1 00:00:13,280 --> 00:00:14,020 Great hi. 2 00:00:14,020 --> 00:00:19,270 So please bear with me, there's a reason I usually work behind the scenes. 3 00:00:19,270 --> 00:00:24,155 I can be an awkward public speaker so brace yourselves. 4 00:00:24,155 --> 00:00:25,951 So this is me. 5 00:00:25,951 --> 00:00:28,970 >> [LAUGH] >> I'm not, in spite 6 00:00:28,970 --> 00:00:33,420 being the British Society for the History of Mathematics Newman prize winner. 7 00:00:33,420 --> 00:00:38,100 Which is now my middle name, by the way. 8 00:00:38,100 --> 00:00:42,725 [LAUGH] I'm not a mathematician or a computer scientists or a historian or 9 00:00:42,725 --> 00:00:47,175 an enviornmist, or even a scholar, or an academic, or 10 00:00:47,175 --> 00:00:52,685 any of the other extraordinary range of specialists that Ada 11 00:00:52,685 --> 00:00:57,695 has brought together in this really unique way today. 12 00:00:57,695 --> 00:01:01,970 I'm an animator, I do visual effects for the most part. 13 00:01:01,970 --> 00:01:05,270 I used to work hand drawn on paper and film. 14 00:01:05,270 --> 00:01:10,498 Now I work in extremely complicated software. 15 00:01:10,498 --> 00:01:19,700 And I actually, around 2009 I was looking for a comic to draw. 16 00:01:19,700 --> 00:01:23,725 Because I was trying to get away from computers. 17 00:01:23,725 --> 00:01:26,689 [LAUGH] Yeah. 18 00:01:26,689 --> 00:01:33,100 [LAUGH] As on this fateful period in 2009, 19 00:01:33,100 --> 00:01:39,283 Sue started. 20 00:01:39,283 --> 00:01:45,040 I know a friend of mine had started Ada Lovelace day and 21 00:01:45,040 --> 00:01:50,165 we were in a pub or I should say, strictly speaking a wine bar. 22 00:01:50,165 --> 00:01:53,230 >> [LAUGH] >> It sounds a bit more she-she, though so 23 00:01:53,230 --> 00:01:54,320 I usually say it's a pub. 24 00:01:54,320 --> 00:01:59,800 And Sue had started Ada Lovelace day and she said you're a woman in tech, 25 00:01:59,800 --> 00:02:04,540 you should do a blog post and I said I don't even know who Ada Lovelace is. 26 00:02:04,540 --> 00:02:06,620 And she said it doesn't matter, 27 00:02:06,620 --> 00:02:11,550 and I said well I'll do a comic, I've been wanting to do a comic for ages. 28 00:02:11,550 --> 00:02:18,343 Ran to Wikipedia, found these crazy kids and 29 00:02:18,343 --> 00:02:24,978 literally in one evening I drew this comic. 30 00:02:24,978 --> 00:02:33,220 It's about this long physically. 31 00:02:33,220 --> 00:02:34,305 It's only eight panels. 32 00:02:34,305 --> 00:02:38,700 [LAUGH] This is possibly 33 00:02:38,700 --> 00:02:39,720 the gag that sealed my fate. 34 00:02:39,720 --> 00:02:47,690 It was just a very, very brief sketched history of Lovelace and Babbage. 35 00:02:47,690 --> 00:02:53,580 This rating of the program, and then when it came to the end of this micro story, 36 00:02:53,580 --> 00:02:57,800 I had to have a blank panel because of course Lovelace dies and 37 00:02:57,800 --> 00:02:59,460 it's on a computer. 38 00:02:59,460 --> 00:03:01,730 It's not really an ending. 39 00:03:01,730 --> 00:03:03,860 It just sort of goes ra, ra, ra. 40 00:03:03,860 --> 00:03:05,140 So I used to work in story. 41 00:03:05,140 --> 00:03:06,270 I know you are not supposed to do that. 42 00:03:06,270 --> 00:03:08,434 So I just threw in this panel. 43 00:03:08,434 --> 00:03:11,627 [LAUGH] 44 00:03:11,627 --> 00:03:16,603 And then this one. 45 00:03:16,603 --> 00:03:22,858 [LAUGH] I think I was thinking of the Avengers. 46 00:03:22,858 --> 00:03:27,653 Which, actually. 47 00:03:27,653 --> 00:03:31,890 [LAUGH] >> So [LAUGH] and then I went to bed, 48 00:03:31,890 --> 00:03:36,420 put it up online and 49 00:03:36,420 --> 00:03:41,480 then the next day it had thousands of hits, and it turned out 50 00:03:41,480 --> 00:03:47,670 that it had turned up in Wired, a Wired blog. 51 00:03:47,670 --> 00:03:52,830 As an announcement that, oh look, this person is going to do a comic about 52 00:03:52,830 --> 00:03:54,552 Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace fighting crime. 53 00:03:54,552 --> 00:03:57,260 >> [LAUGH] >> So I should say there's two enormous 54 00:03:57,260 --> 00:04:02,750 misconceptions that were generated by this. 55 00:04:02,750 --> 00:04:06,300 Number one, that I had any intention of drawing a comic about Charles Babbage and 56 00:04:06,300 --> 00:04:07,350 Ada Lovelace fighting crime. 57 00:04:07,350 --> 00:04:11,840 This was a punchline joke about an imaginary comic and 58 00:04:11,840 --> 00:04:13,740 what it would have looked like. 59 00:04:13,740 --> 00:04:18,460 And the other thing is that Charles and Ada are not super-heroes, 60 00:04:18,460 --> 00:04:23,130 they are in fact super-villains in this comic because, 61 00:04:23,130 --> 00:04:27,798 as it happens, I hate computers and they invented this terrible thing. 62 00:04:27,798 --> 00:04:31,490 >> [LAUGH] >> The computers. 63 00:04:31,490 --> 00:04:33,500 I hated. I should say that in the past tense, 64 00:04:33,500 --> 00:04:38,110 cuz it's been a journey for me, this whole comic here. 65 00:04:38,110 --> 00:04:40,060 So I started drawing comics. 66 00:04:40,060 --> 00:04:40,970 Where, here we go. 67 00:04:40,970 --> 00:04:44,840 Just started a WordPress blog, it's very easy. 68 00:04:44,840 --> 00:04:46,380 You can do it on a whim. 69 00:04:46,380 --> 00:04:51,420 I started throwing out these little comics where, of course, fighting crime. 70 00:04:51,420 --> 00:04:52,602 I fight crime badly. 71 00:04:52,602 --> 00:04:59,170 >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] If I fought 72 00:04:59,170 --> 00:05:00,710 crime well it wouldn't be funny. 73 00:05:00,710 --> 00:05:08,470 Sorry I have to look at my notes here, cuz every once in a while 74 00:05:08,470 --> 00:05:14,750 a wave of terror will come across me and I have to reconsult. 75 00:05:14,750 --> 00:05:20,870 So of course now that I was going beyond the eight panel comic, 76 00:05:20,870 --> 00:05:25,310 I had to do a whole bunch of reading to get more gags, obviously. 77 00:05:25,310 --> 00:05:32,620 So I just went to a bookshop and starting leafing through 78 00:05:32,620 --> 00:05:39,040 books on Lovelace and Babbage, and of course what I discovered 79 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:44,730 was that I had been handed by the universe 80 00:05:44,730 --> 00:05:50,230 both a wonderful gift and a ticking bomb. 81 00:05:50,230 --> 00:05:53,570 >> [LAUGH] >> Because of course the scholarly lion 82 00:05:53,570 --> 00:05:55,270 was that Lovelace was this fraud. 83 00:05:55,270 --> 00:05:57,610 Who was just used by Babbage. 84 00:05:57,610 --> 00:06:02,120 And of course this makes her absolutely the worst conceivable role model for 85 00:06:02,120 --> 00:06:05,410 women in technology. 86 00:06:05,410 --> 00:06:07,494 As a woman in technology, sort of, 87 00:06:07,494 --> 00:06:10,280 actually that sort of is kind of the point here. 88 00:06:10,280 --> 00:06:14,760 Because I'm very used to being underestimated. 89 00:06:14,760 --> 00:06:17,520 But I'm also very used to feeling like a fraud. 90 00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:25,536 So drawing this comic became this very strange, 91 00:06:25,536 --> 00:06:30,480 fraught space for me. 92 00:06:30,480 --> 00:06:34,510 And it always an undercurrent I guess of terror in the comic, but 93 00:06:34,510 --> 00:06:38,850 also of curiosity, and also, I don't know I felt 94 00:06:38,850 --> 00:06:45,040 I had been tasked with doing this thing, I had a reputation in my hands of Lovelace 95 00:06:45,040 --> 00:06:49,630 who's very important to a lot of people and. 96 00:06:49,630 --> 00:06:52,820 I also, and we're all nerds here, I'm guessing. 97 00:06:52,820 --> 00:06:55,210 And I also became obsessed. 