The Information (81 page)
♦
“BASICALLY THE PEASANT WAS RIGHT”
: Walter J. Ong,
Orality and Literacy
, 53.
♦
“IN THE INFANCY OF LOGIC”
: Benjamin Jowett, introduction to Plato’s
Theaetetus
(Teddington, U.K.: Echo Library, 2006), 7.
♦
“WHEN A WHITE HORSE IS NOT A HORSE”
: Gongsun Long, “When a White Horse Is Not a Horse,” trans. by A. C. Graham, in P. J. Ivanhoe et al.,
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy
, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2005), 363–66. Also A. C. Graham,
Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature
, SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 178.
♦
“WRITING, LIKE A THEATER CURTAIN GOING UP”
: Julian Jaynes,
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 177.
♦
“TO THE ASSYRIANS, THE CHALDEANS, AND EGYPTIANS”
: Thomas Sprat,
The History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge
, 3rd ed. (London: 1722), 5.
♦
“THIS PROCESS OF CONQUEST AND INFLUENCE”
: Julian Jaynes,
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
, 198.
♦
TO FORM LARGE NUMBERS, THE BABYLONIANS
: Donald E. Knuth, “Ancient Babylonian Algorithms,”
Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery
15, no. 7 (1972): 671–77.
♦
“IT WAS ASSUMED THAT THE BABYLONIANS”
: Asger Aaboe,
Episodes from the Early History of Mathematics
(New York: L. W. Singer, 1963), 5.
♦
“OUR TASK CAN THEREFORE PROPERLY BE COMPARED”
: Otto Neugebauer,
The Exact Sciences in Antiquity
, 2nd ed. (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1957), 30 and 40–46.
♦
“A CISTERN. THE HEIGHT IS 3,20”
: Donald E. Knuth, “Ancient Babylonian Algorithms,” 672.
♦
“FUNDAMENTALLY LETTERS ARE SHAPES”
: John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, I:13, quoted and translated by M. T. Clanchy,
From Memory to Written Record, England, 1066-1307
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 202.
♦
“OH! ALL YE WHO SHALL HAVE HEARD”
: Ibid.
♦
“I CANNOT HELP FEELING”
:
Phaedrus
, trans. Benjamin Jowett, 275d.
♦
“WE ARE IN OUR CENTURY ‘WINDING THE TAPE BACKWARD’ ”
: Marshall McLuhan, “Media and Cultural Change,” in
Essential McLuhan
, 92.
♦
“THE LARGER THE NUMBER OF SENSES INVOLVED”
: Jonathan Miller,
Marshall McLuhan
, 3.
♦
“ACOUSTIC SPACE IS ORGANIC”
:
Playboy
interview, March 1969, in
Essential McLuhan
, 240.
♦
“MEN LIVED UPON GROSS EXPERIENCE”
: Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall, and Civill,
(1651; repr., London: George Routledge and Sons, 1886), 299.
♦
“MOST LITERATE PERSONS, WHEN YOU SAY”
: Walter J. Ong, “This Side of Oral Culture and of Print,”
Lincoln Lecture
(1973), 2.
♦
“IT IS DEMORALIZING TO REMIND ONESELF”
: Walter J. Ong,
Orality and Literacy
, 14.
♦
“IN SUCH BUSIE, AND ACTIVE TIMES”
: Thomas Sprat,
The History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge
, 3rd ed. (London: 1722), 42.
♦
A BOOK IN 1604 WITH A RAMBLING TITLE
: Robert Cawdrey,
A Table Alphabeticall
(London: Edmund Weaver, 1604) may be found in the Bodleian Library; in a facsimile edition, Robert A. Peters, ed. (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1966); online via the University of Toronto Library; and, most satisfyingly, reprinted as John Simpson, ed.,
The First English Dictionary, 1604: Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall
(Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2007).
♦
A SINGLE 1591 PAMPHLET
: Robert Greene,
A Notable Discovery of Coosnage
(1591; repr., Gloucester, U.K.: Dodo Press, 2008); Albert C. Baugh,
A History of the English Language
, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957), 252.
♦
“IT WERE A THING VERIE PRAISEWORTHIE”
: Richard Mulcaster,
The First Part of the Elementarie Which Entreateth Chefelie of the Right Writing of Our English Tung
(London: Thomas Vautroullier, 1582).
♦
“SOME MEN SEEK SO FAR FOR OUTLANDISH ENGLISH”
: John Simpson, ed.,
The First English Dictionary
, 41.
♦
“NOT CONFORMING HIMSELF”
: John Strype,
Historical Collections of the Life and Acts of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Aylmer
(London: 1701), 129, quoted in John Simpson, ed.,
The First English Dictionary
, 10.
♦
HE COPIED THE REMARKS ABOUT INKHORN TERMS
: Gertrude E. Noyes, “The First English Dictionary, Cawdrey’s
Table Alphabeticall
,”
Modern Language Notes
58, no. 8 (1943): 600.
♦
“SO MORE KNOWLEDGE WILL BE BROUGHT INTO THIS LAND”
: Edmund Coote,
The English Schoole-maister
(London: Ralph Jackson & Robert Dexter, 1596), 2.
♦
“FOR EXAMPLE I INTEND TO DISCUSS
AMO
”
: Lloyd W. Daly,
Contributions to a History of Alphabeticization in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(Brussels: Latomus, 1967), 73.
♦
NOT UNTIL 1613 WAS THE FIRST ALPHABETICAL CATALOGUE
: William Dunn Macray,
Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1598–1867
(London: Rivingtons, 1868), 39.
♦
“LET ME MENTION THAT THE WORDS OR NAMES”
: Gottfried Leibniz,
Unvorgreifliche Gedanken
, quoted and translated by Werner Hüllen,
English Dictionaries 800–1700: The Topical Tradition
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 16
n
.
