Jacquards' Web (39 page)
Authors: James Essinger
284
Acknowledgements
I would also like to thank the following people: David Allison of the National Museum of American History; Anna Alessi; Tracy Banks; Gaëlle Baton and Marie-Chantal Mousset of the Lyons Office of Tourism; Susan Bennett of the Royal Society; Jonathan Betts of the National Maritime Museum; Marie Bouzard; Will Causton; Ben Churchill; Arthur C. Clarke; Robert Cleaver; Heni Clouts; the late I. B. Cohen; Bruce Collier; Garf Collins;Louise Coxon; Sally Day; Alison Dixon of Seaham Town Council; Beate Duncan; Edwina Ehrman of the Museum of London; Mary Essinger; Janet Foster of the Royal Statistical Society; Alan Fuller; Stephen Gillatt; Florence Greffe of th e Académie des Sciences at the Institute of France; Stephen Hallett; Shirley Hanson; Mike Hatton; Peter Hingley of the Royal Astronomical Society; Anthony Hyman; Louis Irwin and Bob Mann of Totnes Museum for their hospitality in Totnes and comprehensive assistance; Eddie Jephcott for assistance with translations; Friedrich W.
Kistermann; Rebecca Lindskog; Jean-Yves Ligot of the Maison des Canuts in Lyons; John McCrae of Simon Langton Grammar School, Canterbury; John Rasmussen; Rebecca Salisbury; Richard K. Scher; Ginny Sennett; Diana Turner of Trinity College Library, Cambridge; Chris Weeks of the British Society of the History of Mathematics; Adrian Wilson of
Textile Month
; Michael Wright, curator of Mechanical Engineering at the London Science Museum; and Helen Yeowart of the Institute of Textiles.
My sincere thanks also to Caroline Davidson for her enthusiasm and insight, to Clive Priddle for his good sense and encouragement, to Fiona Gold for her sound advice, to my brother Rupert Essinger for his ideas and comments, and to Sheila Able-man, a queen among literary agents. Computer scientist Andrew Yeomans read this book in draft form and made many useful suggestions, as did Dr Mark George and Ian Syme, managing director of modern Jacquard loom manufacturer Stäubli UK.
Michael Rodgers of Oxford University Press was an
enthusiastic advocate for the book during the OUP review process. Working with him was a delight. My great thanks also to 285
Jacquard’s Web
OUP’s Marsha Filion, Abbie Headon, Jennifer Hicks, Deborah Protheroe, and Emma Simmons.
My gratitude to Carolyn Gritzmaker and Stacey Harvey-Brown for pointing out some inaccuracies in my description of weaving in the hardback edition of this book, which I have modified following their advice.
For personal reasons my thanks to Kieran Minshull of L. K.
Leon & Co. and to my friends Sandy Baker and Alex Dembitz. My warmest gratitude also to the late Cedric Dickens, the great-grandson of Charles Dickens, for his delightful anecdotes about his early days working for the British Tabulating Machine Company.
Above all, I thank Helen Wylie for her advice, her arduous and earnest research, her careful attention to the complex task of researching the illustrations, her work on the index, and for her belief in this project from the very first day we thought of it.
James Essinger
2004
286
In these notes, I provide details of the original sources I found most useful.
pages 7–18
Here I have drawn on original sources in Lyons, various encyclopaedia articles about sericulture, and from
A History of Textiles
by Kax Wilson (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado,
1979
) and
The Fontana
History of Technology
by Donald Cardwell (Fontana Press, London,
1994
).
pages 22–43
My main source for the early history of Jacquard’s life are papers published in the
Bulletin Municipal Officiel
of Lyons between
1998
and
1999
. As far as I am aware, these are the only reliable historical documents about Jacquard’s life ever published. Other published sources, which are too often mere reworkings of existing unattested accounts of Jacquard’s life, are rarely reliable.
page 46
The draft letter from Charles Babbage to Jean Arago is in the British Library, Additional Manuscripts No.
37 191,
folios
287
–
9
. The portrait of Jacquard which Babbage was finally able to obtain is in the reserve collection of the Science Museum, in London.
page 93
Jean Arago’s letter explaining his problems with obtaining the Jacquard portrait for Babbage is in the British Library, Additional Manuscripts No.
37191
, folio
316
.
page 58
The letter from Herschel to Babbage urging the abandonment of formality in correspondence is in Volume
2
of the Herschel Papers in the library of the Royal Society, London, folio
8
.
page 78
Henry Fitton’s letter of condolence to Babbage on Georgiana’s death is in the British Library, London, in Additional Manuscripts
37 184
, folio
80
.
287
Jacquard’s Web
page 101
The evidence for when Babbage returned to Britain from Turin is inherent in a letter in Additional Manuscripts
39,191
, folio
450
. This is dated
11
September
1840
. It was addressed to Babbage in London but redirected to an address in Ostend, where he seems to have been staying prior to coming back to Britain.
page 102
Sir Robert Peel’s letter to the Earl of Haddington about the correct attitude to adopt to the financial requests of men of science is in the British Library’s Additional Manuscripts
40 456
, folio
98
.
page 103
Peel’s letter to William Buckland, showing how the Prime Minister felt about Babbage, is in Additional Manuscripts
40 514,
folio
223
.
pages 105–6
Henry Goulburn’s letter to Babbage notifying him of the Government’s decision to stop funding the Difference Engine, is in Additional Manuscripts V
37 192,
folios
172
–
3
.
pages 107–12
Babbage’s detailed account of his abortive meeting with Sir Robert Peel on Friday,
11
November
1842
is in Additional Manuscripts
37 192
, folios
189
–
93
.
page 112
Although I do not mention this directly in the text, for details of a dinner-party given by Dickens which Babbage and Lord and Lady Lovelace attended see
The Letters of Charles Dickens
, Vol.
5, 1847–1849
, p.
513
, ed. Storey/Fielding (OUP, Oxford,
1981
).
page 112
For Dickens’s letter to Henry Austin about the bill for Tavistock Place, see
The Letters of Charles Dickens
, Vol.
6
, p.
556
, ed.
Storey/Tillotson and Burgis (OUP, Oxford,
1988
).
pages 128–30
On the subject of Babbage’s personal life, there is an intriguing letter to him from a Reverend Lunn in the British Library’s Additional Manuscripts
37 185
, folio
310
. This suggests that Babbage had asked Lunn to enquire about a certain lady to see whether she might be a suitable candidate for a wife for Babbage. This seems to constitute solid evidence that Babbage had not necessarily resigned himself to permanent bachelor life after Georgiana’s death.
288
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