98 00:06:55,210 --> 00:06:59,850 I mean, it's very, very easy to become completely obsessed with these people. 99 00:06:59,850 --> 00:07:03,887 There's huge personalities and they tick a lot of boxes and they ring a lot of bells, 100 00:07:03,887 --> 00:07:08,020 and they push a lot of buttons, so I couldn't stop reading about them and 101 00:07:08,020 --> 00:07:13,310 I couldn't stop coming up with gags about them, and I couldn't stop drawing them. 102 00:07:13,310 --> 00:07:15,230 I was constantly doing little doodles of the characters. 103 00:07:15,230 --> 00:07:20,430 So I kept going online, and so here I 104 00:07:20,430 --> 00:07:27,600 was with this task from the universe, so. 105 00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:31,540 I guess the big question for me was how to approach this. 106 00:07:31,540 --> 00:07:34,300 So I'm not, as I said, a scholar of any kind. 107 00:07:34,300 --> 00:07:37,699 I'm an animator. And in animation, 108 00:07:37,699 --> 00:07:43,410 what we do is we create illusions. 109 00:07:43,410 --> 00:07:49,990 We create illusion of life, of thought, an illusion of movement, 110 00:07:49,990 --> 00:07:56,970 but to create these illusions you have to be very knowledgeable. 111 00:07:56,970 --> 00:08:00,660 And you have to do a lot of study and a lot of anatomical breakdown. 112 00:08:00,660 --> 00:08:05,751 Because once something begins to move, all the relationships change. 113 00:08:05,751 --> 00:08:09,073 You start to see the back of things, you see the underside of things, 114 00:08:09,073 --> 00:08:09,999 you see all sides. 115 00:08:09,999 --> 00:08:13,517 So for the animator it's very important to understand. 116 00:08:13,517 --> 00:08:16,840 How things are constructed and put together, and 117 00:08:16,840 --> 00:08:20,190 I think that's how I came at this project. 118 00:08:20,190 --> 00:08:23,230 The first thing the animator does even if you're doing something quite 119 00:08:23,230 --> 00:08:24,715 cartoony is research. 120 00:08:24,715 --> 00:08:27,190 >> [LAUGH] >> And 121 00:08:27,190 --> 00:08:31,400 what you [LAUGH] I do some unicorns and things. 122 00:08:31,400 --> 00:08:32,435 It looked a bit plain. 123 00:08:32,435 --> 00:08:35,570 >> [LAUGH] >> And also, 124 00:08:35,570 --> 00:08:36,930 Google Books is simply wonderful. 125 00:08:36,930 --> 00:08:40,200 I think the other very serendipitous thing that happened was that 126 00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:43,020 I started drawing the comic. 127 00:08:43,020 --> 00:08:47,230 Pretty much identical to Google Books project. 128 00:08:47,230 --> 00:08:52,080 Dumping enormous amounts of 19th century material searchable online. 129 00:08:52,080 --> 00:08:55,125 And this gave me actually super powers. 130 00:08:55,125 --> 00:08:59,440 >> [LAUGH] >> Because actually Babbage and 131 00:08:59,440 --> 00:09:02,720 Lovelace were incredibly famous people. 132 00:09:02,720 --> 00:09:05,880 Babbage especially, I was very surprised because I had been 133 00:09:05,880 --> 00:09:10,010 kind of given this story that he was this sad underdog ignored by all. 134 00:09:10,010 --> 00:09:14,600 Whereas he was in fact incredibly famous as a super genius who had invented this 135 00:09:14,600 --> 00:09:15,884 incredible calculating machine. 136 00:09:15,884 --> 00:09:21,860 Babbage's stuff is absolutely everywhere, there's tons of fantastic Babbage stuff. 137 00:09:21,860 --> 00:09:25,046 And he's very frequently paired with Lovelace in these kind of little 138 00:09:25,046 --> 00:09:28,670 anecdotes so he shows that this is very typical, this is the great calculator. 139 00:09:28,670 --> 00:09:33,230 I think this is the Deseret news, it's a re-print of a famous set of 140 00:09:33,230 --> 00:09:38,450 anecdotes that got re-printed all over the place. 141 00:09:38,450 --> 00:09:40,950 Just Babbbage talking about, you know, this stuff. 142 00:09:40,950 --> 00:09:41,890 It's just an example. 143 00:09:41,890 --> 00:09:44,967 I think this one's in the book. 144 00:09:44,967 --> 00:09:51,286 The form that the comic began to take was, because I was in a strange place, 145 00:09:51,286 --> 00:09:59,100 that I was reading a lots of 19th century sources that no one had ever read before. 146 00:09:59,100 --> 00:10:05,040 I was also reading, I think I'd read every secondary source inside out, and 147 00:10:05,040 --> 00:10:11,170 I began to feel this disconnect between this story that some people are telling 148 00:10:11,170 --> 00:10:22,370 and the story that I was seeing in the kind of more contemporary view of them. 149 00:10:22,370 --> 00:10:24,090 So I started doing this split. 150 00:10:24,090 --> 00:10:26,310 The comic is very much about these two cultures. 151 00:10:26,310 --> 00:10:32,180 I loved the whole CB Snow two cultures thing even though it's a bit silly. 152 00:10:32,180 --> 00:10:37,100 You have the world of the humanities and poetry and craziness, 153 00:10:37,100 --> 00:10:40,370 and then you have the world of facts. 154 00:10:40,370 --> 00:10:46,220 So the comic is split, very literally split, between the comic 155 00:10:46,220 --> 00:10:50,320 which takes place in the top half and the notes which happen in the bottom half. 156 00:10:50,320 --> 00:10:54,820 And certainly on the blog I avoided as far as humanly possible any sort of 157 00:10:54,820 --> 00:10:56,620 interpretation whatsoever. 158 00:10:56,620 --> 00:10:59,230 This was the fact part, so it was, generally speaking, 159 00:10:59,230 --> 00:11:02,950 links to interesting primary documents, of which there are tons. 160 00:11:02,950 --> 00:11:08,118 I mean, the really nice thing is that Babbage talks in particular are incredibly 161 00:11:08,118 --> 00:11:12,610 entertaining and nine times out of ten because he was a very funny guy. 162 00:11:12,610 --> 00:11:17,809 So there was always something fun to link to and 163 00:11:17,809 --> 00:11:24,476 so I was having this very extreme split between the story and 164 00:11:24,476 --> 00:11:29,560 the fact that, let me consult my notes here. 165 00:11:29,560 --> 00:11:33,042 Where am I? All right, said that, said that too. 166 00:11:33,042 --> 00:11:36,000 >> [LAUGH] >> Said all this stuff. 167 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:37,010 All right. 168 00:11:37,010 --> 00:11:40,180 So, in a sense it was also a very passive. 169 00:11:40,180 --> 00:11:44,880 A lot of the comic, I confess was sort of a passive-aggressive joke about 170 00:11:44,880 --> 00:11:50,220 the secondary scholarship, in that I was doing these very broad, 171 00:11:50,220 --> 00:11:53,830 crazy comics creating these invented stories. 172 00:11:53,830 --> 00:11:58,430 And it was a little bit of a commentary I think on how I think a lot of I think 173 00:11:58,430 --> 00:12:03,498 biographers could stand to bear in mind that they are also creating a character 174 00:12:03,498 --> 00:12:08,302 in creating a story, very much the way you create a fictional character. 175 00:12:08,302 --> 00:12:12,238 So because I was doing a comic, 176 00:12:12,238 --> 00:12:20,880 I wasn't under any requirement at all to be realistic in any sense. 177 00:12:20,880 --> 00:12:26,087 I come from theater actually before animation, I studied Del Arte so 178 00:12:26,087 --> 00:12:30,830 there's a lot of that in the comic, this feeling of character types. 179 00:12:30,830 --> 00:12:36,180 So in the comic half I'm trying to tell this almost, 180 00:12:36,180 --> 00:12:39,890 it's a satire of course about tech and 181 00:12:39,890 --> 00:12:44,320 its impact on the world then how people think technologically and of our data. 182 00:12:44,320 --> 00:12:49,810 The first comic was a very extended joke about the economic crisis. 183 00:12:49,810 --> 00:12:55,080 Where Babbage fills this economic model that rampages around. 