♦
“
SAYWHAT
, CORRUPTLY CALLED A DEFINITION”
: Ralph Lever,
The Arte of Reason
(London: H. Bynneman, 1573).
♦
“DEFINITION … BEING NOTHING BUT MAKING ANOTHER UNDERSTAND”
: John Locke,
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
, ch. 3, sect. 10.
♦
“SO LONG AS MEN WERE IN FACT OBLIGED”
: Galileo, letter to Mark Welser, 4 May 1612, trans. Stillman Drake, in
Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo
, 92.
♦
“I DO NOT DEFINE TIME, SPACE, PLACE, AND MOTION”
: Isaac Newton,
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
, trans. Andrew Motte (Scholium) 6.
♦
JOHN BULLOKAR, OTHERWISE LEFT AS FAINT A MARK
: Jonathon Green,
Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made
(New York: Holt, 1996), 181.
♦
“WE REALLY DON’T LIKE BEING PUSHED”
: Interview, John Simpson, 13 September 2006.
♦
“
DICTIONARY
, A MALEVOLENT LITERARY DEVICE”
: Ambrose Bierce,
The Devil’s Dictionary
(New York: Dover, 1993), 25.
♦
“IN GIVING EXPLANATIONS I ALREADY HAVE TO USE LANGUAGE”
: Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations
, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 47.
♦
“THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY, LIKE THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION”
: James A. H. Murray, “The Evolution of English Lexicography,” Romanes Lecture (1900).
♦
W. H. AUDEN DECLARED
: Peter Gilliver et al.,
The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 82.
♦
ANTHONY BURGESS WHINGED
: Anthony Burgess, “OED +,” in
But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen? Homage to Qwert Yuiop and Other Writings
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), 139. He could not let go, either. In a later essay, “Ameringlish,” he complained again.
♦
“
EVERY
FORM IN WHICH A WORD”
: “Writing the
OED:
Spellings,” Oxford English Dictionary,
http://www.oed.com/about/writing/spellings.html
(accessed 6 April 2007).
♦
“WHICH, WHILE IT WAS EMPLOYED IN THE CULTIVATION”
: Samuel Johnson, preface to
A Dictionary of the English Language
(1755).
♦
WE POSSESS NOW A MORE COMPLETE DICTIONARY
: John Simpson, ed.,
The First English Dictionary,
24.
♦
“WHAT I SHALL HEREAFTER CALL MONDEGREENS”
: “The Death of Lady Mondegreen,”
Harper’s Magazine
, November 1954, 48.
♦
“THE INTERESTING THING ABOUT MONDEGREENS”
: Steven Pinker,
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
(New York: William Morrow, 1994), 183.
♦
The original writings of Charles Babbage and, to a lesser extent, Ada Lovelace are increasingly accessible. The comprehensive, thousand-dollar, eleven-volume edition,
The Works of Charles Babbage
, edited by Martin Campbell-Kelly, was published in 1989. Online, the full texts of Babbage’s
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
(1864),
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
(1832), and
The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise
(1838) can now be found in editions scanned from libraries by Google’s book program. Not yet available there (as of 2010), but also useful, is his son’s volume,
Babbage’s Calculating Engines: Being a Collection of Papers Relating to Them
(1889). As interest grew during the era of computing, much of the useful material in these books was reprinted in collections; most valuable are
Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines
, edited by Philip Morrison and Emily Morrison (1961); and Anthony Hyman’s
Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage
(1989). Other manuscripts were published in J. M. Dubbey,
The Mathematical Work of Charles Babbage
(1978). The notes that follow refer to one or more of these sources, depending on what seems most useful for the reader. The translation and astounding “notes” on L. F. Menabrea’s “Sketch of the Analytical Engine” by Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, have been made available online at
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
thanks to John Walker; they are also reproduced in the Morrisons’ collection. As for the Lovelace letters and papers, they are in the British Library, the Bodleian, and elsewhere, but many have been published by Betty Alexandra Toole in
Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers
(1992 and 1998); where possible I try to cite the published versions.
♦
“LIGHT ALMOST SOLAR HAS BEEN EXTRACTED”
: Charles Babbage,
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
(1832), 300; reprinted in
Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage
, ed. Anthony Hyman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 200.
♦
THE
TIMES
OBITUARIST
: “The Late Mr. Charles Babbage, F.R.S.,”
The Times
(London), 23 October 1871. Babbage’s crusade against organ-grinders and hurdy-gurdies was not in vain; a new law against street music in 1864 was known as Babbage’s Act. Cf. Stephanie Pain, “Mr. Babbage and the Buskers,”
New Scientist
179, no. 2408 (2003): 42.
♦
“HE SHOWED A GREAT DESIRE TO INQUIRE”
: N. S. Dodge, “Charles Babbage,”
Smithsonian Annual Report of 1873
, 162–97, reprinted in
Annals of the History of Computing
22, no. 4 (October–December 2000), 20.
♦
NOT “THE MANUAL LABOR OF ROWING”
: Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
(London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864), 37.
♦
“ ‘THE TALL GENTLEMAN IN THE CORNER’ ”
: Ibid., 385–86.
♦
“THOSE WHO ENJOY LEISURE”
: Charles Babbage,
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
, 4th ed. (London: Charles Knight, 1835), v.
♦
HE COMPUTED THE COST OF EACH PHASE
: Ibid., 146.
♦
“AT THE EXPENSE OF THE NATION”
: Henry Prevost Babbage, ed.,
Babbage’s Calculating Engines: Being a Collection of Papers Relating to Them; Their History and Construction
(London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1889), 52.
♦
“ON TWO OCCASIONS I HAVE BEEN ASKED”
: Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
, 67.