The Difference Engine

With kinotropic scenery by MR. JJ TOBIAS and Assistants

The New Flash Medley Orchestra, led by MR. MONTGOMERY

The Action of the Piece arranged by MR. CJ SMITH

The Dresses by MRS. HAMPTON and MISS BAILEY

The Whole Produced Under the Direction of MR. JJ TOBIAS

Dramatis Personae

Mark Riddley, alias Fox Ski

Mr. Dorrington (a wealthy Liverpool Merchant, on a visit to London)… MR. J. ROMER.

Frank Danvers (a British Naval Officer, just arrived from the Indies)… MR. WM. BIRD.

Robert Danvers (his younger brother, a ruined roue, pigeoned by the clackers)… MR. L. MELVIN.

Mr. Hawksworth Shabner (Principal Proprietor of a West-End Clacking-Hall, Bill-Discounter, and Anythingarian where there is Anything to be Got)… MR. P. WILLIAMS.

Bob Yorkner (a Duffer, tired of the Lay)… MR. W. JONES.

Ned Brindle (the Magsman, a half-and-half cove)… MR C. AUBREY.

Tom Fogg, alias Old Deady, alias The Animal, (a laudanum fiend suffering under delirium-tremens)… MR. A. CORENO.

Joe Onion, alias The Crocodile, (a bully-rock, and creature of Shabner's)… MR. G. VELASCO.

Dickey Smith (the Wakeful Bird, a young Engine-clerk in no ways particklar, pecking out a living as best he can)… MR. G. MASKELL.

Ikey Bates (Landlord of Rat's Castle, proprietor of two-pe

Waiter at the Cat-and-Bagpipes Tavern… MR. SMITHSON.

The Bow Street Special Inspector… MR. FRANKS.

Louisa Truehait (the Victim of an ill-requited attachment)… MISS CAROLINE BARNETT.

Charlotte Willers (a young lady with her cat from the country)… MISS MARTHA WELLS

DRESS CIRCLE, 3S. BOXES, 2S. PIT, 5D. GALLERY, 2D.

BOX OFFICE OPEN DAILY FROM TEN O'CLOCK UNTIL FIVE.

[Mori Yujo, a samurai and classical scholar of Satsuma Province, wrote the following ceremonial poem upon his son's departure for England, in 1854. it is translated from Sinicized Japanese.]

As always, I searched that day for land, in all four directions, but could still find none. How melancholy it was! Then by chance, with the Captain's permission, I climbed up one of the masts. From the great height, with sails and smokestack far below me, I was amazed to make out the coast of Europe—a mere hair's-breadth of green, above the watery horizon. I shouted down to Matsumura: "Come up! Come up!" And up he came, very swiftly and bravely.

Together atop the mast, we gazed upon Europe. "Look!" I told him. "Here is our first proof that the world is really round! While we were standing down there on deck we could not see a thing; but up here, land is distinctly visible. This is proof that the surface of the sea is curved! And if the sea is curved, why, then, so is the whole earth!"

Matsumura exclaimed, "It's fantastic—it's just the way you say! The Earth indeed is round! Our first real proof!"

–MORI ARINORI, 1854.

Modus

It seemed that Her Ladyship had been ill-served by the Paris publicists, for the lecture-hall, modest as it was, was less than half-filled.

Dark folding-seats, in neat columnar rows, were precisely dotted by the shiny pates of balding mathematicians. Here and there among the savants sat shifty-eyed French clackers in middle-age, the summer linen of their too-elegant finery looking rather past the mode. The last three rows were filled by a Parisian women's club, fa

Lady Ada Byron turned a page, touched a gloved finger to her bifocal pince-nez. For some minutes, a large green bottle-fly had been circling her podium. Now it broke the intricacy of its looping flight to alight on the bulging archipelago of Her Ladyship's padded, lace-trimmed shoulder. Lady Ada took no apparent notice of the attentions of this energetic vermin, but continued on gamely, in her accented French.

The Mother said:

"Our lives would be greatly clarified if human discourse could be interpreted as the exfoliation of a deeper formal system. One would no longer need ponder the grave ambiguities of human speech, but could judge the validity of any sentence by reference to a fixed and finitely describable set of rules and axioms. It was the dream of Leibniz to find such a system, the Characteristica Universalis…

"And yet the execution of the so-called Modus Program demonstrated that any formal system must be both incomplete and unable to establish its own consistency. There is no finite mathematical way to express the property of 'truth.' The transfinite nature of the Byron Conjectures were the ruination of the Grand Napoleon; the Modus Program initiated a series of nested loops, which, though difficult to establish, were yet more difficult to extinguish. The program ran, yet rendered its Engine useless! It was indeed a painful lesson in the halting abilities of even our finest ordinateurs.

"Yet I do believe, and must assert most strongly, that the Modus technique of self-referentiality will someday form the bedrock of a genuinely transcendent meta-system of calculatory mathematics. The Modus has proven my Conjectures, but their practical exfoliation awaits an Engine of vast capacity, one capable of iterations of untold sophistication and complexity.

"Is it not strange that we mere mortals can talk about a concept—truth—that is infinitely complicated? And yet—is not a closed system the essence of the mechanical, the unthinking? And is not an open system the very definition of the organic, of life and thought?

"If we envision the entire System of Mathematics as a great Engine for proving theorems, then we must say, through the agency of the Modus, that such an Engine lives, and could indeed prove its own life, should it develop the capacity to look upon itself. The Lens for such a self-examination is of a nature not yet known to us; yet we know that it exists, for we ourselves possess it.

"As thinking beings, we may envision the universe, though we have no finite way to sum it up. The term, 'universe,' is not in fact a rational concept, though it is something of such utter immediacy that no thinking creature can escape a pressing knowledge of it, and indeed, an urge to know its workings, and the nature of one's own origin within it.

"In his final years, the great Lord Babbage, impatient of the limits of steam-power, sought to harness the lightning in the cause of calculation. His elaborate system of 'resistors' and 'capacitors,' while demonstrative of the most brilliant genius, remains fragmentary, and is yet to be constructed. Indeed, it is often mocked by the undiscerning as an old man's hobby-horse. But history shall prove its judge, and then, I profoundly hope, my own Conjectures will transcend the limits of abstract concept and enter the living world."