." The promptness part was true, at least.

She was concerned now, hurt. "But doesn't the Society pay you a proper salary? Oh dear, and I've put you to so much trouble, Mr. Fraser! I had no idea."

"They recompense me in their own way, ma'am. I am well rewarded."

He was her paladin. It was more than enough.

She stepped to her bureau, searching among papers and receipts. Her fingers touched the tortoise-shell handle of her traveling-mirror.

She turned then, and caught him with a woman's look. Under its pressure, he lifted his hand, quite without volition, and touched his bumpy cheek below the eye-patch. His white side-whiskers did not hide the scars. A shotgun had caught him there. It still ached sometimes, when it rained.

She did not see his gesture, though, or did not choose to see it. She beckoned him nearer. "Mr. Fraser. My friend. Tell me something, won't you? Tell me the truth." She sighed. "Am I nothing but a funny little grey-haired blue-stocking?"

"Madame," Fraser said gently, "you are la Reine des Ordinateurs."

"Am I?" She lifted the mirror, gazed within it.

In the minor, a City.

It is 1991. It is London. Ten thousand towers, the cyclonic hum of a trillion twisting gears, all air gone earthquake-dark in a mist of oil, in the frictioned heat of intermeshing wheels. Black seamless pavements, uncounted tributary rivulets for the frantic travels of the punched-out lace of data, the ghosts of history loosed in this hot shining necropolis. Paper-thin faces billow like sails, twisting, yawning, tumbling through the empty streets, human faces that are borrowed masks, and lenses for a peering Eye. And when a given face has served its purpose, it crumbles, frail as ash, bursting into a dry foam of data, its constituent bits and motes. But new fabrics of conjecture are knitted in the City's shining cores, swift tireless spindles flinging off invisible loops in their millions, while in the hot unhuman dark, data melts and mingles, churned by gear-work to a skeletal bubbling pumice, dipped in a dreaming wax that forms a simulated flesh, perfect as thought—

It is not London—but mirrored plazas of sheerest crystal, the avenues atomic lightning, the sky a super-cooled gas, as the Eye chases its own gaze through the labyrinth, leaping quantum gaps that are causation, contingency, chance. Electric phantoms are flung into being, examined, dissected, infinitely iterated.

In this City's center, a thing grows, an auto-catalytic tree, in almost-life, feeding through the roots of thought on the rich decay of its own shed images, and ramifying, through myriad lightning-branches, up, up, toward the hidden light of vision,

Dying to be born.

The light is strong,

The light is clear;

The Eye at last must see itself

Myself…

I see:

I see,

I see

I

!