He is a pretty cool guy himself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Graham-Cumming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage
“In 1838, Babbage invented the pilot (also called a cow-catcher), the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles.[37] He also constructed a dynamometer car and performed several studies on Isambard Kingdom Brunel‘s Great Western Railway in about 1838.[38] Babbage’s eldest son, Benjamin Herschel Babbage, worked as an engineer for Brunel on the railways before emigrating to Australia in the 1850s.[39]”
Nice!
“In On the Economy of Machine and Manufacture, Babbage described what is now called the Babbage principle, which describes certain advantages with division of labour. Babbage noted that highly skilled—and thus generally highly paid—workers spend parts of their job performing tasks that are “below” their skill level. If the labour process can be divided among several workers, it is possible to assign only high-skill tasks to high-skill and high-cost workers and leave other working tasks to less-skilled and lower-paid workers, thereby cutting labour costs. This principle was criticised by Karl Marx who argued that it caused labour segregation and contributed to alienation. The Babbage principle is an inherent assumption in Frederick Winslow Taylor‘s scientific management.”
Cool.
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Also mentioned is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace – Never heard of her.”
“Lovelace died at the age of thirty-six, on 27 November 1852,[23] from uterine cancer and bloodletting by her physicians.[24] She was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham.”
Another death caused by bloodletting. -.-
And another mention is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_logic. Never heard of that.
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The official website to the plan of building the engine is http://plan28.org/. I wanted to contact him and suggest to him that he make a kickstarter account, but he left no email, only a Twitter, and i dont use Twitter. Apparently, it is possible to tweet him a message without an account, which i did.