[SIGCIS-Members] Babbage's Language of Thought

[Brian Randell]

Hi Paul:

I’m not involved in the project myself, and can add just one further reference to Mark Priestley’s reply.

SWADE, D. 2011. Pre-Electronic Computing. In: JONES, C. B. & LLOYD, J. L. (eds.) Dependable and Historic Computing. Heidelberg: Springer. pp.58-83.

http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-3-642-24540-4

This reproduces examples (on pages 73 and 74) of each of Babbage’s three types of diagrams comprising his Mechanical Notation. One of these describes, in flow diagram form, the programmable printer that Babbage designed for his No. 2 Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, which was eventually successfully built over 150 years later - and can now be seen at the Science Museum and the Computer History Museum.

Cheers

Brian Randell

On 12 Dec 2014, at 03:18, Paul Fishwick <metaphorz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Brian
>   Please keep us informed of the simulation for Babbage’s notation. Can you provide a reference to the 
> article or book where the notation (e.g., the flow diagram in your online article) is covered? 
> -paul
> 
> 
> On Dec 11, 2014, at 4:34 AM, Brian Randell <brian.randell at newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>> Hi:
>> 
>> This comes from the Plan 28 Blog:
>> 
>>> Babbage's Language of Thought
>>> This is a guest post by Adrian Johnstone, Professor of Computing at Royal Holloway, University of London.
>>> 
>>> Babbage has been called the 'great-uncle' of modern computing, a claim that rests simultaneously on his demonstrable understanding of most of the architectural principles underlying the modern computer, and the almost universal ignorance of Babbage's work before 1970.
>>> 
>>> There has been an explosion of interest both in Babbage's devices and the impact they might have had in some parallel history, as well as in Babbage himself as a man of great originality who had essentially no influence at all on subsequent technological development.
>>> 
>>> In all this, one fundamental question has been largely ignored: how is it that one individual working alone could have synthesised a workable computer design over quite a short period, designing an object whose complexity of behaviour so far exceeded that of contemporary machines that it would not be matched for over one hundred years?
>>> 
>>> I believe that the answer lies in the techniques Babbage developed to reason about complex systems. The Leverhulme Trust have recently made a major award to myself and my collaborator Prof Elizabeth Scott which we will use to document, formalise and implement simulators for Babbage's Notation. The team also includes Plan 28’s Dr Doron Swade, who is the foremost authority on Babbage, and Dr Piers Plummer who has an extensive background in chip design, computer architecture, mechanical CAD and programming language compiler design. The work will be based in Royal Holloway's Centre for Software Language Engineering.
>> <snip>
>> 
>> Full article at http://blog.plan28.org/2014/11/babbages-language-of-thought.html
>> 
>> Cheers
>> 
>> Brian Randell
>> 
>> 
>> School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
>> EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
>> URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brian.randell
>> 
>> 
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> 
> Paul Fishwick, PhD
> Chair, ACM SIGSIM
> Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology 
>    and Professor of Computer Science
> Director, Creative Automata Laboratory
> The University of Texas at Dallas
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> 

School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brian.randell