List of Mechanical Notations Proposed to Be Lent for the Exhibition
All the drawings explaining the principles of the Mechanical Notation.
The complete Mechanical Notations of the Swedish Calculating Engine of M. Scheutz.
These latter drawings had been made and used by my youngest son, Major Henry P. Babbage, now resident in India, in explaining the principles of the Mechanical Notation at the meeting of the British Association at Glasgow, and afterwards in London, at a meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
The Mechanical Notations of the Difference Engine No. 1.
These had been made at my own expense, and were finished by myself and my eldest son, Mr. B. Herschel Babbage, now resident in South Australia.
A complete set of the drawings of the Difference Engine No. 2, for calculating and printing tables, with seven orders of differences, and thirty places of figures. Finished in 1849.
A complete set of the Notations necessary for the explanation and demonstration of Difference Engine No. 2, finished in 1849.
These drawings and notations would have required for their exhibition about seven or eight hundred square feet of wall. My letter to Mr. Gravatt was forwarded to the Commissioners with his own application for space to exhibit them. The Commissioners declined this offer; yet during the first six weeks of the Exhibition there was at a short distance from the Difference Engine an empty space of wall large enough for the greater part of these instructive diagrams. This portion of wall was afterwards filled up by a vast oilcloth. Other large portions of wall, to the amount of thousands of square feet, were given up to other oilcloths, and to numberless carpets. It is evident the Royal Commissioners were much better qualified to judge of furniture for the feet than of furniture for the head.
I was myself frequently asked why I did not employ a person to explain the Difference Engine. In reply to some of my friends, I inquired whether, when they purchased a carriage, they expected the builder to pay the wages of their coachman.
But my greatest difficulty was with foreigners; no explanation I could devise, and I tried many, appeared at all to satisfy their minds. The thing seemed to them entirely incomprehensible.
That the nation possessing the greatest military and commercial marine in the world—the nation which had spent so much in endeavouring to render perfect the means of finding the longitude—which had recently caused to be computed and published at considerable expense an entirely new set of lunar Tables should not have availed itself at any cost of mechanical means of computing and stereotyping such Tables, seemed entirely beyond their comprehension.
At last they asked me whether the Commissioners were bêtes. I assured them that the only one with whom I was personally acquainted certainly was not.
When hard pressed by difficult questions, I thought it my duty as an Englishman to save my country’s character, even at the expense of my own. So on one occasion I suggested to my unsatisfied friends that Commissioners were usually selected from the highest class of society, and that possibly four out of five had never heard of my name.
But here again my generous efforts to save the character of my country and its Commissioners entirely failed. Several of my foreign friends had known me in their own homes, and had seen the estimation in which I was held by their own countrymen and by their own sovereign. These were still more astonished.
On another occasion an anecdote was quoted against me to prove that my name was well known even in China. It may, perhaps, amuse the reader. A short time after the arrival of Count Strzelecki in England, I had the pleasure of meeting him at the table of a common friend. Many inquiries were made relative to his residence in China. Much interest was expressed by several of the party to learn on what subject the Chinese were most anxious to have information. Count Strzelecki told them that the subject of most frequent inquiry was Babbage’s Calculating Machine. On being further asked as to the nature of the inquiries, he said they were most anxious to know whether it would go into the pocket. Our host now introduced me to Count Strzelecki, opposite to whom I was then sitting. After expressing my pleasure at the introduction, I told the Count that he might safely assure his friends in the Celestial Empire that it was in every sense of the word an out-of-pocket machine.
At last the Commissioners were moved, not to supply the deficiency themselves, but to address the Government, to whom the Difference Engine belonged, to send somebody to explain it. I received a communication from the Board of Works, inquiring whether I could make any suggestions for getting over this difficulty. I immediately made inquiries, and found a person who formerly had been my amanuensis, and had, under my direction, worked out many most intricate problems. He possessed very considerable knowledge of mathematics, and was willing, for the moderate remuneration of six shillings a day, to be present daily during nine hours to explain the Difference Engine.
I immediately sent this information to the Board of Works, with the name and address of the person I recommended. This, I have little doubt, was directly communicated to the Commissioners; but they did not avail themselves of his services.
It is difficult, upon any principle, to explain the conduct of the Royal Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1862. They were appointed by the Government, yet when the Government itself became an exhibitor, and sent for exhibition a Difference Engine, the property of the nation, these Commissioners placed it in a small hole in a dark corner, where it could, with some difficulty, be seen by six people at the same time.
No remonstrance was of the slightest avail; it was “Hobson’s choice,” that or none. It was represented that all other space was occupied.
A trophy of children’s toys, whose merits, it is true, the Commissioners were somewhat more competent to appreciate, filled one of the most prominent positions in the building. On the other hand, a trophy of the workmanship of English engineers, executed by machine tools thirty years before, and admitted by the best judges to be unsurpassed by any rival, was placed in a position not very inappropriate for the authorities themselves who condemned it to that locality.
