June 13, 2004
Cowcatcher.
Invented by Charles Babbage in 1838, the cowcatcher has prevented many derailments and has even helped recovering alcoholics. Although it has been known to catch the occasional guitarist.
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Babbage. Poor man.
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"In railroading, the pilot is the device mounted at the front of a locomotive to deflect obstacles from the track that might otherwise derail the train. Archaically this was called a cowcatcher, and this is still the common layman's usage, but this term is deprecated and has not been used by railroad workers for more than a century." Archaically?,/i> Shit. I have GOT to get out more.
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Archaically is what I meant. /note to self: there is a reason they have a preview button.
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Wasn't it a Babbage that invented the computer?
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Wasn't it a Babbage that invented the computer? The same guy.
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Babbage was also a tireless campaigner against buskers. Babbage was both a genius and a world class crank.
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Babbage once wrote Lord Tennyson to suggest an alternate to the last line of Tennyson's "The Vision of Sin". He suggested that the line 'Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born' be replaced with 'Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 and one-sixteenth is born' because it was more statistically accurate at the time.