engine and goliath
The Difference Engine William Gibson & Bruce Sterling FIRST ITERATION The Angel of Goliad Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, October 14, 1905. ... He ran it through a government Engine for me, and printed up your Bow Street file, rat-a-tat-tat, like fun. ... In the other pocket she found his card-case, red morocco leather; inside were business cards, cartes-de-visite with his Engine-stippled portrait, a London train timetable. ... Sybils attention, however, was held by an inset view of the gunnery Engine. ... BAYLEYS LITHIA WATER, cures Brights disease and the gouty diathesis; GURNEYS "REGENT" POCKET STEAM-ENGINE, intended for use with domestic sewing machines. ... She let her gaze follow steam-pipes and taut wires to the gleam of the Babbage Engine, a small one, a kinotrope model, no taller than Sybil herself. Unlike everything else in the Garrick, the Engine looked in very good repair, mounted on four mahogany blocks. ... Lord Charles Babbage, father of the Difference Engine and the Newton of our modern age! ... "Have you never heard of the Great Napoleon ordinateur, the mightiest Engine of the French Academy? ... They framed tall letters, in a fancy alphabet of sharp-edged Engine-Gothic, black against white: Editions Panoptique Presents And below the kinotrope, Houston entered stage-left, a bulky, shabby figure, limping toward the podium at the center of the stage. ... Without, at that time, a single mile of British railroad, and lacking the telegraph, or, indeed, Engine resources of any kind. ... " "Sir, I do believe I hear the Engine getting up steam for the kinotrope . ... "Something to do with the way an Engine handles messages," the clerk was explaining. ... He could see at a glance that most of the hats around him were dead cheap, Engine-made, pre-cut in a factory, though looking very nearly as fine as a craftsman-hatters work, and at half the price or less. ... " "Theyve studied its remains in Cambridge," Godwin said, "at the Institute of Engine Analytics. ... "No," Godwin said, "and I cant say that all that airy Engine-spinning has come to much, directly. ... I know pressure differentials, and engine duty, and crank-shaft torque, and wheel diameters. ... "Thatll be the Goliath. ... The crenellations of polished brass crowning the stack of the Goliath were especially impressive. ... It was an Engine punch-card, cut to a French specialty-gauge, and made of some bafflingly smooth artificial material. ... The Goliath and the French Vulcan lurched at once into the lead. ... Vulcan and Goliath began to jostle for position at the first turn. ... Turning the card over, he examined the Engine-stippled portrait of a pale-haired gentleman gone balding in front. ... As a practical matter, I doubt that the scientific societies could provide the Engine-resources necessary to such a broad and ambitious project. ... Engine-work is in constant demand. ... Ive heard her lecture on Engine mathematics. ... He described Adas tormentors, and the circumstances, to the best of his ability, but he made no mention of the wooden case with its French Engine-cards of camphorated cellulose. ... "The Central Statistics Bureau maintain extensive files on the criminal classes -- anthropometric measurements, Engine-portraits, and so forth. ... "The Cambridge Institute of Engine Analytics has completed my stress-analysis," Mallory said. ... "The Engine simulations prove it. ... Manufacturers had Engine-embroidered that whole beast-headed rabble of pagan godlets on curtains and carpets and carriage-robes, much to Mallorys distaste, and he had come to take an especial dislike to silly maunderings about the Pyramids, ruins which inspired exactly the sort of chuckle-headed wonderment that most revolted his sensibilities. ... He took an Engine-printed floor-plan of the building from beneath his counter, and marked out Mallorys twisting route in red ink. ... No doubt, like most accomplished clackers, Wakefield had grown up with the Engine trade. Babbages very first Engine, now an honored relic, was still less than thirty years old, but the swift progression of Enginery had swept a whole generation in its wake, like some mighty locomotive of the mind. ... Damp weather curdles the gear-oil -- and in dry weather, a spinning Engine can even create a small Leyden-charge, which attracts all manner of dirt! ... " "Ah yes," Wakefield drawled, "the dear old Institute of Engine Analytics. ... I dont often have the chance to discuss Engine philosophy. ... "It seemed to me his plans for, er, social studies, would demand more Engine-power than we have in Great Britain. ... The human element is our only true bottle-neck, you see, for only a trained analyst can turn raw Engine-data into workable knowledge. ... But youve put all that in Engine-form, eh? ... It was a collection of stipple-printed Engine-portraits. ... The little square picture-bits of the Engine-prints were just big enough to distort their faces slightly, so that the men all seemed to have black drool in their mouths and dirt in the corners of their eyes. ... But that would take us weeks of Engine-spinning, and require a special clearance from the people upstairs. ... As they awaited the Engine-spin, Mallory feigned a relaxed indifference. ... Its a common clacker trick, to read the Engine-files on someone of the criminal class -- they call it pulling his string, or being up on a cake. ... Such a search consumes Engine-time and money, and were always over budget in both. ... An Engine-fraud, like credit-theft or stock-fraud, and punished just the same, when its found out. ... , the card said, in grotesquely elaborate Engine-Gothic. ... Its common knowledge that the Grand Napoleon suffered some dire mishap early this year," Tobias assured him, "and the great Engine has never spun quite properly since. ... They can kick an Engine half off its blocks! ... "Engine-made. ... "She