But no hired aristocratic agent was employed to excite the slumbering perceptions of the Commissioners, who might have secured a favourable position for the Difference Engine, by practising on their good nature, or by imposing upon their imbecility.
It has been urged, in extenuation of the conduct of these Commissioners, that their duty as guardians of the funds entrusted to them, and of the interests of the Guarantors, compelled them to practise a rigid economy.
Rigid economy is to be respected only when it is under the control of judgment, not of favouritism. If the machinery for making arithmetical calculations which was placed at the disposal of the Commissioners had been properly arranged, it might have been made at once a source of high gratification to the public and even of profit to the Exhibition.
Such a group of Calculating Machines might have been placed by themselves in a small court capable of holding a limited number of persons. Round the walls of this court might have been hung the drawings I had offered to lend, containing the whole of those necessary for the Difference Engine No. 2, as well as a large number of illustrations for the explanation of the Mechanical Notation. The Swedish Difference Engine and my own might have been slowly making calculations during the whole day.
This court should have been open to the public generally, except at two or three periods of half an hour each, during which it should have been accessible only to those who had previously secured tickets at a shilling apiece.
During each half hour the person whom I had recommended to the Commissioners might have given a short popular explanation of the subject.
This attraction might have been still further increased, and additional profit made, if a single sheet of paper had been printed containing a woodcut of the Swedish Machine, an impression from a page of the Tables computed and stereotyped by it at Somerset House, and also an impression from a stereotype plate of the Difference Engine exhibited by the Government.
A plate of the Swedish Machine is in existence in London. I am confident that, for such a purpose, I could have procured the loan of it for the Commissioners, and I would willingly have supplied them with the stereotype plate from which the frontispage of the present volume was printed, together with from ten to twenty lines of necessary explanation.
These illustrations of machinery used for computing and printing Tables might have been put up into packets of dozens and half dozens, and also have been sold in single sheets at the rate of one penny each copy. There can be no doubt the sale of them would have been very considerable. As it was, I found the woodcut representing the Difference Engine No. 1 in great request, and during the exhibition I had numberless applications for it; having given away my whole stock of about 800 copies.
The calculating court might have held comfortably from sixty to eighty seats. Each lecture would have produced say £3. This being repeated three times each day, together with the sale of the woodcuts, would have produced about £10 per day, out of which the Commissioners would have had six shillings per day to pay the assistant who gave the required explanations.
If the dignity of the Commissioners would not permit them to make money by such means, they might have announced that the proceeds of the tickets would be given to the distressed population of the Manchester district, and there would then have been crowds of visitors.
But the rigid economy of the Commissioners, who refused to expend six shillings a day for an attendant, although it would most probably have produced a return of several hundred pounds, was entirely laid aside when their patronage was to be extended to a brother official.
Captain Fowke, an officer of engineers, whose high order of architectural talent became afterwards so well known to the public, and whose whole time and services were retained and paid for by the country, was employed to make a design for the Exhibition Building.
The Commissioners approved of this design, which comprised two lofty domes, uniting in themselves the threefold inconvenience of being ugly, useless, and expensive. They then proceeded to pay him five thousand pounds for the job. This system of awarding large sums of money to certain favoured public officers who are already paid for their services by liberal salaries seems to be a growing evil. At the period of the Irish famine the undersecretary of the Treasury condescended to accept £2,500 out of the fund raised to save a famished nation. Some inquiries, even recently, were occasionally made whether any similar deduction will be allowed from the liberal contributions to the sufferers by the cotton famine.
The question was raised and the practice reprobated in the House of Commons by men of opposite party politics. Mr. Gladstone remarked:—
“If there was one rule connected with the public service which more than any other ought to be scrupulously observed, it was this, that the salary of a public officer, more especially if he were of high rank, ought to cover all the services he might be called upon to render. Any departure from this rule must be dangerous.” Hansard, vol. 101, p. 138, 1848. Supply, 14 Aug. 1848. See also The Exposition of 1851, 8vo., p. 217.
The following paragraph appeared in The Times a short time since, under the head Naval Intelligence:—
“A reply has been received to the memorial transmitted to the Admiralty some few days since from the inspectors employed on the iron frigate Achilles, building at Chatham dockyard, requesting that they may be placed on the same footing as regards increased pay as the junior officers and mechanics working on the iron frigate for the additional number of hours they are employed in the dockyard. The Lords of the Admiralty intimate that they cannot accede to the wishes of the memorialists, who are reminded that, as salaried officers of the establishment, the whole of their time is at the disposal of the Admiralty. This decision has caused considerable dissatisfaction.”
It appears that the Admiralty wisely adopted the principle enunciated by Mr. Gladstone.
It may, however, not unreasonably have caused dissatisfaction to those who had no interest to back them on finding that such large sums are pocketed by those who are blessed with influential friends in high quarters.
