I've had a fascination with both Charles Babbage and Ted Nelson since the age of eighteen (I can blame Hyperland and The Difference Engine respectively), and have come to know Ted fairly well in person.
The parallels are striking. They're both creative polymaths who struck upon an idea well before its time (automatic computation by mechanical or other means, and a global hypertextual document system). They both received considerable support towards realising their ideas, and both failed due to a combination of irascibility and an inability to settle on a version of their idea that was 'good enough'.
In Babbage's case, this went as far as burning through £17000 of public money with little to show apart from some finely machined parts and some precision engineering equipment, which he promptly lost in a dispute with his engineer, Clements. Babbage then asked for more money on the grounds that he'd thought of a much jollier wheeze than the tired old Difference Engine (No.2 - he'd already had one major ground-up redesign), and only needed a little more money to build his whizzy new Analytical Engine.
As far as I'm aware, however, Ted has never shown an aversion to hurdy-gurdies or to street musicians in general, although he does claim to have invented to rock opera.
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Date: 2007-05-17 10:47 pm (UTC)The parallels are striking. They're both creative polymaths who struck upon an idea well before its time (automatic computation by mechanical or other means, and a global hypertextual document system). They both received considerable support towards realising their ideas, and both failed due to a combination of irascibility and an inability to settle on a version of their idea that was 'good enough'.
In Babbage's case, this went as far as burning through £17000 of public money with little to show apart from some finely machined parts and some precision engineering equipment, which he promptly lost in a dispute with his engineer, Clements. Babbage then asked for more money on the grounds that he'd thought of a much jollier wheeze than the tired old Difference Engine (No.2 - he'd already had one major ground-up redesign), and only needed a little more money to build his whizzy new Analytical Engine.
As far as I'm aware, however, Ted has never shown an aversion to hurdy-gurdies or to street musicians in general, although he does claim to have invented to rock opera.