184 00:12:55,080 --> 00:12:57,870 So it's satire with broad characters. 185 00:12:57,870 --> 00:13:03,190 But I wasn't quite sure what to talk about in this 186 00:13:03,190 --> 00:13:05,670 tarot I thought this might be fun, I used a lot of tarot cards. 187 00:13:05,670 --> 00:13:10,738 Again it's a bit of a two cultures thing because I was looking for this dreamlike 188 00:13:10,738 --> 00:13:15,581 fantastical side to this story, what people feel about these characters, 189 00:13:15,581 --> 00:13:21,106 what people think about these characters, what associations people have with them, 190 00:13:21,106 --> 00:13:24,840 as opposed to this kind of jumble of facts that you have so. 191 00:13:24,840 --> 00:13:29,706 I found tarot really extraordinary because the first two cards 192 00:13:29,706 --> 00:13:34,400 of the tarot deck after the magician and the high priestess. 193 00:13:34,400 --> 00:13:37,910 And the magician deals with physicalities, objects, 194 00:13:37,910 --> 00:13:40,530 the manipulation of the physical world. 195 00:13:40,530 --> 00:13:45,554 And the high priestess is about secret, 196 00:13:45,554 --> 00:13:49,841 conceptual, hidden knowledge, 197 00:13:49,841 --> 00:13:54,440 relationships, religious ideas. 198 00:13:54,440 --> 00:14:00,540 And Lovelace actually specifically calls herself Babbage's high priestess, 199 00:14:00,540 --> 00:14:02,720 referring I'm pretty sure to the Oracle of Delphi. 200 00:14:02,720 --> 00:14:06,960 She was picturing the machine as this oracle and she would be the high priestess 201 00:14:06,960 --> 00:14:10,890 of it and Babbage of course, it's very much about this division of hardware and 202 00:14:10,890 --> 00:14:15,360 software so I played a lot with these kind of divisions of types and 203 00:14:15,360 --> 00:14:17,660 all these sort of story telling things, I thought that might be interesting. 204 00:14:17,660 --> 00:14:25,860 But I had to keep coming back to again in animation we deal very much with. 205 00:14:25,860 --> 00:14:29,210 We always have to come back to the real and keep it nailed down. 206 00:14:29,210 --> 00:14:31,420 Otherwise you can't do the illusion. 207 00:14:31,420 --> 00:14:36,580 This is just an example of the sort of study that I do, 208 00:14:36,580 --> 00:14:39,930 hand studies for Lovelace's type hand, Babbage's type hand. 209 00:14:39,930 --> 00:14:44,840 It's dealing with these dualities, these contrasts between these types of figures, 210 00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:45,805 types of anatomy. 211 00:14:45,805 --> 00:14:52,970 That might be interesting, 212 00:14:52,970 --> 00:14:57,520 and again think about [LAUGH] I love that, this is my very favorite, it's so tiny but 213 00:14:57,520 --> 00:15:02,670 it's just my favorite Babbage snippet and 214 00:15:02,670 --> 00:15:09,430 I guess I started to think about the anatomy of 215 00:15:09,430 --> 00:15:16,680 the comic as being related to the notes and to the primary documents and specific. 216 00:15:16,680 --> 00:15:19,900 So I kept coming back to the primary documents and feeding stuff out of that 217 00:15:19,900 --> 00:15:23,330 and going back in and going back and forth between kind of these stories and 218 00:15:23,330 --> 00:15:29,440 associations and these facts and so from this, 219 00:15:29,440 --> 00:15:33,290 this is another, just thinking that people would be interested in the process here. 220 00:15:33,290 --> 00:15:38,150 So these are some sketches of averages sort of body language that I drew 221 00:15:38,150 --> 00:15:40,640 to get a sense of that committed to thing. 222 00:15:40,640 --> 00:15:45,330 Because it's, I love that sort of very broad style of body language. 223 00:15:45,330 --> 00:15:48,510 And, I was thinking of him as this very linear person. 224 00:15:48,510 --> 00:15:52,230 And, this is very much drawn from his own writings. 225 00:15:52,230 --> 00:15:54,092 I mean Babbage wrote a tremendous amount. 226 00:15:54,092 --> 00:15:58,029 [LAUGH] I think if you stacked up all his books they'd about, 227 00:15:58,029 --> 00:16:02,755 if you include the pamphlets it's like this, and then there's tons of 228 00:16:02,755 --> 00:16:08,460 anecdotes he was a very very popular person for people to tell anecdotes about. 229 00:16:08,460 --> 00:16:09,775 The thing about Babbage is that he's easy. 230 00:16:09,775 --> 00:16:15,231 I fell in love with Babbage first, I'm not gonna lie, he's still kind of my favorite. 231 00:16:15,231 --> 00:16:19,985 And his personality is extremely evident in every single thing he wrote, and 232 00:16:19,985 --> 00:16:21,540 it's very consistent. 233 00:16:21,540 --> 00:16:23,280 And it's kinda perfect for 234 00:16:23,280 --> 00:16:27,570 my little schematic, because this very solid grounded guy is very direct. 235 00:16:27,570 --> 00:16:31,030 His body is always a kind of straight line, he's a bit centered, 236 00:16:31,030 --> 00:16:35,930 kind of in the middle of this body, he's a very confident guy. 237 00:16:35,930 --> 00:16:41,230 And his body language is, in my head, it comes out of his writing. 238 00:16:41,230 --> 00:16:43,600 You can feel the way that he's standing. 239 00:16:43,600 --> 00:16:46,296 And I was absolutely delighted when I fell across this. 240 00:16:46,296 --> 00:16:52,660 >> [LAUGH] >> I am 95% sure this is Babbage. 241 00:16:52,660 --> 00:16:54,330 It's not actually labelled as Babbage. 242 00:16:54,330 --> 00:17:00,770 This is 1851 from, the punch Great Exhibition gag issue. 243 00:17:00,770 --> 00:17:05,840 And there's gags about all the types that you're seeing around the Great Exhibition. 244 00:17:05,840 --> 00:17:08,870 And this is the fancy portrait of a gentlemen who has been honorable 245 00:17:08,870 --> 00:17:13,580 mentioned by Prince Albert, honorably mentioned indeed is that all scandalous. 246 00:17:13,580 --> 00:17:19,030 And Babbage of course was furious that they didn't have the Difference Engine 247 00:17:19,030 --> 00:17:22,850 fragment in the exhibition. 248 00:17:22,850 --> 00:17:24,078 He wrote a pamphlet about him. 249 00:17:24,078 --> 00:17:28,605 [LAUGH] So yeah, I guess I was really pleased that I 250 00:17:28,605 --> 00:17:33,141 maybe sort of captured something about the guy. 251 00:17:33,141 --> 00:17:38,394 But then you come to Lovelace, and of course Lovelace is a problem, 252 00:17:38,394 --> 00:17:44,550 cuz Lovelace is always a problem. 253 00:17:44,550 --> 00:17:48,910 These are some sketches that I was kind of coming at. 254 00:17:48,910 --> 00:17:51,500 Because I had Babbage, and Babbage was so clear, 255 00:17:51,500 --> 00:17:54,270 I started building Lovelace in opposition to Babbage. 256 00:17:54,270 --> 00:17:57,790 So Babbage is very linear, he's very direct, and 257 00:17:57,790 --> 00:17:59,140 he's in the middle of his body. 258 00:17:59,140 --> 00:18:04,862 Whereas Lovelace, I'm always looking for spirals and indirect lines, 259 00:18:04,862 --> 00:18:09,830 she's always looking kind of off to the side or around. 260 00:18:09,830 --> 00:18:14,860 And this something that really comes out in her letters I think, in that, 261 00:18:14,860 --> 00:18:18,750 she's this incredibly prodient person. 262 00:18:18,750 --> 00:18:23,820 Anyone whose read her letters will find that she's changing personalities like 263 00:18:23,820 --> 00:18:28,840 drastically from [LAUGH] one day to the next, almost, she's 264 00:18:28,840 --> 00:18:33,360 got a completely different personality, they're almost unrecognizable sometimes. 