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[POTUS]

James Lyon & Der_loki both have sharp eyes. This is the only scan I Have for this card - so the settings are not fine-tuned, but it looks like there is a calendar: "26 27" . . . There's also something at the top of the image, "ACC" ??? Have a looooooooook:

[buff]

[Leeravitz]

This is hardly an answer to what we're all looking for, but I think people have been tending to look at the computer angle to the exclusion of how the card's set up. It seems to me that the fact that the numbers, grid etc. are all present should be significant...But it's still hard to see how...

Given that Kurt may be looking at challenging us at something 'mathematical', the most obvious 'form' I could think of that the card might be taking is something to do with the 'magic square'. You'll forgive my actual lack of knowledge as to how this can apply, but maybe there's something in it: Euler was the mathematician who first came up with the notion of the 'Magic Square', it's generally done with a 3x3 grid (numbers 1-9) etc.

I also agree with those who suspect that they may be something in searching for 'differences', but the question is: what numbers could be involved? The 'answer' I was most convinced by up to this point was that maybe there's an algebraic substitution going on, and we're looking (somehow) at something that 'adds up' or 'makes a sum' horizontally, vertically (maybe even diagonally) across the grid. But even if such a thing could be made to 'work', I'm not sure what 'result' we'd be getting from it - another number value for something, perhaps? 9 or 12 digits??!

Sorry...that's probably left everything as baffling as ever...

[Cassio]

The Difference Engine

[Leeravitz]

Yeah. The Difference Engine is one of my favourite alternate history books...I guess there *could* be a clue hidden in the book, with the card's answer referring us to say a specific word (so, if the answer is a 9 digit number then that might be page, paragraph, word number or something)...but, frankly, The Difference Engine has been reprinted several times since the early 90's when Gibson and Sterling wrote it, and so the first task would be finding out what edition (if any) such clues would cross refer to...

If anyone's interested in the background to the Difference Engine, I recommend The Difference Dictionary, which is on - line (not that I can remember the URL, of course), which gives some strong insight into the historical and literary background to the book...

If many of you are still wondering what the Difference Engine is actually about, I won't spoil a good read for you, but the starting point is imagining that history developed differently, and Babbage got to make the Difference Engine (and his more advanced follow up, the Analytical Engine) back in the 1820's. In our world, he couldn't (mainly I think because it was far too expensive/mechanically difficult for him to get the component specifications right). So, what results is a proto - cyberpunk world in the 1850's ('steampunk')... The divergence point of the history may actually go further back - if I recall correctly, this seems to have something to do with Lord Byron, the poet, not dying in his youth whilst fighting in the Greek War of Independence in 1824; Byron goes on to head an 'Industrial Radical' English political party (which never actually existed - presumably combining his position as a Lord with his known Romantic/radical extremism) and they take over government from the Duke of Wellington sometime in the 1830's. They are then supportive of Babbage and, well, read on...

The Byron connection may seem a bit irrelevant, but one of Babbage's closest friends and confidants was Lady Ada Byron, Lord B's daughter, who was a redoubtable mathematician, came up with the notion of using punch cards to programme the Analytical Engine, and is featured heavily in the book...

All this is fascinating stuff, but I'm not sure how it helps with the puzzle...

I had a look over some Magic Squares a few hours ago, and they didn't seem much joy there either (expert mathematicians were no doubt way ahead of me here!!). This is because any magic square worth the name has to contain a variety of consecutive natural numbers. Clearly, the results we've gotten from the card seem to indicate - if we assume that initial letters stand in place of numbers- that there are only five numbers here that need dealing with, namely whatever would correspond to letters A, B, C, S, and N. Logic might dictate that this would simply mean that the letters correspond to the numbers 1 - 5, but I don't see how that helps us...

I remain intrigued by the fact that there are nine separate 'clues', nonetheless...The Difference Engine itself worked, I believe, on the principle that its gears could end up in one of nine different positions...

But, even allowing for the fact that the higher up cards are tough, it does seem to me unlikely that the answer will have something to do with being able to compute polynomial functions or something equally abstruse. The hieroglyphics card was tough to crack, because it was hard to work out what the clue was likely to refer to, not because the basic principle of decoding was tough to work out...

