In which Penelope Dreadful tries her hand at programming the “olde” way, and Shakespeare goes in circles.
Drop the Cow!
Smacking I.T. on the back of the head!
In which Penelope Dreadful tries her hand at programming the “olde” way, and Shakespeare goes in circles.
some of these episodes need a “What that is and how it works” section for those of us less educated individuals =P
My search engine of choice isn’t really putting out much as far as 1800’s programming is concerned
You know me, Brian – I’m all about being esoteric. It’s not enough for me to do nerd humour about toy building bricks. It has to be obscure humour about toy building bricks for semi-sadistic slackers jaded by the prevalence of bumbling management in large corporations who are also well-versed in cancelled TV shows and enjoy programming, studying computing history, and reading comic books while possessing a vastly flawed grasp on theoretical physics. You’d be amazed how big the demographic is.
In fact, if it got any larger, I’d need a bigger belt.
Joking aside (strike that – never signed my side-joking contract this year), the idea of an explanation section is something I’ve contemplated a time or two – glad you mentioned it.
Presuming your search engine (Bing, of course ;)) found the basic goods on Babbage’s Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, you can find more details in Charles Babbage and the Engines of Perfection by Bruce Collier and James MacLachlan (Oxford University Press). The best on-line resource I’ve found for such info is here: http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/contents.html.
As for how they were programmed (or “would have been programmed” in my storyline), Most my information comes from that FourmiLab link, above. (Trivia: that site is developed and maintained by John Walker, founder of Autodesk, the company that makes 3ds Max, the program I use to create Drop the Cow!) I’m presuming that – in the absence of magnetic or optical storage units, Penny would still have to punch in the actual program on punch cards (much like folks had to do even up to the 1980s) – since she doesn’t have a handy carry-box with her favourite programs on cello-cards, like any other respectable “clacker” of 1868. For a GREAT fictional account of steampunk computing, I recommend The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Other than a relatively weak ending, the book fascinated me. (It’s also where I stole the term “clacker” from. :))
Just for fun, here’s a better render of Crazy Eddie’s “You Crank” analytical engine that Penny uses at the cafe:
Why pay for steam when you’ve got a monkey?
And, last but not least, Penny is of course programming in Ada. More search engine fodder for ya. 😉
I’m glad you said she was programming in Ada. No mention of Babbage’s (a prime example of the geek-slacker, btw!) calculating engines is complete without mentioning Ada!
BTW, if you haven’t already heard of it, I highly recommend a non-Lego (the horror! The horror!) steampunk webcomic about Charles and Ada entitled The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.
No, no, no… Clearly they’re doing this all wrong. They merely need to travel to Egypt and find the Stargate. At least turning that wheel by hand crank would actually produce results in a timely fashion. 😉