265 00:18:33,360 --> 00:18:34,620 Always quite forceful, and 266 00:18:34,620 --> 00:18:38,520 there's something always a bit ferocious about her. 267 00:18:38,520 --> 00:18:42,070 But sometimes she's a bit the coquette, and sometimes she's joking around, and 268 00:18:42,070 --> 00:18:45,000 then sometimes she's this complete weirdo, and sometimes she's this and 269 00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:45,720 sometimes she's that. 270 00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:51,340 So, she's trying on and I feel she's very difficult to know if not impossible 271 00:18:51,340 --> 00:18:55,714 to know as a human being, because she's always trying on all these personas. 272 00:18:55,714 --> 00:19:00,470 I guess, just speculating here but I think at the end of the day, 273 00:19:00,470 --> 00:19:05,525 her base actual personality was simply not possible to have as 274 00:19:05,525 --> 00:19:10,690 a Victorian woman, and certainly not as a Victorian aristocrat. 275 00:19:10,690 --> 00:19:15,650 You can't be that sort of person and be in that position. 276 00:19:15,650 --> 00:19:19,720 Part of the thing in her letters is I feel she's always pretending to be 277 00:19:19,720 --> 00:19:24,540 who the person that she's writing to wants her to be. 278 00:19:24,540 --> 00:19:28,588 And she always over plays it a little bit. 279 00:19:28,588 --> 00:19:37,280 So Ada and the comic kind of wound up being what I felt she wanted to be a bit. 280 00:19:37,280 --> 00:19:39,210 I kind of wanted to set her free, 281 00:19:39,210 --> 00:19:42,440 because she's obviously a person who's in so much pain. 282 00:19:42,440 --> 00:19:48,620 And so not comfortable with kind of her lot in life. 283 00:19:48,620 --> 00:19:52,280 So I wanted her to have this wonderful 284 00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:55,580 engine to play around in and all this stuff. 285 00:19:55,580 --> 00:20:02,100 So the Lovelace I wound up kind of choosing to use, is actually 286 00:20:02,100 --> 00:20:09,690 very much the one in relation to Babbage, not only cuz they're a dynamic duo. 287 00:20:09,690 --> 00:20:15,200 But also because for me my favorite Ada of all the myriad Ada's 288 00:20:15,200 --> 00:20:18,600 is the one in her correspondence with Babbage over the writing of the notes, 289 00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:24,130 where she's so confident and funny and she's joking around, 290 00:20:24,130 --> 00:20:28,860 and she's on task, and I just really love this Ada. 291 00:20:28,860 --> 00:20:34,450 And she herself wrote about the notes. 292 00:20:34,450 --> 00:20:39,550 In her own notes she says, it's got this masculine quality, feminine quality it's 293 00:20:39,550 --> 00:20:45,640 a hydrogenous sort of style of writing that she had discovered for herself. 294 00:20:45,640 --> 00:20:47,780 And her persona as the person writing the notes, 295 00:20:47,780 --> 00:20:51,990 which is a really remarkable persona with this. 296 00:20:51,990 --> 00:20:56,082 Actually, I have to say from the lecture this morning, I was so thrilled to get 297 00:20:56,082 --> 00:21:00,548 confirmation that she had read Peacock's algebra, because I was casting around for 298 00:21:00,548 --> 00:21:03,977 where she picked up this bizarre style that she does the notes in. 299 00:21:03,977 --> 00:21:07,295 For someone who'd been taught by De Morgan and Babbage, 300 00:21:07,295 --> 00:21:11,804 both of whom are extremely lucid, very clear and straightforward writers. 301 00:21:11,804 --> 00:21:16,336 And then for her mathematics paper she's writing, 302 00:21:16,336 --> 00:21:20,820 in this convoluted, sentences this long. 303 00:21:20,820 --> 00:21:26,530 And then as part of my researches, I read Peacock's Algebra, and 304 00:21:26,530 --> 00:21:29,010 I was like Peacock, [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] 305 00:21:29,010 --> 00:21:30,210 >> And you could see her thinking, 306 00:21:30,210 --> 00:21:34,720 this is how a mathematician would write, with these long sentences and 307 00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:37,870 the detached we, that she uses and all this stuff. 308 00:21:37,870 --> 00:21:42,500 So there's a bit of Peacock maybe [LAUGH] in this Ada. 309 00:21:42,500 --> 00:21:46,920 So it's the Ada with Babbage that I sort of wound up using, 310 00:21:46,920 --> 00:21:51,165 because I felt that with Babbage and again this is my speculation, 311 00:21:51,165 --> 00:21:55,810 cuz we can't know, everyone's dead and long dead. 312 00:21:55,810 --> 00:22:01,300 For me, it always felt like Ada felt she could really be herself with Babbage and 313 00:22:01,300 --> 00:22:07,170 vice versa, but that was her most authentic self. 314 00:22:07,170 --> 00:22:09,690 I love this thing that I found. 315 00:22:09,690 --> 00:22:12,600 This isn't in the book actually cuz I was saving it up for something else, 316 00:22:12,600 --> 00:22:17,420 but this is Lady Eastlake, who's slightly catty [LAUGH] lady. 317 00:22:17,420 --> 00:22:20,520 But I love this line, he was amused at my saying that Babbage and 318 00:22:20,520 --> 00:22:22,170 not Byron should have been her father. 319 00:22:22,170 --> 00:22:24,840 She doesn't know that they know each other at this stage. 320 00:22:24,840 --> 00:22:26,790 I was amused, a couple of days later she says, 321 00:22:26,790 --> 00:22:32,060 I was amused after my remark to find that Babbage and herself, the greatest friends 322 00:22:32,060 --> 00:22:38,410 I think this is 45. 323 00:22:38,410 --> 00:22:45,070 So this idea of her and Babbage as 324 00:22:45,070 --> 00:22:49,500 these people who could, it was them against the world a little bit, 325 00:22:49,500 --> 00:22:55,920 was the sense that I started getting from the letters, 326 00:22:55,920 --> 00:23:00,160 from the documents, just I guess it's a sense that you get, I mean, I can't 327 00:23:00,160 --> 00:23:05,150 tell if it's an objective sense or not, probably not, but it's a sense that I got. 328 00:23:05,150 --> 00:23:10,060 This is another, one of the things about Lovelace is that, 329 00:23:10,060 --> 00:23:15,750 where as Babbage is always on character, like I have never, ever, despite reading 330 00:23:15,750 --> 00:23:19,825 hundreds of kind of things about Babbage, he has never stepped out of character. 331 00:23:19,825 --> 00:23:23,480 He's always like, oh Babbage, or oh Babbage what are you doing? 332 00:23:23,480 --> 00:23:26,830 He's always very exactly as he should be. 333 00:23:26,830 --> 00:23:31,260 Whereas, Ada, every single thing I've ever found about her I'm like, 334 00:23:31,260 --> 00:23:34,060 oh I didn't know that side of her at all. 335 00:23:34,060 --> 00:23:36,551 Everything is surprising, everything is different. 336 00:23:36,551 --> 00:23:40,855 So here she's pitching in to the Turkish ambassador about the rights of women, 337 00:23:40,855 --> 00:23:43,307 which is not what I pictured her doing at all. 338 00:23:43,307 --> 00:23:50,630 >> [LAUGH] >> So that 's a little surprise there. 339 00:23:50,630 --> 00:23:54,149 Now I've lost my thought again, let me go back to my notes. 340 00:23:54,149 --> 00:23:57,596 Talk amongst yourselves. 341 00:23:57,596 --> 00:24:02,597 [NOISE] All right, oh actually Richard Holmes 342 00:24:02,597 --> 00:24:10,950 has told you to expect me to explain why Lovelace smokes a pipe. 343 00:24:10,950 --> 00:24:14,118 Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I would have to jump ahead here. 344 00:24:14,118 --> 00:24:19,682 This is Pocket Universe Ada vs the actual Ada. 345 00:24:19,682 --> 00:24:21,670 Smokes a pipe. 346 00:24:21,670 --> 00:24:25,768 To begin with, because I was filling in a compositional gap in a drawing. 347 00:24:25,768 --> 00:24:29,158 This little white space that I didn't like, and so I stuck a pipe in it. 348 00:24:29,158 --> 00:24:32,748 It is a reference to Sherlock Holmes obviously, but it's also that I thought to 349 00:24:32,748 --> 00:24:36,192 be blunt that people would take her more seriously if she was smoking a pipe. 350 00:24:36,192 --> 00:24:40,046 >> [LAUGH] >> I've always thought that 351 00:24:40,046 --> 00:24:43,684 sometimes famous philosophers are talking complete bullshit. 