: views from the Hill

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Apocryphal Babbage quotation?

Even if so, I like this:

On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

-- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

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