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Oh have you met Miss Sally Brown
The country’s fairest daughter,
She works the handle up and down,
To pump the farmer’s water
Pumpin’ Sal, pumpin’ Sal,
No one does it like that little gal,
Jump to the pump and work that rod,
And make your fellow a lucky sod!
Sally moved to London Town
And soon became misguided,
She pumped the men who came around,
And sent them home delighted.
Pumpin’ Sal, pumpin’ Sal, [etc.]
Sally lives in Bridewell now
Pumping is her chore ’gain.
She wears her legs out for to power
A Virtuoso’s Organ.
Pumpin’ Sal, pumpin’ Sal, [etc.]
At the final beat, the quicksilver in the tube finally shot up to kiss the ribbon. Ha
Mounted to the top of the wind-box was a row of what had at first appeared to be organ-pipes. Each was several inches in diameter and a yard long. They were arranged in a segment of an arc whose center was a dense complex of rods and levers atop the console, and whose radius was a couple of yards. The pipes were joined to the console by brass levers that fa
It now became obvious that pistons were concealed within those cylinders, and some of them were being pressed up by air from the wind-chest. As they moved they elevated the ends of the brass levers. Each lever pivoted around an oiled fulcrum that was far from the piston, and close to the central mechanism, giving it a large mechanical advantage at the latter end. The rapid upward thrust of each piston caused the opposite end of its lever to press downward slowly, but with great force; and each of those lever-ends bore down upon a slim vertical rod. The rods were thirty-two in number, arranged in a regular picket-line; each of them resisted movement for a few heart-beats and then gave way, as if some barrier had been breached. This sudden yielding enabled the piston at the opposite end to fly up until it tripped a lever affixed to a vertical pushrod on the outside of its pipe. The pushrod transmitted force down to some air-gate at the base of the pipe, which sprang open, allowing the piston to fall down to its starting-place. It was all over in a few moments. Miss Spates pulled the knob that caused all the keys to pop up to the zero position.
The coda to the performance was a faint skirling noise that emanated from the works for a few seconds. Then a little golden spume jetted from a cavity on the front of the console, and was caught by a porcelain bowl beneath. Daniel snatched this and showed it to the visitors. It contained several tiny disks of gold, like f?ry-coins, some of which were still spi
“Tallied in what way?” Joha
“The clerk examines the card,” Daniel said, indicating the snarled document Miss Spates had been reading from, “and checks the sum of each number, to know how many bits ought to have been punched out; if this agrees not with the number of bits in the bowl, the card is in error, and is sent back to be re-melted. A rare occurrence, for Miss Spates does not make Mis-takes!”
Indeed Miss Spates had already reached up to grip a brass lever, and hauled back on it once; this had ratcheted the iron pallet a short distance deeper into the machine, as she verified by a glance into the prism. The bellows-wenches were singing again, and Miss Spates had found a new number on the card, and was registering it upon the keys. In a few moments came another climax of singing, hissing, and clunking; another convulsion of many levers and another rill of golden bits. After several more repetitions, Ha
“My understanding of Clerkenwell Court has been much advanced,” was Eliza’s verdict, “and yet there remains much that is mysterious. I see, for example, why you have recruited organ-makers. But not the man who makes lightning.”
“We bought a stock of parts from a Dutch organ-maker who was returning to his home country, and so this machine was fabricated using the tricks of that trade,” Daniel allowed. “A toy-maker, a horologist, or electrical enthusiast might have reached the same destination, via a different route.”
“But this is not, as I gather, the machine that does the thinking?”
“The Logic Mill will be a different machine entirely,” Daniel said.
“Will be? And so it does not exist yet?”
“The punching of the cards will take a great deal of time, even if we build many more machines like this one, and put all of Bridewell to work,” Daniel said. “Moreover, the Logic Mill ca
“I should say so!” Joha
“It is ductile, hence easily made into cards of perfectly uniform thickness. Yet it is durable, for it is the only metal that does not rust or tarnish. But that is not why we need capital. Strange to relate, we already have enough gold locked away in our vault to transcribe all of the paper cards that I brought with me.”
“Please say more on that-?” Eliza requested.
“Oh, when I came here from Boston I brought several boxes of these paper cards-enough to inform the logical kernel of a machine.”
“Why did you?”
“Because, madame, the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts has been generously supported by men of some importance, and I thought they might like to see tangible evidence that I had actually been doing something. No, I did not anticipate any of this.” He extended a hand toward the machine, and followed up with a judicious hooding of the eyelids, and a nod at Caroline.
“There are more cards still in Boston, then?”
“I left almost all of them behind in Massachusetts. But God willing they are at this very moment being loaded into the hold of a ship, Minerva, which I believe is known to you. She sailed from London in late April, and ought to have reached Boston Harbor last week.”
“When Minerva, God willing, returns to London, then you shall have need of more gold for making into cards,” Joha
“By a happy coincidence,” Daniel said with a dry smile, “more gold is expected to reach us, by sea, at the same time. And so when I speak of our need for capital, I am not referring to gold for card-making.”
“As a sort of technologickal adventurer, Doctor, you are suffered, nay encouraged, to imbibe of a sort of optimism that in other disciplines-such as finance-would be reckoned incompetence,” Eliza said. “I am being asked to act as a financier, and can afford myself no such luxury. I say that you are gambling too much on the likelihood that two ships-one freighted with cards, the other with gold-shall arrive in London safely and at the same time.”