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Babbage

I’ve been reading a book about codes and ciphers, and learned some interested information about Charles Babbage. He’s not only the ‘father of the computer’ as most of us know him today, but the father of the cow catcher (you know, the guard in front of a train’s engine) and the speedometer as well! But best was this quote by Babbage:

Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 25th, 2005 at 7:01 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Babbage”

  1. Carina Says:
    April 25th, 2005 at 9:23 pm

    Did I miss something? What’s the quote?

  2. David Says:
    April 26th, 2005 at 11:11 am

    Ooops. Wrong button. I accidently clicked the “hide from non-logged-in users” instead of the “show as a quote” button….