Reckoning with matter : calculating machines, innovation, and thinking about thinking from Pascal to Babbage / Matthew L. Jones.

Author
Jones, Matthew L. (Matthew Laurence), 1972- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Description
331 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

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Firestone Library - Stacks QA75 .J66 2016 Browse related items Request

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    Summary note
    "Tells the story of early modern European calculating machines, from the early attempts of Blaise Pascal in the 1640s through Charles Babbage{u2019}s efforts of the 1820s to 40s. All failed spectacularly. By exploring these failed technologies, Matthew L. Jones tracks diverse forms of technical life--different social arrangements of practitioners, different legal conceptions of the ownership of work and ideas, and different philosophical conceptions of knowledge and skill. Philosophers, engineers, and craftspeople wrote about their distinctive competencies, about technical novelty, and about the best way to coordinate their efforts, and drawing on these remarkably well-preserved records, Jones reveals the concrete processes of imagining, elaborating, testing, and building key components for calculating machines. By highlighting the makers and their conceptions of invention right up to the instauration of modern patent regimes and the solidification of the concept of Romantic genius, Jones argues that these conceptions of creativity and of making are often more incisive--and more honest--than those still dominating our own legal, political, and aesthetic culture."--Provided by publisher.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-320) and index.
    Contents
    • Introduction
    • Carrying tens: Pascal, Morland, and the challenge of machine calculation
    • First carry : Babbage and Clement mechanize table making
    • Artisans and their philosophers: Leibniz and Hooke coordinate minds, metal, and wood
    • Second carry : Babbage gets funded
    • Improvement for profit: calculating machines and the prehistory of intellectual property
    • Third carry : Babbage claims his property
    • Reinventing the wheel: emulation in the European enlightenment
    • Fourth carry : Babbage confronts prior art
    • Teething problems: Charles Stanhope and the coordination of technical knowledge from Geneva to Kent
    • Fifth carry : Babbage's collaborators emulate
    • Calculating machines, creativity, and humility from Leibniz to Turning
    • Final carry : Epilogue.
    ISBN
    • 9780226411460 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
    • 022641146X ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
    • 9780226411637 ((e-book))
    • 022641163X ((e-book))
    LCCN
    2016015339
    OCLC
    944086965
    Other standard number
    • 99975102669
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