ITEM DETAILS

Boston: Lilly, Wait, Colman, and Holden 1834. [2], [263]-545 pages. The Edinburgh Review was issued quarterly in wraps, and we offer here the entire April-July issue from 1834. The Lardner/Babbage article appears on pages 263-327 and includes 5 engravings in the text of calculator dials. Front and rear wraps are lacking, remnants of the spine label and paper remain. Occasional light foxing. This is an apparently scarce Boston imprint for this journal. While institutional runs of this journal are common, with some 550+ holdings at this writing, the Boston imprints are much scarcer with only 5 institutions noting holdings of only partial runs. This may qualify as an early American imprint related to computing, and is undoubtedly the first American printing of this article. The Lardner/Babbage article reviews and comments on the following articles: 'Letter to Sir Humphrey Davy..on the application of Machinery to Calculate and Print Mathematical Tables by Charles Babbage', 'On the Application of Machinery to the Calculation of Astronomical and Mathematical Tables' by Charles Babbage (1822), 'Address to the Astronomical Society by Henry Thomas Colebrooke on presenting the first gold Medal of the Society to Charles Babbage Esq. For the invention of the Calculating Machine' (1822), 'On the determination of the General Term of a new Class of Infinite Series' by Charles Babbage (1824), 'On Errors common to many Tables of Logarithms' by Charles Babbage (1827), 'On a Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery' by Charles Babbage (1826), and 'Report by the Committee appointed by the Council of the Royal Society to consider the subject referred to in a Communication received by them from the Treasury, respecting Mr. Babbage's Calculating Engine and to report thereupon.'' (1829) Unlike the one paragraph reviews we're used to today, this treatise was an extensive commentary that provides us today with an interesting historical perspective on his work, and provided the public of that time with a more detailed overview and awareness of Babbage's work than they had seen previously. Origins of Cyberspace 51 notes it is 'The most extensive contemporary account of the Difference Engine No. 1, written by Dionysius Lardner, a prolific popularizer of science. ''From the technical detail that it contains, much of which can be directly linked to the drawings of the machine, it is evident that Babbage was directly involved with and played a substantial hand in its preparation'' (Bromley 1989, 24) From this article Georg Scheutz first obtained detailed information about Babbage's Difference Engine, enabling him to design and eventually construct his own calculating machine twenty years later' (Origins of Cyberspace 51 referring to the London edition). Good.

[Book #13439]