moves much like an Engine-guided Maudsley lathe," Mallory noted. ... In Choshu, we have an Engine! ... The interior bore a single French Engine-card, of the Napoleon gauge. ... An Engine-printed daguerreotype. ... Mallory saw that Disraeli had bought himself a Colt & Maxwell Typing Engine, and had managed to haul the thing out of its packing-crate and set it upright on its curved iron legs. ... Of course, as an ardent simulationist, I myself put much faith in Engine-modeling. ... The image of Byron, surrounded by wreaths, ornate scroll-work, and figures representative of the early history of the Industrial Radical Party, has been Engine-stippled upon a film of transparent material, which was then transferred to the plaque, glazed, and fired. ... In the dimness he could make out fat Engine-printed headlines bemoaning the poor state of the Prime Ministers health. ... Engine-printed, rumpled in the hasty plastering. ... A title, in large smudgy Engine-type: "THE SEVEN CURSES OF THE WHORE OF BABYLONDON"! ... The sheet seemed flung together out of random chunks of Engine-imagery. ... In the Engine-work of the catchpenny prints you might see the same hackneyed picture a hundred times. ... Mallory stepped closer and examined the bill, which extolled, and depicted in an Engine-cut, the beautifying effects of Colgates Clear Complexion Soap. ... He had to admit that the name looked very well in eighty-point Engine-Gothic. ... "The thought of that evil man, loose in London -- with money, from God only knows what source -- fomenting riot and rebellion during a public emergency -- and in control of an Engine-driven press! ... "He has an Engine printing-press, and a rabble of confederates. ... "Coaly fumes pouring out our engine-room," Brian reminisced, "and the lads tossing-up their rations from the mal-de-mer, right and left! ... Engine-clacking, no end of use in the scientific study of socialism . ... Below this roof grew a maze of steel braces, a fret-work of ratchets and wheeled tracking, where Engine-driven pulley-cans could run along like spiders. Somewhere pistons chugged, with the familiar popping racket of an Engine printing-press. ... The anarchists then commenced the painful work of advancing a siege-engine. ... It is an Engine-printed report from an elderly officer of the Meirokusha, a famous confraternity of Japanese scholars which serves, not incidentally, as the foremost Oriental chapter of the Society of Light. ... Engine-patterned brocade, smooth and cold to the touch. ... Shed already killed our Texian Goliath. ... The next file consisted of Engine-printed copies of several letters from a Mr. ... They wore Engine-cut woolen jackets and polished brogues soled with creped rubber. ... " Fraser took out an Engine-stippled morgue-portrait. ... Like the swarthy man, he was newly and nattily kitted out, all in Oxford Streets latest, his coat of Engine-cut gabardine dyed a blue that verged on lavender. ... Soon power of steam and the Engine must pervade our land. ... " "A junior Engine-clerk, sir, to judge by the state of his shoes. ... " Oliphant then spent half-an-hour, down on his knees upon the carpet, watching Alfred demonstrate a toy French Engine -- operated, as was its cousin the Great Napoleon, by compressed air. The little Engine employed lengths of telegraph-tape, rather than cards, reminding Oliphant of his letter to M. ... Alfred was connecting his Engine to a miniature kinotrope. ... It held a very large number of Engine-cards in the Napoleon gauge, cut from a novel material, milky and very smooth to the touch. ... He disliked swinging-saloons, finding the Engine-controlled movements of the cabin, intended to compensate for the vessels pitch and roll, somehow more unsettling than the ordinary motion of a ship at sea. ... The public, however, were apparently fascinated by the novel employment of a small Engine, somewhat on the order of a gunnery Engine, whose sole task consisted of maintaining as near a level footing in the cabin as was deemed possible. ... The Engine is no longer functioning accurately? ... The pictures, if one could call them that, were either grotesque daubs, seemingly executed in a messy imitation of Engine-stippling, or queer geometric formulations suggesting the restless motion of kinotrope-bits. ... " "Did he ever speak with you about his interest in the Engine known as the Great Napoleon? ... As the Engine-driven music of the grand panmelodium brought the grisettes from their chairs, she took his arm. ... Rise above these black patterns of wheel-tracks, These snow-swept streets, Into the great map of London, forgetting MODUS The Images Tabled The Language of Signs The circular arrangement of the axes of the Difference Engine round large central wheels led to the most extended prospects. ... A vague glimpse even of an Analytical Engine opened out, and I pursued with enthusiasm the shadowy vision. ... By the aid of the language of signs, the Engine became a reality. ... The text derives from a tape-spool emitted by a Colt & Maxwell Typing Engine. ... And surely it was Gods will, that the computational powers of the Engine be brought to bear upon the great commonality, upon the flows of traffic, of commerce, the tidal actions of crowds -- upon the infinitely divisible texture of His work. ... Dickey Smith (the Wakeful Bird, a young Engine-clerk in no ways particklar, pecking out a living as best he can) . ... The program ran, yet rendered its Engine useless! ... The Modus has proven my Conjectures, but their practical exfoliation awaits an Engine of vast capacity, one capable of iterations of untold sophistication and complexity. ... "If we envision the entire System of Mathematics as a great Engine for proving theorems, then we must say, through the agency of the Modus, that such an Engine lives, and could indeed prove its own life, should it develop the capacity to look upon itself.