Peter Carroll is the author of Queen of Misfortune – A Lady Jane Grey Novel. For more information, see his website.
Asked what is the connection with a computer and a pine forest, one may be surprised that the first recognised computer was constructed of pinewood, designed and built by Thomas Fowler in 1840.
But the man known to be the father of the computer, Charles Babbage (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer
Although the first programmer computer designed by Babbage was ill accepted as a viable product; had Babbage managed to acquire more funds to build his analytical engine, our ancestors may well have been using one 100 years before we did.
But I wonder what difference would that have made in a rapidly changing world given the knowledge of new technology, and how indeed would it have affected the outcome of the Second World War?
Given the genius of the German war machine, and their V2 rocket, used to bomb the Home Counties in England in 1944 – this missile was the mother of all the later computer assisted space rockets.
I dread to think just how much more efficient the V2 could have been, given the support of a built in computer. Living in North London as a child I well remember the sheer terror of the rockets because, unlike Hitler’s weapons before, you never knew when they were coming, just a loud ‘whoosh’ and a terrific explosion blurred the senses.
Perhaps then its further development was best delayed to a later time.
As for the very resourceful Charles Babbage; we who live in the South West of England are privileged indeed to know that he was a scholar at the King Edward V1 Grammar School in Totnes, and earlier he attended Alphington country school near Exeter. He married Georgiana Whitmore at St Michael’ church in Teignmouth, Devon, on 24th July 1814.they had eight children of which only four survived childhood.
Considered to be a ‘dreamy’ pupil many would not have realised the formidable aspirations which racked his brain cells (his brain can be seen at London’s Science museum) and what derived from that – when, one day, he found himself strongly impressed with the woodwork of Fowler, and it is his son we have to thank for assembling Babbage’s ‘difference’ engine after his death, using parts found in his father’s laboratory.
Looking at it, it is a fine concoction of wheels, spindles and gears; I would have simply loved to get my hands on it as a boy. It was the beginning of yet another step towards man’s progress to the tune that it became almost an essential part of our present lifestyle. If those who rejected Babbage’s inventiveness were alive now they would surely be kicking themselves.
And how many times we have heard of other such early inventors who have been laughed and scoffed at and what absolute determination and courage, often at their own expense – they doggedly pressed for recognition despite the sometimes hopeless probability of acceptance. Those great authors too like JK Rowling who, despite having had several of her initial manuscripts rejected, carried on regardless to gain that so well deserved recognition – to the point that one wonders just where we would be without them, deprived of all they have given the world.
Incredibly Babbage who was an ingenious inventor also delved in many other things, like counting all the broken panes of glass in a factory, publishing in 1857 a “Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows”: Of 464 broken panes, he concluded14 were caused by “drunken men, women or boys.”
He also invented the metal plate nicknamed the ‘cow catcher’ attached to the front of locomotives, a dynamometer car and an ophthalmoscope to name but a few – and also assisted in establishing the modern postal system in England.
I am of an age when my first conception of a computer was when I worked for a large soft drinks company in Sidcup, Kent and the whole top floor of a very large new office building was given to the installation of their first computer, incredible to think it was not as powerful as my standard type desktop model!
Because of those early inventors, technology changes so very quickly, no longer can we buy a new gadget which, once seemed to last a lifetime. Now the very latest state of the art will often be obsolete in just a year, and it makes one think just how far we can go. But always there is someone following the example of those inventors of old, and given the invaluable assistance of a computer generated age, it has to be simpler now.
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QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll
A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!
Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]
Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.
