The Information (84 page)
♦
“THE RAPID AND INDISPENSABLE CARRIER”
:
Littell’s Living Age
6, no. 63 (26 July 1845): 194.
♦
“SWIFTER THAN A ROCKET COULD FLY”
: Andrew Wynter, “The Electric Telegraph,” 138.
♦
“ALL IDEA OF CONNECTING EUROPE WITH AMERICA”
: Alexander Jones,
Historical Sketch of the Electric Telegraph
, 6.
♦
“A RESULT SO PRACTICAL, YET SO INCONCEIVABLE”
: “The Atlantic Telegraph,”
The New York Times
, 6 August 1858, 1.
♦
DERBY, VERY DULL
: Charles Maybury Archer,
The London Anecdotes
, 51.
♦
“THE PHENOMENA OF THE ATMOSPHERE”
: Ibid., 73.
♦
“ENABLES US TO SEND COMMUNICATIONS”
: George B. Prescott,
History, Theory, and Practice of the Electric Telegraph
(Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860), 5.
♦
“FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES”
:
The New York Times
, 7 August 1858, 1.
♦
“DISTANCE AND TIME HAVE BEEN SO CHANGED”
: Quoted in Iwan Rhys Morus, “ ‘The Nervous System of Britain,’” 463.
♦
LIEUTENANT CHARLES WILKES
: Charles Wilkes to S. F. B. Morse, 13 June 1844, in Alfred Vail,
The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph
, 60.
♦
“PROFESSOR MORSE’S TELEGRAPH IS NOT ONLY AN ERA”
: Quoted in Adam Frank, “Valdemar’s Tongue, Poe’s Telegraphy,”
ELH
72 (2005): 637.
♦
“WHAT MIGHT NOT BE GATHERED SOME DAY”
: Andrew Wynter, “The Electric Telegraph,” 133.
♦
“MUCH IMPORTANT INFORMATION … CONSISTING OF MESSAGES”
: Alfred Vail,
The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph
, viii.
♦
THE GIVING, PRINTING, STAMPING, OR OTHERWISE TRANSMITTING
: Agreement between Cooke and Wheatstone, 1843, in William Fothergill Cooke,
The Electric Telegraph
, 46.
♦
“THE DIFFICULTY OF FORMING A CLEAR CONCEPTION”
: “The Telegraph,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
, 336.
♦
“TELEGRAPHIC COMPANIES ARE RUNNING A RACE”
: Andrew Wynter,
Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers: Being Some of the Chisel-Marks of Our Industrial and Scientific Progress
(London: Robert Hardwicke, 1863), 363.
♦
“THEY STRING AN INSTRUMENT AGAINST THE SKY”
: Robert Frost, “The Line-Gang,” 1920.
♦
“A NET-WORK OF NERVES OF IRON WIRE”
:
Littell’s Living Age
6, no. 63 (26 July 1845): 194.
♦
“THE WHOLE NET-WORK OF WIRES”
: “The Telegraph,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
, 333.
♦
“THE TIME IS NOT DISTANT”
: Andrew Wynter,
Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers
, 371.
♦
“THE TELEGRAPHIC STYLE BANISHES”
: Andrew Wynter, “The Electric Telegraph,” 132.
♦
“WE EARLY INVENTED A SHORT-HAND”
: Alexander Jones,
Historical Sketch of the Electric Telegraph
, 123.
♦
“THE GREAT ADVANTAGE”
: Alfred Vail,
The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph
, 46.
♦
THE SECRET CORRESPONDING VOCABULARY
: Francis O. J. Smith,
THE SECRET CORRESPONDING VOCABULARY
; Adapted for Use to Morse’s Electro-Magnetic Telegraph: And Also in Conducting Written Correspondence, Transmitted by the Mails, or Otherwise
(Portland, Maine: Thurston, Ilsley, 1845).
♦
THE A B C UNIVERSAL COMMERCIAL ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH CODE
: Examples from William Clauson-Thue,
THE A B C UNIVERSAL COMMERCIAL ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH CODE,
4th ed. (London: Eden Fisher, 1880).
♦
“IT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO THE AUTHOR’S KNOWLEDGE”
: Ibid., iv.
