Babbage's two lives

Babbage wrote two relatively detailed, yet significantly incongruous, autobiographical accounts of his pre-Cambridge and Cambridge days. He published one in 1864 and in it advertised the existence of the other, which he carefully retained in manuscript form. The aim of this paper is to chart in some detail for the first time the discrepancies between the two accounts, to compare and assess their relative credibility, and to explain their author's possible reasons for knowingly fabricating the less credible of the tw

The Body Machinic: Technology, Labor, and Mechanized Bodies in Victorian Culture

While recent scholarship focuses on the fluidity or dissolution of the boundary between body and machine, The Body Machinic historicizes the emergence of the categories of human and mechanical labor. Beginning with nineteenth-century debates about the mechanized labor process, these categories became defined in opposition to each other, providing the ideological foundation for a dichotomy that continues to structure thinking about our relation to technology. These perspectives are polarized into technophobic fears of dehumanization and machines taking over, or technological determinist celebrations of new technologies as improvements to human life, offering the tempting promise of maximizing human efficiency. The Body Machinic argues that both sides to this dichotomy function to mask the ways the apparent body-machine relation is always the product of human social relations that become embedded in the technologies of the labor process. Chapter 1 identifies the emergence of this dichotomy in the 1830s Factory Question debates: while critics of the factory system described workers as tools appended to monstrous, living machines, apologists claimed large-scale industrial machinery relieved human toil by replicating the laboring body in structure and function. Chapters 2 examines factory workers\u27 autobiographies which record their experiences of being treated like machine parts, disposed of when broken by gruesome factory accidents. Chapter 3 analyzes Trollope\u27s Michael Armstrong and Tonna\u27s Helen Fleetwood, in which merely occupying the space of the factory initiates workers\u27 transformations into a dangerously politicized yet mindless community of automata. Chapter 4 analyzes Babbage\u27s mathematical theory, his Difference Engine, and Dickens\u27s representation of Babbage in Little Dorrit to argue that representations of mechanization were crucial to debates about the category of mental labor, which we continue to define as productive of intellectual property through its categorical opposition to mechanized manual labor. The conclusion looks at Butler\u27s Erewhon and argues that the particular forms of technophobia and technophilia that dominate today--in which humans become increasingly mechanical, or machines become increasingly life-like--are a direct inheritance of Victorian constructions of human and mechanical as categorically opposed, and of the resulting metaphor of the mechanized laboring body

Prosthetic Body Parts in Literature and Culture, 1832 to 1908

Covering the years 1832 to 1908, a period that saw significant development in prosthetic technologies—in particular artificial legs, teeth, and eyes—this thesis explores representations of prostheses in British and American nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and culture. By considering prosthetic devices such as wooden legs and hook hands alongside artificial body parts that are often overlooked in terms of their status as prostheses, such as wigs and dentures, this thesis is the first to examine holistically the varied and complex attitudes displayed towards attempts to efface bodily loss in this period. Lennard J. Davis has shown how the concept of physical normalcy, against which bodily difference is defined, gained cultural momentum in the nineteenth century as bodily statistics emerged onto the scene (Enforcing Normalcy). This thesis builds on Davis’s work by considering other historical factors that contributed to the rise of physical normalcy, a concept that I show was buttressed by an understanding of the “healthy body” as “whole”. Like Davis, I also explore the denigration of physical difference that such a rise encouraged. The prosthesis industry, which saw tremendous development in the nineteenth century, cashed in on the increasing mandate for physical normalcy. However, as this thesis shows—and where it breaks new ground—while contemporary journalism and advertising often lauded the accomplishments of an emerging group of professional prosthesis makers, fiction tended to provide the other side of the picture, revealing the stereotypes, stigma, scepticism, inadequacies, and injustices attached to the use and dissemination of prosthetic devices. I argue that Victorian prosthesis narratives complicated the hegemony of normalcy that Davis has shown emerged in this period. Showing how representations of the prostheticised body were inflected significantly by factors such as social class, gender, and age, this thesis argues that nineteenth-century prosthesis narratives, though presented in a predominantly ableist manner, challenged the dominance of physical completeness as they either questioned the logic of prostheticisation or presented non-normative subjects in threateningly powerful ways.AHR

Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

This open access book investigates imaginaries of artificial limbs, eyes, hair, and teeth in British and American literary and cultural sources from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture shows how depictions of prostheses complicated the contemporary bodily status quo, which increasingly demanded an appearance of physical wholeness. Revealing how representations of the prostheticized body were inflected significantly by factors such as social class, gender, and age, Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture argues that nineteenth-century prosthesis narratives, though presented in a predominantly ableist and sometimes disablist manner, challenged the dominance of physical completeness as they questioned the logic of prostheticization or presented non-normative subjects in threateningly powerful ways. Considering texts by authors including Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle alongside various cultural, medical, and commercial materials, this book provides an important reappraisal of historical attitudes to not only prostheses but also concepts of physical normalcy and difference

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing the operations, expenditures, and condition of the institution for the year 1873

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. [1585] Research related the the American Indian; acient mounds in America; etc