From Blaise Pascal in the 1600s to Charles Babbage in the first half of the nineteenth century, inventors struggled to create the first calculating machines. All failed—but that does not mean we cannot learn from the trail of ideas, correspondence, machines, and arguments they left behind. In Reckoning with Matter, Matthew L. Jones draws on the remarkably extensive and well-preserved records of the quest to explore the concrete processes involved in imagining, elaborating, testing, and building calculating machines. He explores the writings of philosophers, engineers, and craftspeople, showing how they thought about technical novelty, their distinctive areas of expertise, and ways they could coordinate their efforts. In doing so, Jones argues that the conceptions of creativity and making they exhibited are often more incisive—and more honest—than those that dominate our current legal, political, and aesthetic culture.
Author(s): Matthew L. Jones
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 340
Tags: History, Calculators, Computers, Technology
Contents......Page 8
Introduction......Page 10
1. Carrying Tens: Pascal, Morland, and the Challenge of Machine Calculation......Page 22
First Carry. Babbage and Clement Mechanize Table Making......Page 53
2. Artisans and Their Philosophers: Leibniz and Hooke Coordinate Minds, Metal, and Wood......Page 65
Second Carry. Babbage Gets Funded......Page 97
3. Improvement for Profit: Calculating Machines and the Prehistory of Intellectual Property......Page 106
Third Carry. Babbage Claims His Property......Page 131
4. Reinventing the Wheel: Emulation in the European Enlightenment......Page 135
Fourth Carry. Babbage Confronts Prior Art......Page 166
5. Teething Problems: Charles Stanhope and the Coordination of Technical Knowledge from Geneva to Kent......Page 171
Fifth Carry. Babbage’s Collaborators Emulate......Page 209
6. Calculating Machines, Creativity, and Humility from Leibniz to Turing......Page 221
Final Carry. Epilogue......Page 248
Acknowledgments......Page 260
Conventions......Page 264
Abbreviations......Page 266
Notes......Page 268
References......Page 302
Index......Page 330