♦
“TO GUARD AGAINST MISTAKES OR DELAYS”
:
Primrose v. Western Union Tel. Co
., 154 U.S. 1 (1894); “Not Liable for Errors in Ciphers,”
The New York Times
, 27 May 1894, 1.
♦
AN ANONYMOUS LITTLE BOOK
: Later reprinted, with the author identified, as John Wilkins,
Mercury: Or the Secret and Swift Messenger. Shewing, How a Man May With Privacy and Speed Communicate His Thoughts to a Friend At Any Distance
, 3rd ed. (London: John Nicholson, 1708).
♦
“HE WAS A VERY INGENIOUS MAN”
: John Aubrey,
Brief Lives
, ed. Richard Barber (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1982), 324.
♦
“HOW A MAN MAY WITH THE GREATEST SWIFTNESS”
: John Wilkins,
Mercury: Or the Secret and Swift Messenger
, 62.
♦
“
WHATEVER IS CAPABLE OF A COMPETENT DIFFERENCE
”
: Ibid., 69.
♦
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE DILETTANTES
: David Kahn,
The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968), 189.
♦
“WE CAN SCARCELY IMAGINE A TIME”
: “A Few Words on Secret Writing,”
Graham’s Magazine
, July 1841; Edgar Allan Poe,
Essays and Reviews
(New York: Library of America, 1984), 1277.
♦
“THE SOUL IS A CYPHER”
:
The Literati of New York
(1846), in Edgar Allan Poe,
Essays and Reviews
, 1172.
♦
A BRIDGE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE OCCULT
: Cf. William F. Friedman, “Edgar Allan Poe, Cryptographer,”
American Literature
8, no. 3 (1936): 266–80; Joseph Wood Krutch,
Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius
(New York: Knopf, 1926).
♦
A “KEY-ALPHABET” AND A “MESSAGE-ALPHABET”
: Lewis Carroll, “The Telegraph-Cipher,” printed card 8 x 12 cm., Berol Collection, New York University Library.
♦
“ONE OF THE MOST SINGULAR CHARACTERISTICS”
: Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
(London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864), 235.
♦
POLYALPHABETIC CIPHER KNOWN AS THE VIGENÈRE
: Simon Singh,
The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking
(London: Fourth Estate, 1999), 63 ff.
♦
“THE VARIOUS PARTS OF THE MACHINERY”
: Dionysius Lardner, “Babbage’s Calculating Engines,”
Edinburgh Review
59, no. 120 (1834): 315–17.
♦
“NAME OF EVERYTHING WHICH IS
BOTH
X
AND
Y
”
: De Morgan to Boole, 28 November 1847, in G. C. Smith, ed.,
The Boole–De Morgan Correspondence 1842–1864
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 25.
♦
“NOW SOME
Z
S ARE NOT
X
S”
: De Morgan to Boole, draft, not sent, ibid., 27.
♦
“IT IS SIMPLY A FACT”
: quoted by Samuel Neil, “The Late George Boole, LL.D., D.C.L.” (1865), in James Gasser, ed.,
A Boole Anthology: Recent and Classical Studies in the Logic of George Boole
(Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2000), 16.
♦
“THE RESPECTIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE SYMBOLS 0 AND 1”
: George Boole,
An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, on Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities
(London: Walton & Maberly, 1854), 34.
♦
“THAT LANGUAGE IS AN INSTRUMENT OF HUMAN REASON”
: Ibid., 24–25.
♦
“UNCLEAN BEASTS ARE ALL”
: Ibid., 69.
♦
“A WORD IS A TOOL FOR THINKING”
: “The Telegraph,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
, 359.
♦
“BABIES ARE ILLOGICAL”
: Lewis Carroll,
Symbolic Logic: Part I, Elementary
(London: Macmillan, 1896), 112 and 131. And cf. Steve Martin,
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 74.
♦
“PURE MATHEMATICS WAS DISCOVERED BY BOOLE”
: Bertrand Russell,
Mysticism and Logic
(1918; reprinted Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2004), 57.