If the Commissioners had really wished to have obtained a suitable building at a fair price their course was simple and obvious. They need only have stated the nature and amount of accommodation required, and then have selected half a dozen of the most eminent firms amongst our great contractors, who would each have given them an estimate of the plans they respectively suggested.
The Commissioners might have made it one of the conditions that they should not be absolutely bound to give the contract to the author of the plan accepted. But in case of not employing him a sum previously stipulated should have been assigned for the use of the design.
By such means they would have had a choice of various plans, and if those plans had, previously to the decision of the Commissioners, been publicly exhibited for a few weeks, they might have been enlightened by public criticism. Such a course would have prevented the gigantic job they afterwards perpetrated. It could therefore find no support from the Commissioners.
The present Commissioners, however, are fit successors to those who in 1851 ignored the existence of the author of the Economy of Manufactures and his inventions. They seem to have been deluded into the belief that they possessed the strength, as well as the desire, quietly to strangle the Difference Engine.
It would be idle to break such butterflies upon its matchless wheels, or to give permanence to such names by reflecting them from its diamond-graven plates. Though the steam-hammer can crack the coating without injuring the kernel of the filbert it drops upon—the admirable precision of its gigantic power could never be demonstrated by exhausting its energy upon an empty nutshell.
Peace, then, to their memory, aptly enshrined in unknown characters within the penetralia of the temple of oblivion.
These celebrities may there at last console themselves in the enjoyment of one enviable privilege denied to them during their earthly career—exemption from the daily consciousness of being “found out.”
It is, however, not quite impossible, although deciphering is a brilliant art, that one or other of them may have heard of the dread power of the decipherer. Having myself had some slight acquaintance with that fascinating pursuit, it gives me real pleasure to relieve them from this very natural fear by assuring them that not even the most juvenile decipherer could be so stupid as to apply himself to the interpretation of—characters known to be meaningless.
Yet there is one name amongst, but not of them—a fellow-worshipper with myself at far other fanes, whose hands, like mine, have wielded the hammer, and whose pen, like mine, has endeavoured to communicate faithfully to his fellow-men the measure of those truths he has himself laboriously extracted from the material world. With such endowments, it is impossible that he could have had any cognizance of this part of the proceedings of his colleagues.
At the commencement of the Exhibition, Mr. Gravatt was constantly present, and was so kind as to explain to many anxious inquirers the nature and uses of the Difference Engine. This, however, interfered so much with his professional engagements as a Civil Engineer, that it would have been unreasonable to have expected its continuance. In fact, as not above half a dozen spectators could see the machine at once, it was a great sacrifice of valuable time for a very small result.
During the early part of my own examination of the Exhibition I had many opportunities of conversing with experienced workmen, well qualified to appreciate the workmanship of the Difference Engine; these I frequently accompanied to its narrow cell, and pointed out to them its use, as well as the means by which its various parts had received their destined form.
Occasionally also I explained it to some few of my personal friends. When Mr. Gravatt or myself were thus engaged, a considerable crowd was often collected, who were anxious to hear about, although they could not see, the Engine itself.
Upon one of these occasions I was insulted by impertinent questions conveyed in a loud voice from a person at a distance in the crowd. My taste for music, and especially for organs, was questioned. I was charitable enough to suppose that this was an exceptional case; but in less than a week another instance occurred. After this experience, of course, I seldom went near the Difference Engine. Mr. Gravatt who had generously sacrificed a considerable portion of his valuable time for the information and instruction of the public was now imperatively called away by professional engagements, and the public had no information whatever upon a subject on which it was really very anxious to be instructed.
Fortunately, however, the Exhibition took place during the long vacation; and a friend of mine, Mr. Wilmot Buxton, of the Chancery Bar, very frequently accompanied me in my visits. Possessing a profound knowledge of the mathematical principles embodied in the mechanism, I had frequently pointed out to him its nature and relations. These I soon found he so well apprehended that I felt justified in entrusting him with one of my keys of the machine, in order that he might have access to it without the necessity of my presence.
Whenever he opened it for his own satisfaction or for the instruction of his friends, he was speedily surrounded by a far larger portion of the public than could possibly see it, but who were still attracted by his lucid oral explanation.
It was fortunate for many of the visitors to the Exhibition that this occurred, for the demands on his time, when present, were incessant, and hundreds thus acquired from his explanations a popular view of the subject.
After the close of the Exhibition, Mr. Gravatt and myself attended to prepare the Difference Engine for its return to the Museum of King’s College. To our great astonishment, we found that it had already been removed to the Museum at South Kensington. Not only the Difference Engine itself, but also the illustrations and all the unfinished portions of exquisite workmanship which I had lent to the Exhibition for its explanation, were gone.
On Mr. Gravatt applying to the Board of Works, it was stated that the Difference Engine itself had been placed in the Kensington Museum because the authorities of King’s College had declined receiving it, and immediate instructions were of course given for the restoration of my own property.