Another mathematical innovation of the century was that of placing logarithms on a stick by the Scot, John Napier. What he had done, of course, was to make an analog, or scale model of the arithmetical numbers. “Napier’s bones” quickly became what we now call slide rules, forerunners of a whole class of analog computers that solve problems by being actual models of size or quantity. Newton joined Leibnitz in contributing another valuable tool that would be used in the computer, that of the calculus.
The Computer in Literature
Even as Plato had viewed with suspicion the infringement of mechanical devices on man’s domain of higher thought, other men have continued to eye the growth of “mechanisms” with mounting alarm. The scientist and inventor battled not merely technical difficulties, but the scornful satire and righteous condemnation of some of their fellow men. Jonathan Swift, the Irish satirist who took a swipe at many things that did not set well with his views, lambasted the computing machine as a substitute for the brain. In Chapter V, Book Three, of Gulliver’s Travels, the good dean runs up against a scheming scientist in Laputa:
The first Professor I saw was in a very large Room, with Forty Pupils about him. After Salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a Frame, which took up the greatest part of both the Length and Breadth of the Room; he said, perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a Project for improving speculative knowledge by practical and mechanical Operations. But the World would soon be sensible of its Usefulness; and he flattered himself, that a more noble exalted Thought never sprang in any other Man’s Head. Every one knew how laborious the usual Method is of attaining to Arts and Sciences; whereas by his Contrivance, the most ignorant Person at a reasonable Charge, and with a little bodily Labour, may write Books in Philosophy, Poetry, Politicks, Law, Mathematicks, and Theology, without the least Assistance from Genius or Study. He then led me to the Frame, about the Sides whereof all his Pupils stood in Ranks. It was a Twenty Foot Square, placed in the Middle of the Room. The Superfices was composed of several Bits of Wood, about the Bigness of a Dye, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender Wires. These Bits of Wood were covered on every Square with Papers pasted on them; and on these Papers were written all the Words of their Language in their several Moods, Tenses, and Declensions, but without any Order. The Professor then desired me to observe, for he was going to set his Engine to work. The Pupils at his Command took each the hold of an Iron Handle, whereof there were Forty fixed round the Edges of the Frame; and giving them a sudden Turn, the whole Disposition of the Words was entirely changed. He then commanded Six and Thirty of the Lads to read the several Lines softly as they appeared upon the Frame; and where they found three or four Words together that might make Part of a Sentence, they dictated to the four remaining Boys who were Scribes. This work was repeated three or four Times, and at every Turn the Engine was so contrived, that the Words shifted into new Places, as the square Bits of Wood moved upside down.
Six hours a-day the young Students were employed in this Labour; and the Professor showed me several Volumes in large Folio already collected, of broken Sentences, which he intended to piece together, and out of those rich Materials to give the World a compleat Body of Art and Sciences; which however might be still improved, and much expedited, if the Publick would raise a Fund for making and employing five Hundred such Frames in Lagado....
Fortunately for Swift, who would have been horrified by it, he never heard Russell Maloney’s classic story, “Inflexible Logic,” about six monkeys pounding away at typewriters and re-creating the world great literature. Gulliver’s Travels is not listed in their accomplishments.
The French Revolution prompted no less an orator than Edmund Burke to deliver in 1790 an address titled “Reflections on the French Revolution,” in which he extols the virtues of the dying feudal order in Europe. It galled Burke that “The Age of Chivalry is gone. That of sophists, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”
Seventy years later another eminent Englishman named Darwin published a book called On the Origin of Species that in the eyes of many readers did little to glorify man himself. Samuel Butler, better known for his novel, The Way of All Flesh, wrote too of the mechanical being, and was one of the first to point out just what sort of future Darwin was suggesting. In the satirical Erewhon, he described the machines of this mysterious land in some of the most prophetic writing that has been done on the subject. It was almost a hundred years ago that Butler wrote the first version, called “Darwin Among the Machines,” but the words ring like those of a 1962 worrier over the electronic brain. Butler’s character warns:
There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. The more highly organized machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes, so to speak, in comparison with past time.
Do not let me be misunderstood as living in fear of any actually existing machine; there is probably no known machine which is more than a prototype of future mechanical life. The present machines are to the future as the early Saurians to man ... what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present.