[SIGCIS-Members] Babbage's Language of Thought

[Mark Priestley]

Hi Paul (+ list)

Babbage described the notation in a paper to the Royal Society in 1826:
there's a link to it on this page
<http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/116.toc>. This was
reprinted in volume 3 of Babbage's collected works, ed. Martin
Campbell-Kelly (Pickering, 1989). Dionysius Lardner's 1834 article on
"Babbage's calculating engine" also discusses the notation. (Reprinted in
vol. 2 of the collected works). There's a small section on it, based on
these sources, in my book. I don't know where the diagram in the blog post
came from - presumably the Science Museum archives?

It's a fascinating topic, particularly the suggestion that Babbage used the
notation to reason about, and so simplify, the design of the Difference
Engine. I'm really looking forward to following the progress of this
project.

Cheers,
Mark

On 12 December 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
> Arts & Technology
> 800 West Campbell Road, AT10
> Richardson, TX 75080-3021
> Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick
> Blog: creative-automata.com
>
>
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