352 00:24:43,684 --> 00:24:46,643 But people take them seriously because they've got the pipe. 353 00:24:46,643 --> 00:24:50,868 >> [LAUGH] >> That's obviously the missing 354 00:24:50,868 --> 00:24:52,669 accoutrement. 355 00:24:52,669 --> 00:24:59,727 So this is just a little demonstration here, of kinda the process again. 356 00:24:59,727 --> 00:25:03,430 So this, again, is Ada completely surprising you. 357 00:25:03,430 --> 00:25:06,089 This is the New York Mirror, 1833. 358 00:25:06,089 --> 00:25:09,502 This is actually the same year that Lovelace met Babbage. 359 00:25:09,502 --> 00:25:13,162 Oh it is said that Ada Byron, sole daughter of the noble bard, 360 00:25:13,162 --> 00:25:15,656 is the most coarse and vulgar woman in England. 361 00:25:15,656 --> 00:25:17,986 >> [LAUGH] >> So 362 00:25:17,986 --> 00:25:23,423 I believe this might be referenced to the fact that Ada very weird. 363 00:25:23,423 --> 00:25:28,218 Pretty much everyone remarks on the fact that she's quite odd socially. 364 00:25:28,218 --> 00:25:34,825 But it also might be alluding to the fact that she tended to swear. 365 00:25:34,825 --> 00:25:37,165 She swore a lot in her letters, and 366 00:25:37,165 --> 00:25:42,335 then I kinda combined that with Babbage's wonderful error pop up, which, 367 00:25:42,335 --> 00:25:47,046 this is, for some reason, in the Exhibition to 1851 Pamphlet. 368 00:25:47,046 --> 00:25:51,543 He describes his error pop-ups, so if you have the wrong thing in the engine, 369 00:25:51,543 --> 00:25:54,281 this little plaque will pop up that says wrong. 370 00:25:54,281 --> 00:25:59,305 And then he adds later the continually ringing loud bell, which I'm sure 371 00:25:59,305 --> 00:26:04,185 would be absolutely delightful if you were programming this machine. 372 00:26:04,185 --> 00:26:06,292 So I did this. 373 00:26:06,292 --> 00:26:11,145 >> [LAUGH] >> This is drawn form life. 374 00:26:11,145 --> 00:26:16,231 >> [LAUGH] >> And then if you have to have 375 00:26:16,231 --> 00:26:22,001 the punch line eventually >> [LAUGH] 376 00:26:22,001 --> 00:26:23,660 >> For a special learner]. 377 00:26:23,660 --> 00:26:33,434 >> [LAUGH] >> It's a good time. 378 00:26:33,434 --> 00:26:39,645 So yeah, I think Pocket Universe Ada is a specific facet of Ada 379 00:26:39,645 --> 00:26:45,146 because it's too hard to draw all the various Ada's. 380 00:26:45,146 --> 00:26:48,613 And this image that I did for the 200th, 381 00:26:48,613 --> 00:26:53,908 I just wound up kind of turning her face from camera because I think 382 00:26:53,908 --> 00:26:59,705 there's something very ultimately unknowable about her as a person. 383 00:26:59,705 --> 00:27:05,181 Oh it's another thing that in terms of 384 00:27:05,181 --> 00:27:12,203 playing between how I played with stuff I guess. 385 00:27:12,203 --> 00:27:14,046 Lovell's of course famously, 386 00:27:14,046 --> 00:27:18,422 I think as every single person has mentioned had an addictive personality. 387 00:27:18,422 --> 00:27:23,437 Gambling, opium and that sort of thing. 388 00:27:23,437 --> 00:27:30,216 So in the comic that appears as her addiction to poetry, 389 00:27:30,216 --> 00:27:35,265 of course, the actual Lovelace very much 390 00:27:35,265 --> 00:27:40,758 had reconciled these two halves of herself. 391 00:27:40,758 --> 00:27:42,453 The poetical science bit. 392 00:27:42,453 --> 00:27:44,209 But if that was reconciled in the comic, 393 00:27:44,209 --> 00:27:46,386 then you wouldn't have any character movement. 394 00:27:46,386 --> 00:27:52,689 So she's still very much against poetry, and it's this kind of dark side to her. 395 00:27:52,689 --> 00:27:57,142 This is from Organist's, which is a later story, not in the book, but 396 00:27:57,142 --> 00:28:00,203 she's getting kicked out of a poetry club here. 397 00:28:00,203 --> 00:28:01,561 She’s had a little too much. 398 00:28:01,561 --> 00:28:07,239 >> [LAUGH] >> So, that's Miss Babbage. 399 00:28:07,239 --> 00:28:07,888 I guess, 400 00:28:07,888 --> 00:28:12,846 for me there's a lot of serendipities that keep happening in the comic. 401 00:28:12,846 --> 00:28:17,144 And although initially I was very annoyed at Ada for failing to stay in character 402 00:28:17,144 --> 00:28:21,198 for even two letters in a row- >> [LAUGH] 403 00:28:21,198 --> 00:28:23,718 >> At the end of the day, actually, 404 00:28:23,718 --> 00:28:28,939 her very prudian quality, her very ambiguity, her slipperiness, 405 00:28:28,939 --> 00:28:33,890 wound up making her the perfect representative of this chaotic, 406 00:28:33,890 --> 00:28:36,242 illogical, ambiguous side. 407 00:28:36,242 --> 00:28:40,253 In a comic that's very much about the two cultures, 408 00:28:40,253 --> 00:28:44,365 you've got fact, and then you got this other world. 409 00:28:44,365 --> 00:28:48,045 It's not fiction so much as sort of stuff that cannot be pinned down. 410 00:28:48,045 --> 00:28:52,916 And I think this been a lot of trying to pin down this very ambiguous thing, 411 00:28:52,916 --> 00:28:57,550 and I think it's a very engineer sort of thing to want to do, to say oh, 412 00:28:57,550 --> 00:28:59,463 she was this or she was that. 413 00:28:59,463 --> 00:29:03,482 It's like Babbage is, who is the most left-brained, 414 00:29:03,482 --> 00:29:08,356 unambiguous person possibly ever, with his little buffers to make 415 00:29:08,356 --> 00:29:12,646 sure that no gear could ever be perfectly out of alignment. 416 00:29:12,646 --> 00:29:17,425 An intolerance of ambiguities is not gonna sit well with 417 00:29:17,425 --> 00:29:20,577 anybody who needs to hang with Ada for 418 00:29:20,577 --> 00:29:26,490 a while cuz you have to be able to tolerate this ambiguous side of her. 419 00:29:26,490 --> 00:29:27,672 But I think that's healthy. 420 00:29:27,672 --> 00:29:29,949 Sometimes you just can't know stuff. 421 00:29:29,949 --> 00:29:34,842 That said, I just want to bring up this paper because 422 00:29:34,842 --> 00:29:39,961 sometimes you find the document and your scholars here 423 00:29:39,961 --> 00:29:44,760 must know this feeling Charlie must be fantastic. 424 00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:47,894 Sometimes you find something that is just really magical. 425 00:29:47,894 --> 00:29:54,310 This is from the Southern review, which is a very short lived paper to celebrate 426 00:29:54,310 --> 00:30:00,361 the culture of the south published in Maryland in the wake of the Civil War. 427 00:30:00,361 --> 00:30:02,788 It's kind of an odd little journal. 428 00:30:02,788 --> 00:30:04,111 It only lasted a couple of years. 429 00:30:04,111 --> 00:30:09,176 But one of the things they printed in it was 430 00:30:09,176 --> 00:30:16,268 letters home from this guy, and on his way around London, 431 00:30:16,268 --> 00:30:20,774 God, I'm blanking out on his name. 432 00:30:20,774 --> 00:30:21,411 Isn't that terrible? 433 00:30:21,411 --> 00:30:22,258 It's in the book. 434 00:30:22,258 --> 00:30:26,938 Peal, Pike, it starts with P, very short name that starts with P. 435 00:30:26,938 --> 00:30:32,544 So he met Charles Babbage, cuz he was connected with scientific types. 436 00:30:32,544 --> 00:30:37,759 And there's this incredibly vivid description of Babbage, 437 00:30:37,759 --> 00:30:43,787 the most vivid description of Babbage, as this nervous mannered guy. 438 00:30:43,787 --> 00:30:48,767 And this is '54, so this is two years after Lovelace had died. 439 00:30:48,767 --> 00:30:53,422 And I just love this line, her peculiar capability higher 440 00:30:53,422 --> 00:30:57,038 he said then out of anyone he knew to prepare. 