Babbage Machine Yale Event

When we first met our exchange couple, they mentioned the nearby Computer History Museum and the Babbage machine. Sounded interesting, so when the Yale Club of Silicon Valley announced an event there, I thought I'd attend.

For those of you who don't know, Charles Babbage was a 19th century genius, who died an embittered old man because his brilliant plans for mechanical computing had not been realized. Really quite a story...if only the British government had stuck with him, the Information Age might have started decades earlier than it did. The Science Museum in London built a model according to his plans...and it worked! For more info, you can look at NPR's story.

After the demonstration, I actually thought about just driving home despite the $35 ticket price--the 75 alumni nibbling at au d'ouvres and drinking wine upstairs were intimidating! Well, thought I'd at least browse the museum and was amused by the exhibit of a treasure trove of old computer equipment found in a warehouse in Germany; amused because I thought how typical that Germany has the stuff, but it takes Californians to rescue it and put it on display. Bumped into an interesting woman there who does graphic design for Apple and we chatted away, so by the time we went up to have some crab cakes and shrimp appetizers and meet a few more interesting people, President Levin's talk was to begin.

Levin referred to Apple's three i's (iPod, iPhone, iPad), and then used that to segue into his talk about Yale's three i's--the Internet, internationalism, and interdisciplinary efforts. So was quite an interesting evening, and the boys sent me a cute photo of what they were doing--homework on the deck--while I was away.