Wot's on radio?

Good morning to everyone reading 'The Third' on the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, Friday 21 June 2013. The summer solstice occurs when the tilt of a planet's semi-axis, in either the northern or the southern hemisphere, is most inclined toward the star (sun) that it orbits. Earth's maximum axial tilt toward the sun is 23° 26'. This happens twice each year, at which times the sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or the south pole.



Wikipedia - Summer Solstice

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, that is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: the poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, that if it would but apprehend some joy, it comprehends some bringer of that joy; or in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Spark Notes - Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream - Act 5, Scene 1: lines 7-22

Nevertheless, I have a friend who always asks me the following question:



I commend the truly extraordinary story of Charles Babbage, a forgotten genius, to everyone reading 'The Third'. One of the great scientific brains of the nineteenth century, he first conceived the computer but died a despised failure. It is a new play by David Pownall. Although most people today rely on their computers, few will have little knowledge of Babbage. This is a play with strong contemporary overtones as Babbage is forced to constantly struggle against financial cuts and restraints imposed by successive governments and a lack of investment in scientific projects.

Although failure and injustice have dogged the lives of many inventors, Babbage really took terrible revenge upon himself. At the beginning of the play, he is building his analytical engine, the prototype of the modern computer, at his house in Dorset Street, W1. When he learns his project will no longer be funded by Government, he cracks and loses the will to fight on. He is flat broke, exhausted, bitter and disillusioned. If no one wants his computer, so be it. Let the thing be scrapped. Only one friend is able to imagine the future of the computer - Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter, poet, prophet, gambler and mathematician. Following the early death of Babbage's wife, Ada is the most important woman in his life, albeit she is married to an aristocrat. Through thick and thin, illness and despair, Babbage and Ada are a team in numbers, imagination and dreams.



BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3 - Babbage

I propose some toast: to Charles Babbage, his computer and all of you! Three cheers from kleines c and the gang (Friday morning breakfast coffee)!