441 00:30:57,038 --> 00:31:00,566 I believe it was, there was an ambiguity again. 442 00:31:00,566 --> 00:31:03,320 The descriptions connected with his calculating machine, 443 00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,614 I fear I'm not expressing myself rightly here as to the precise nature of 444 00:31:06,614 --> 00:31:07,860 the subject he mentioned. 445 00:31:07,860 --> 00:31:13,479 And then you get this beautiful little very human moment. 446 00:31:13,479 --> 00:31:15,593 It was the recollection of her miserable life. 447 00:31:15,593 --> 00:31:18,783 He spoke of it as a tragedy, that seemed to sadden him for a while, 448 00:31:18,783 --> 00:31:21,161 speaking in a lower tone of voice and in a manner so 449 00:31:21,161 --> 00:31:24,873 subdued that as I stood listening to him I could scarce believe he was the same 450 00:31:24,873 --> 00:31:28,375 nervous-mannered gentlemen who had entered the room an hour before. 451 00:31:28,375 --> 00:31:30,677 There was so much feeling in both his words and 452 00:31:30,677 --> 00:31:34,615 manner that I did not feel at liberty to question him as to the precise nature of 453 00:31:34,615 --> 00:31:42,076 the unhappiness of the life he was speaking of. 454 00:31:42,076 --> 00:31:45,599 This moment for me was a very, very beautiful moment, 455 00:31:45,599 --> 00:31:49,889 because I had not been able to articulate why I felt that Babbage and 456 00:31:49,889 --> 00:31:54,508 Lovelace's friendship was not only genuine but quite a profound one. 457 00:31:54,508 --> 00:32:00,509 And this was very much not an opinion held by most of the serious scholars for 458 00:32:00,509 --> 00:32:06,140 whom obviously Lovelace was a tool that Babbage was cynically using. 459 00:32:06,140 --> 00:32:12,039 Which to me, I guess, ultimately that just felt almost impossible, to picture Babbage 460 00:32:12,039 --> 00:32:17,563 putting up with someone who thought he was a fool, for even more than five minutes. 461 00:32:17,563 --> 00:32:21,630 So this was a very beautiful thing to find. 462 00:32:21,630 --> 00:32:25,610 And it was such an obscure journal that I don't know if anybody would've found it 463 00:32:25,610 --> 00:32:30,070 without Google Books. 464 00:32:30,070 --> 00:32:33,590 And at least understood, I guess, what it meant. 465 00:32:33,590 --> 00:32:36,880 And there's also some nice little character moments here. 466 00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:41,160 This delightful bit speaking of Lady Lovelace's matter of fact mind, 467 00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:44,900 Mister Babbage told me he used to have a good deal of good natured fun by telling 468 00:32:44,900 --> 00:32:49,792 her all sorts of extraordinary stories and I'm just dying to know what sort of. 469 00:32:49,792 --> 00:32:51,760 [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] 470 00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:53,450 >> What sort of strange little jokes they 471 00:32:53,450 --> 00:32:55,000 had going on because 472 00:32:55,000 --> 00:33:01,010 they have this very chummy elusive kind of way of writing letters that. 473 00:33:01,010 --> 00:33:03,230 One does long to listen in on a conversation. 474 00:33:03,230 --> 00:33:06,140 You also see Babbage gossiping like crazy. 475 00:33:06,140 --> 00:33:08,390 Good day with a Byron devil in her. 476 00:33:08,390 --> 00:33:10,440 Uncongenial match with Lord Lovelace. 477 00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:14,355 And oh my god, Babbage, stop it. 478 00:33:14,355 --> 00:33:17,910 [LAUGH] So in this you get everything. 479 00:33:17,910 --> 00:33:20,790 You get a little bit of the calculating machine. 480 00:33:20,790 --> 00:33:22,110 You get this very emotional thing. 481 00:33:22,110 --> 00:33:25,840 And you get these little, these little, wonderful character moments. 482 00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:28,250 So hooray for primary documents. 483 00:33:28,250 --> 00:33:34,248 And that's kind of the image I drew. 484 00:33:34,248 --> 00:33:36,670 So, that's the comic. 485 00:33:36,670 --> 00:33:38,620 There's a third character in this comic. 486 00:33:38,620 --> 00:33:40,960 A central character in the comic. 487 00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:44,754 To move my feelings are always in Belint. 488 00:33:44,754 --> 00:33:48,290 [LAUGH] And that's the analytical engine. 489 00:33:48,290 --> 00:33:53,150 As I said, it's a darn [LAUGH] sweet lesson that has assured you guys that 490 00:33:53,150 --> 00:33:58,191 you'll understand the [LAUGH] analytical engine by the time I explain it. 491 00:33:58,191 --> 00:34:01,290 >> [LAUGH] >> Which I can't swear to that 492 00:34:01,290 --> 00:34:02,390 happening, but. 493 00:34:02,390 --> 00:34:09,040 So after all of this going back and forth fact and fishing blah blah blah, 494 00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:15,490 here I had something, an engine that was completely indescribable, apparently. 495 00:34:15,490 --> 00:34:21,190 Because no matter where I turned, everyone would say, oh it's very, very brilliant. 496 00:34:21,190 --> 00:34:24,840 But you can't understand it, it's too complicated to explain. 497 00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:29,240 And for someone drawing a comic with this thing in it, I felt that I needed to have 498 00:34:29,240 --> 00:34:34,190 engine in there, to contrast it with the comic book engine. 499 00:34:34,190 --> 00:34:36,000 Which looks like this. 500 00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:43,088 This is George Elliot getting her spellchecking done. 501 00:34:43,088 --> 00:34:48,648 [LAUGH] So the engine in the comic is this vast labyrinth, 502 00:34:48,648 --> 00:34:52,330 which is how I feel about computers. 503 00:34:52,330 --> 00:34:55,903 So in contrast, of course I need to have the real engine and so 504 00:34:55,903 --> 00:34:59,290 I just wanted a drawing of the thing that I could rip off. 505 00:34:59,290 --> 00:35:03,950 But sadly, I was completely shocked and horrified to discover that there did not 506 00:35:03,950 --> 00:35:06,580 exist a visualization of the entire engine. 507 00:35:06,580 --> 00:35:11,810 So I had to do one myself based off of this. 508 00:35:11,810 --> 00:35:13,480 The papers of the late Allan Bromley, 509 00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:20,900 which, anyone who does anything analytical engine is a helpless slave to. 510 00:35:20,900 --> 00:35:22,590 And this was really hard and 511 00:35:22,590 --> 00:35:26,865 I have no idea if it's right but that's my elevation. 512 00:35:26,865 --> 00:35:31,090 >> [LAUGH] >> Ish, 513 00:35:31,090 --> 00:35:36,860 there's a lot of question marks as anyone will tell you here, 514 00:35:36,860 --> 00:35:40,260 that's about how big it was I think. 515 00:35:40,260 --> 00:35:45,249 It's got three types of punch cards, now the easiest way to describe, 516 00:35:45,249 --> 00:35:49,593 this is go on there you go, so that's how I did the elevation. 517 00:35:49,593 --> 00:35:51,137 But before you do that, and here's the person. 518 00:35:51,137 --> 00:35:53,768 [LAUGH] Before you do that, 519 00:35:53,768 --> 00:35:58,800 I kind of had set aside a couple of weeks to do this. 520 00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:03,740 And as it turns out, I spent about five months on the engine alone. 521 00:36:03,740 --> 00:36:06,840 Because to do the elevation, you have to know where everything is, and 522 00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:08,720 to know where everything is you have to go through all the papers. 523 00:36:08,720 --> 00:36:10,406 And oh my God, it took forever. 