Charles Babbage was the first steampunk

A steampunk in costume

Steampunk, Wikipedia says, is a "genre which originated during the 1980s and early 1990s and incorporates elements of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, horror, and speculative fiction. It involves a setting where steam power is widely used—whether in an alternate history such as Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United States, or in a post-apocalyptic time —that incorporates elements of either science fiction or fantasy."
   The Steampunk World's Fair was recently held in Piscataway, New Jersey, USA and had over 4,000 attendees. Of course the real steampunk was Charles Babbage, who features in Chapter 2, "The dawn of Computing," of The Universal Machine. Babbage actually tried to build a mechanical computer - the Analytical Engine. Although Babbage never managed to build his Engine the people at Plan 28 intend to complete his design and build a working mechanical computer.

A model of part of the Analytical Engine

Plan 28 - building the Analytical Engine

Part of the Analytical Engine
in the London Science Museum

Plan 28 - is an ambitious project to build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine - the world's first mechanical computer. Babbage never built the Analytical Engine during his life and many doubted that it would work. However, since Doran Swade's successful project at the Science museum to build a replica of Babbage's Difference Engine No.2, which does work, many people believe Babbage's Analytical Engine would also work.
    The Analytical Engine would not be a giant mechanical calculator like the Difference Engine - it's a programmable computer. It has a mechanical memory, called the Store. a central processing unit, called the Mill, and can be programmed using punch cards for input and it can print out its results. It conceptual architecture is essentially the same as a modern digital computer. It would be the ultimate steam punk fantasy made real! For more information visit http://plan28.org

The Origins of Punch Cards

Just found a great photograph of a Jacquard Loom used for weaving complex patterns in cloth. The program for the pattern was stored in punch cards that were adopted by Charles Babbage as the input mechanism for the Analytical Engine.

Punch cards are still used by some knitting machines, but no longer by computers.

The Writing Process

So let's look at how I've been writing my book so far. Basically I work chapter by chapter but not necessarily in linear (1, 2, 3...) order. In fact I don't complete a chapter before going to another (I'm not very methodical).

So far I've completed a good draft of Chapter 2 which is about Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine in Victorian times. I'll try to find a way of linking to or uploading this chapter so you have a good piece of material to read.

I research my material be reading books and web sources that I then collate and summarise - I'm trying to write a book that is fun and easy to read and most of the books that provide the source material are way too long and dull.

With this blog I now plan to put the rough notes of my research into the blog and use those as the basis for each chapter. Currently I'm using Google Docs to hold all my notes and chapter drafts. I like the sense of security it gives me of having my work in the cloud (I also export copies to my work and home computers).