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Was this announced as an Arrival or Departure? |
There's been nary a murmur about these pages for simply ages, so Your Correspondent thought to plug the void with a lazy On This Day-kind of entertainment as a little something to be getting on with before a flurry of anticipated bloggish activity evolves beyond the Draft Department: In order to smooth the Comings and Goings of people through history, on this day in 1888 the revolving door was patented by Theophilus Van Kannel.
For thems who may be unfamiliar with this revolutionary idea, (hem hem), I have furnished an extract of the technical drawing for United States Patent number US387571A, (expired on this day in 1905, obv.) above. So with this handy image in mind, Dear Reader, let us put it to good use in a Flying With Hands take on Hatches and Dispatches:
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Mata Hari Isaac Israël, 1916 |
In the Comings Department, on this day in 1876, the mysterious and infamous Dutchwoman Margeretha Geertruida Zelle, a.k.a. Mata Hari, was born. Were she to dress, or, ahem, undress herself in raiments woven in complicated and luxurious brocade, she may have appreciated the endeavours of one man who made possible the mass production of such sumptuous fabric, for her life was a relatively short one and the axiom that good things come to those who wait couldn't thus apply in her case.
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J. M. Jacquard silk portrait, Woven on a programmable loom of his name by Michel-Marie Carquillat, 1839 |
I speak, of course, of inventor Joseph Marie Jacquard, who, in the Goings Department, died on this day in 1834. The Jacquard Loom is quite the fixture in the both the Industrial Revolution and the Computer Revolution, where its punch cards found a temporary home and give fond memories to Computer Scientists of a particular vintage.
English polymath and inventor Charles Babbage, the so-called Father of the Digital Computer, owned a copy of this woven silk portrait of Jacquard. He was mightily interested in this loom and the notion of punch cards and freely adopted their use in the development of his Analytical Engine.
As a little aside, and as befits the output of this monstrous brain (which, as he donated it to Science, can be read about here), amongst his many written contributions to the world of science and society is an entrancing 1864 pamphlet extract from his work Passages in the Life of a Philosopher*, entitled A Chapter on Street Nuisances, wherein he rails against the noise pollution of London by the incessant street music.
He lists the "Instruments of torture permitted by the Government to be in daily and nightly use in the streets of London" (viz. brass bands, harpsichords, hurdie-gurdies, drums, bagpipes, psalm singing &c. &c.) and singles out for public shaming the many "Encouragers of Street Music" (viz. tavern-keepers, coffee-shoppes, servants, children, country visitors, sometimes even the occasional titled lady - "but these are almost invariably of recent elevation, and deficient in that taste which their sex usually possesses" - &c. &c.)
He points also to "ladies of elastic virtue and cosmopolitan tendencies, to whom it affords a decent excuse for displaying their fascinations at their own open window" as also being great supporters of this reviled music, so it was fortunate he did not live to witness the "fascinations" of Mata Hari, for he would surely have had a thing or two to add to her reputation.
By the way, Ada Lovelace, (daughter of bad boy Romantic poet Lord Byron) herself the so-called Prophetess of the Computer Age, said in 1843 of her collaborator and friend Charles Babbage's invention, "The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."
Anyhoo, for thems who did not take the quaint subject Textiles & Design in school in the 70s or 80s and study in minute detail the whys and wherefores, I am furnishing a picture below of the invention in question (the Jacquard loom not the Analytical Engine, obv.):
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1850 Portable Version of the Jacquard Loom |
And for thems who did not work at Big Blue, a.k.a. IBM, or his kith and kin around the same time, I am furnishing a picture below of the thrilling computer punch card complete with bonus tape drives and is that the germ of a regulation comb-over?
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The questions and the answers to Life's Mysteries - and just Getting Stuff Done - Once beheld in humble punched cardboard |
And, before it's all but gone, that's about it for the 7th of August!
* Prefaced thus:
Some men write their lives to save themselves from ennui, careless of the amount they inflict on their readers.
Others write their personal history, lest some kind friend should survive them, and, in showing off his own talent, unwittingly show them up.
Others, again, write their own life from a different motive - from fear that the vampires of literature might make it their prey.
Image credits: 1-4: Wikimedia Commons; 5: via Internet Archive; 6: Flying With Hands; 7: Sotheby's; 8: via Google