524 00:36:10,406 --> 00:36:15,036 So in the book I explain it like this. 525 00:36:15,036 --> 00:36:20,100 [LAUGH] As Babbage himself found, and God I feel for 526 00:36:20,100 --> 00:36:24,920 him, to explain how something is moving in relationships on 527 00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:29,470 a static image, is really hard and I don't understand his mathematical notation and 528 00:36:29,470 --> 00:36:33,010 neither does anybody else, so I couldn't just use that. 529 00:36:33,010 --> 00:36:36,090 So I did this and I don't think it's as clear as it could be had, 530 00:36:36,090 --> 00:36:42,000 so I'm going to show you the best way. 531 00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,080 Here's some bits I built while I get this thing together. 532 00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:46,620 So this is the sort of thing I would do, right. 533 00:36:46,620 --> 00:36:49,190 Just take a plan. 534 00:36:49,190 --> 00:36:51,420 Pull it apart. 535 00:36:51,420 --> 00:36:55,830 Try to figure out what everything did, cuz you can't actually make 536 00:36:55,830 --> 00:37:00,540 it do things without knowing how everything comes around. 537 00:37:00,540 --> 00:37:03,180 This is how the cards work roughly. 538 00:37:03,180 --> 00:37:06,770 I think this is actually Herschel design I'm not sure, 539 00:37:06,770 --> 00:37:10,860 Babbage's son did some stuff, but the punch cards work 540 00:37:10,860 --> 00:37:15,860 on the basic principal that there's levers that are activated, 541 00:37:15,860 --> 00:37:19,880 this is a bit inverse in that the levers activated if there's a whole, these 542 00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:25,390 are the lovely barrels which I'll explain in a sec, they're pretty marvelous. 543 00:37:25,390 --> 00:37:28,010 I think that's all I got, yeah, yeah. 544 00:37:28,010 --> 00:37:32,430 But the easiest way to kind of explain how the whole thing is put together which is 545 00:37:32,430 --> 00:37:34,530 my missing piece. 546 00:37:34,530 --> 00:37:36,710 So this is sort of a baby engine. 547 00:37:36,710 --> 00:37:39,320 It's not the whole thing. 548 00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:40,980 This, by the way, is why I hate computers. 549 00:37:40,980 --> 00:37:44,750 This is the software I have to work with. 550 00:37:44,750 --> 00:37:48,440 In my actual job these are all your controls. 551 00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:49,640 These are more of your controls. 552 00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:51,655 Each of these opens up even more controls. 553 00:37:51,655 --> 00:37:54,280 >> [LAUGH] >> God knows what most of them do, 554 00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:55,570 I've got all these [LAUGH]. 555 00:37:55,570 --> 00:38:02,770 I'm just an animator, man, but you wind up having to work your way around this. 556 00:38:02,770 --> 00:38:04,060 How much time do I got? 557 00:38:04,060 --> 00:38:04,950 Oh no, I'm out of time. 558 00:38:04,950 --> 00:38:07,590 Okay, super quick. 559 00:38:07,590 --> 00:38:15,141 This is my artist impression of the flow, just really roughly, of how this goes. 560 00:38:15,141 --> 00:38:20,560 I'm painfully aware that there's all sorts of experts in here who are sniggering and 561 00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:21,921 going what the hell? 562 00:38:21,921 --> 00:38:26,150 >> [LAUGH] >> So. 563 00:38:26,150 --> 00:38:28,200 As I understand it, you've got these three cards, right? 564 00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:30,490 So there's the number cards which have the number. 565 00:38:30,490 --> 00:38:35,050 These are 50 digit numbers and Babbage's kind of most ambitious plan. 566 00:38:35,050 --> 00:38:39,380 Each of those columns in that big engine is just one number. 567 00:38:39,380 --> 00:38:41,700 The whole height of the engine is just all those digits. 568 00:38:41,700 --> 00:38:45,020 If you're only dealing with a three digit number, the engine's like this high. 569 00:38:45,020 --> 00:38:48,970 All the height is just the size of the number. 570 00:38:48,970 --> 00:38:56,030 So this is just a one digit kind of slice and all the slices just go up. 571 00:38:56,030 --> 00:38:59,830 So the number card which I've just stuck where he put it on the plan, 572 00:38:59,830 --> 00:39:05,780 so you have these cards with 573 00:39:05,780 --> 00:39:09,190 exactly Jackart Link style if you've seen how one of those things works. 574 00:39:09,190 --> 00:39:12,910 It's just a pasteboard card and 575 00:39:12,910 --> 00:39:18,290 if there is a hole, the levers go right through and nothing happens. 576 00:39:18,290 --> 00:39:20,130 So that's most of the time. 577 00:39:20,130 --> 00:39:25,320 But you leave one hole unpunched and that pushes a little lever. 578 00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:30,370 And mostly what Babbage seemed to have those levers do is engage 579 00:39:30,370 --> 00:39:32,200 something to the cams. 580 00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,270 This power that was continually turning onto the engine. 581 00:39:35,270 --> 00:39:39,560 So then they start to move, once they were engaged. 582 00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:43,610 So this is a 50 digit number written on a punch card there. 583 00:39:43,610 --> 00:39:47,660 So you have 58 rows of ten columns each. 584 00:39:47,660 --> 00:39:51,460 Each of these would in theory have one unpunched hole and 585 00:39:51,460 --> 00:39:55,362 that reads off into the store, I don't know how. 586 00:39:55,362 --> 00:40:01,713 [LAUGH] Can you [LAUGH] no, no, nobody knows how. 587 00:40:01,713 --> 00:40:06,677 Somehow this takes the car, I mean you could figure it, I'm sure we could come, 588 00:40:06,677 --> 00:40:11,000 every one of us could come up with some nifty design that would do that. 589 00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:13,833 So that sets off all these levers. 590 00:40:13,833 --> 00:40:16,317 And the levers hook up. 591 00:40:16,317 --> 00:40:19,138 All right actually you probably have the variable card. 592 00:40:19,138 --> 00:40:22,860 Is the address, now I can ask you guys! 593 00:40:22,860 --> 00:40:26,240 The address, if you're just reading the number cards into the store. 594 00:40:26,240 --> 00:40:29,440 The address would have to come off the variable card, or is that only for mill? 595 00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:30,240 Okay. 596 00:40:30,240 --> 00:40:34,480 So before we do that you have to have the addressing cards, 597 00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:36,470 the variable cards, what do you call it. 598 00:40:36,470 --> 00:40:39,360 I call them address cards just cuz to me it's more, okay, 599 00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:42,870 that's the address of where in the store you're picking it up. 600 00:40:42,870 --> 00:40:50,110 And so it'd have apparently some really cool way of designating all these things. 601 00:40:50,110 --> 00:40:52,050 And this is a problem, apparently, 602 00:40:52,050 --> 00:40:54,010 how these variable cards are gonna all deal with stuff. 603 00:40:54,010 --> 00:40:56,670 But this just hooks up, 604 00:40:56,670 --> 00:41:03,280 the variable card just hooks up a number in the store by lifting a little 605 00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:08,640 widget between these racks and the number cards. 606 00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:13,950 You read out an address, read out a number so the address hooks it up and 607 00:41:13,950 --> 00:41:22,310 then the number just reads off on to the storage. 608 00:41:22,310 --> 00:41:25,560 So now you've got two numbers just read off the card into the store. 