♦
“THE PERFECT SYMMETRY OF THE WHOLE APPARATUS”
: James Clerk Maxwell, “The Telephone,” Rede Lecture, Cambridge 1878, “illustrated with the aid of Mr. Gower’s telephonic harp,” in W. D. Niven, ed.,
The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell
, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1890; repr. New York: Dover, 1965), 750.
♦
GAYLORD AMOUNTED TO LITTLE MORE
: “Small enough that if you walked a couple of blocks, you’d be in the countryside.” Shannon interview with Anthony Liversidge,
Omni
(August 1987), in Claude Elwood Shannon,
Collected Papers
, ed. N. J. A. Sloane and Aaron D. Wyner (New York: IEEE Press, 1993), xx.
♦
“THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT”
: “In the World of Electricity,”
The New York Times
, 14 July 1895, 28.
♦
THE MONTANA EAST LINE TELEPHONE ASSOCIATION
: David B. Sicilia, “How the West Was Wired,”
Inc
., 15 June 1997.
♦
“THE GOLD-BUG”
: 1843;
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
(New York: Doubleday, 1966), 71.
♦
“CIRCUMSTANCES, AND A CERTAIN BIAS OF MIND”
: Ibid., 90.
♦
“ ‘THINKING MACHINE’ DOES HIGHER MATHEMATICS”
:
The New York Times
, 21 October 1927.
♦
“A MATHEMATICIAN IS NOT A MAN”
: Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,”
The Atlantic
(July 1945).
♦
UTTERLY CAPTIVATED BY THIS “COMPUTER”
: Shannon to Rudolf E. Kalman, 12 June 1987, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
♦
“AUTOMATICALLY ADD TWO NUMBERS”
: Claude Shannon, “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits,”
Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
57 (1938): 38–50.
♦
HIS “QUEER ALGEBRA”
: Vannevar Bush to Barbara Burks, 5 January 1938, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
♦
“AN ALGEBRA FOR THEORETICAL GENETICS”
: Claude Shannon,
Collected Papers
, 892.
♦
EVALUATION FORTY YEARS LATER
: Ibid., 921.
♦
“OFF AND ON I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON AN ANALYSIS”
: Claude Shannon to Vannevar Bush, 16 February 1939, in Claude Shannon,
Collected Papers
, 455.
♦
“A CERTAIN SCRIPT OF LANGUAGE”
: Leibniz to Jean Galloys, December 1678, in Martin Davis,
The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing
(New York: Norton, 2000), 16.
♦
“HIGHLY ABSTRACT PROCESSES AND IDEAS”
: Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell,
Principia Mathematica
, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 2.
♦
“EPIMENIDES THE CRETAN SAID”
: Bertrand Russell, “Mathematical Logic Based on the Theory of Types,”
American Journal of Mathematics
30, no. 3 (July 1908): 222.
♦
“IT WAS IN THE AIR”
: Douglas R. Hofstadter,
I Am a Strange Loop
(New York: Basic Books, 2007), 109.
♦
“HENCE THE NAMES OF SOME INTEGERS”
: Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell,
Principia Mathematica
, vol. 1, 61.
♦
DOES THE BARBER SHAVE HIMSELF
: “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (1910), in Bertrand Russell,
Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901–1950
(London: Routledge, 1956), 261.
♦
“LOOKED AT FROM THE OUTSIDE”
: Kurt Gödel, “On Formally Undecidable Propositions of
Principia Mathematica
and Related Systems I” (1931), in
Kurt Gödel: Collected Works
, vol. 1, ed. Solomon Feferman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 146.
♦
“A SCIENCE PRIOR TO ALL OTHERS”
: Kurt Gödel, “Russell’s Mathematical Logic” (1944), in
Kurt Gödel: Collected Works
, vol. 2, 119.
♦
“ONE CAN PROVE ANY THEOREM”
: Kurt Gödel, “On Formally Undecidable Propositions of
Principia Mathematica
and Related Systems I” (1931), 145.
♦
“CONTRARY TO APPEARANCES, SUCH A PROPOSITION”
: Ibid., 151 n15.
♦
“AMAZING FACT”—“THAT OUR LOGICAL INTUITIONS”
: Kurt Gödel, “Russell’s Mathematical Logic” (1944), 124.
