the adventures of alfred tennyson and charles babbage

charles babbage, the english mathematician and father of the modern computer wrote the following to alfred tennyson in response to his poem, “the vision of sin” »

In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

… If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.”

(via ragbag)

44 notes

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  1. loquaciouscatastrophe reblogged this from ragbag and added:
    Clearly, Charles Babbage was the man.
  2. peet-b-shelley reblogged this from ragbag
  3. wygle reblogged this from ragbag
  4. planetmarsce reblogged this from ragbag and added:
    Haha. Take that, reincarnation!
  5. 50thousandtimes reblogged this from ragbag
  6. bluesiren reblogged this from ragbag
  7. kbkarma reblogged this from ragbag and added:
    Babbage: the Victorian era’s greatest pedant.
  8. swapnashangrila reblogged this from ragbag and added:
    extreme intellectual amusement.
  9. anathemadelight reblogged this from ragbag
  10. entropicflux reblogged this from ragbag and added:
    I’ve spent fifteen minutes rewriting that correction as a decimal...an improper fraction...
  11. ragbag posted this

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