609 00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:30,300 And then these guys are the operations cards, so these is the main event here. 610 00:41:30,300 --> 00:41:35,170 It could add, subtract, multiply, divide, so there are these little. 611 00:41:35,170 --> 00:41:41,720 They're the smallest cards, with only a very limited number of options on them. 612 00:41:41,720 --> 00:41:49,450 And what these cards do is so unbelievably clever that I still can't get over it. 613 00:41:49,450 --> 00:41:52,610 How do you do this very complicated thing of adding two numbers together with 614 00:41:52,610 --> 00:41:53,950 a single card? 615 00:41:53,950 --> 00:41:59,239 The card runs this little mini widget, 616 00:41:59,239 --> 00:42:02,170 which is the barrel. 617 00:42:02,170 --> 00:42:05,490 So the card will turn the barrel to a specific location. 618 00:42:05,490 --> 00:42:06,940 To say, okay, we're gonna add now. 619 00:42:06,940 --> 00:42:08,320 The barrel turns around. 620 00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:13,310 And then the barrels go through a little wedge. 621 00:42:13,310 --> 00:42:14,916 At least on the plan 25, 622 00:42:14,916 --> 00:42:19,080 there's barrels all over the place controlling all these things. 623 00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:24,468 So the barrels will then, from a single instruction on the operation card, 624 00:42:24,468 --> 00:42:26,820 run for a little bit here. 625 00:42:26,820 --> 00:42:30,560 The barrels will run through a little wedge of instructions. 626 00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:33,370 And they're tall barrels with all these zillions of pegs. 627 00:42:33,370 --> 00:42:38,040 So one line of pegs in a barrel will activate a couple of dozen levers and 628 00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:42,620 it took like 50 or something to run these operations and then you'd just run 629 00:42:42,620 --> 00:42:47,950 through a dozen or however many turns of operations you need to get through it. 630 00:42:47,950 --> 00:42:53,470 So the basic flow is, number cards 631 00:42:53,470 --> 00:42:58,070 read off the numbers into the store with the variable cards telling them where. 632 00:42:58,070 --> 00:43:01,880 Then the operations cards says, okay, let's add these guys. 633 00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:06,340 So the variable cards will select a number. 634 00:43:06,340 --> 00:43:09,770 We'll say pick up whatever number is over here. 635 00:43:09,770 --> 00:43:10,690 And it just hooks up. 636 00:43:10,690 --> 00:43:13,230 The whole machine just works by hooking and unhooking stuff. 637 00:43:13,230 --> 00:43:17,110 So it just hooks up with a little pinion. 638 00:43:17,110 --> 00:43:18,610 Reads it off to this section. 639 00:43:18,610 --> 00:43:23,280 So the different functions are a different section of very specific machinery for 640 00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:24,480 each specific function. 641 00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:30,760 So it sends it over here, and then picks up the second number. 642 00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:33,330 Sends that over there. 643 00:43:33,330 --> 00:43:35,270 And then these guys go to work. 644 00:43:35,270 --> 00:43:36,970 And they do their little jazz. 645 00:43:36,970 --> 00:43:44,740 I've got an anticipating carry build I can show you outside. 646 00:43:44,740 --> 00:43:48,620 I'm sure there's a bunch of them around. 647 00:43:48,620 --> 00:43:49,750 So it runs its jazz. 648 00:43:49,750 --> 00:43:54,640 And once it's done, then the variable card says, okay, read out the output. 649 00:43:54,640 --> 00:44:01,010 Sorry, first it reads its output to the little output right there. 650 00:44:01,010 --> 00:44:03,930 So it just hooks up, reads it out. 651 00:44:03,930 --> 00:44:09,560 Variable card says, okay, read the result out to location whatever. 652 00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:12,500 And then it just reads that out, and it's done. 653 00:44:12,500 --> 00:44:14,220 So that's the whole operation. 654 00:44:14,220 --> 00:44:15,210 So that was a little, 655 00:44:15,210 --> 00:44:18,370 slightly more confusing than I usually manage to do this. 656 00:44:18,370 --> 00:44:20,770 I'm on the spot here. 657 00:44:20,770 --> 00:44:24,230 This does animate, this isn't an emulator by the way. 658 00:44:24,230 --> 00:44:31,087 This is hand keyed, cuz I'm just a monkey. 659 00:44:31,087 --> 00:44:34,082 It's gonna run through its little thing. 660 00:44:34,082 --> 00:44:37,478 At some point something would jam and then the bells would go off and 661 00:44:37,478 --> 00:44:41,202 then, you'd have to the urchin with the tiny hands to crawl into it cuz. 662 00:44:41,202 --> 00:44:44,530 >> [LAUGH] >> I don't know how he planned to fix 663 00:44:44,530 --> 00:44:50,220 anything that jammed in this thing because it's basically a solid mass of metal, 664 00:44:50,220 --> 00:44:52,550 I'm sure he had a plan. 665 00:44:52,550 --> 00:44:54,390 And actually I just have one final point. 666 00:44:54,390 --> 00:44:59,306 Which is, there was some concern which was just at the limit of my 667 00:44:59,306 --> 00:45:04,030 technical understanding of the engine. 668 00:45:04,030 --> 00:45:07,630 There was some concern over how the variable cards and 669 00:45:07,630 --> 00:45:10,260 the operations cards and the number cards were all coordinated. 670 00:45:10,260 --> 00:45:13,850 Cuz the problem is these are completely disconnected to each other. 671 00:45:13,850 --> 00:45:14,530 They're on their own. 672 00:45:14,530 --> 00:45:18,700 So you better hope to God that you've got the right set of cards coming through at 673 00:45:18,700 --> 00:45:19,850 the same time. 674 00:45:19,850 --> 00:45:23,780 So I designed for Ada in this universe of hers. 675 00:45:23,780 --> 00:45:27,548 She's got her programming organ. 676 00:45:27,548 --> 00:45:33,490 [LAUGH] It's got little shortcuts and things. 677 00:45:33,490 --> 00:45:37,310 So she can just type in all the functions. 678 00:45:37,310 --> 00:45:40,800 This is actually based off of, if you go up to Mackle's Field, 679 00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:43,500 there's this beautiful museum of Jacquard looms. 680 00:45:43,500 --> 00:45:47,130 And they have all these wonderful gadgets for punching the cards, 681 00:45:47,130 --> 00:45:50,910 they're pretty magnificent so, had there actually been an engine 682 00:45:50,910 --> 00:45:53,950 then somebody would've I'm sure built this thing. 683 00:45:53,950 --> 00:45:59,460 So on a final note, sorry I've run way over and everyone's starving, on a final 684 00:45:59,460 --> 00:46:06,650 note I have to say again with this with Ada. 685 00:46:06,650 --> 00:46:10,030 I'm not clever enough to do this. 686 00:46:10,030 --> 00:46:17,280 But if you love something and if it's meant to happen, you will make it happen. 687 00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:23,220 For me to specify that she had to have all these specific qualifications. 688 00:46:23,220 --> 00:46:24,320 And be amazing at this thing. 689 00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:28,960 And then she would just step in I think that's a bit backwards. 690 00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:30,930 I mean, Lovelace loved the engine. 691 00:46:30,930 --> 00:46:34,170 That's very clear, I think, in everything that she wrote. 692 00:46:34,170 --> 00:46:47,420 And in order to kind of serve her function with the engine she did 693 00:46:47,420 --> 00:46:52,818 Extraordinary things, so that's my talk thanks. 694 00:46:52,818 --> 00:46:55,405 >> [APPLAUSE] >> [INAUDIBLE] 695 00:46:55,405 --> 00:46:56,520 >> [APPLAUSE]