I'm of the opinion that there has to be a clue to what the 'answer' to this card is right before our eyes, in the structure of the card: we've identified the computers, we can see that there are nine separate entries, the grid pattern is reminiscent of a magic square (even if it isn't one), when the names of the computers are broken down to initial letters only, we are left with only five distinct letters (of which only one remains unrepeated)...there must be an answer in there somewhere...

[tanner]

Re: The Difference Engine

[Mikeyj]

Random musings

[Cassio]

The Difference Dictionary is on the link I posted above.

[Leeravitz]

Ah, well, that'd sort that out neatly, then.

[helen27]

Hi there, I have been lurking for a little while and thought it was time to contribute to the mayhem.

It has been bothering me for a little while now, the wording on the card and the answers that you have come to.

The first letter of each word just about apart from two letters comes to "AN ABACUS" and thinking on these lines I started trying to connect "scouts", "an abacus" and "charles babbage" as these seemed to be the connecting points.

Was looking at abacus because earliest computer, mathematics and kurt all tied in together, also "Have a scout around" seems too specific a choice of words to be accidental.

There is a connection between Charles Babbage and the scouts.

Charles Babbage was being considered for the Savilian chair of mathematics at Oxford University", but because of his father dying he did not apply and Baden Powell(father) took it instead.
Again there is the oxford connection too, seems to crop up in a couple of puzzles so far.

Not sure if this is anything or just ramblings of a frazzled person trying to connect dots where there may be none.

Just figured that it is Baden Powells father who held the chair, not actually the guy who started the scouts. Sorry my mistake didnt read the date of birth properly.....

[JebJoya]

Heh, I'm a scout (well, a venture (although not officially any more, thanks to the reorganisation), all we do is go to the pub and get drunk in the woods... Ah well ), and I'm a mathematician, but I never knew Baden Powell was the Maths chair at Oxford... Well, there you go, you learn something new every day...

Jeb

[Leeravitz]

I don't know much about Babbage and the Scouts, but I'd agree - the pun does sound like it's there for a reason...

The 'AN ABACUS' solution has always sounded quite neat to me, inasmuch as the Difference Engine was a sort of modified abacus machine, and I'd even go so far as to note that the nine divisions convieniently seem to reflect the individual components of the Difference Engine's 'mill'...

But, clearly, the answer doesn't actually say 'AN ABACUS'. Now, rather than letting that stand, here's a thought: could it be that we've named some of the computers wrong in the first place (missed formal titles, or chosen the wrong initial letter???). We seem to have got correct the following letters: AN ABAC-S, but we have another N, rather than a U. Moreover, there are eight letters in the solution, and nine letters on the grid, which might mitigate against it. Moreover, I remain a bit bemused by the fact that this answer appears in anagram form. There's no reason it shouldn't, but my feeling is that, if a grid can be (approximately) drawn up (i.e. a 3 x3 square containing nine separate letters), then the most logical way of ciphering a code would be to have it read in columns, or alternate diagonals or counterclockwise or whatever. Rather than that, the letters seem to be all over the place. That is, providing my transposition is correct. The set up does go like this, doesn't it?:

A S B
A C N
A S N

which is equivalent to

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

But to reiterate: that 'scout round' phrase *is* curious...and maybe the Baden Powell connection is spot on. Sounds like it could be. But a) what the hell does it mean? and b) We still don't seem to have solved Kurt's puzzle by finding it out. I'm starting to get paranoid enough to believe that one of us is going to end up actually feeding data into a difference engine...!!!

[Leeravitz]

Oh, another thing that might be worth clearing up (as I've just recalled it myself). There were really two major Babbage inspirations that 21st century computer gurus look back to. The first was the Difference Engine (which was never made, only planned) - basically, a very complicated calculator/abacus machine for working out the 'method of differences', hence the name.

Babbage later went on to consider the creation of the Analytical Engine (along with Lady Ada Byron). This, again, was never made, only planned, but was designed to be much more like we would consider a modern electronic computer to be. It was to have had a central calculating section (rather like the Difference Engine) which Babbage called the 'mill', and another section which would 'record' the actions that the 'mill' had taken previously (which he termed the 'store'). If you can see in this some parallels to 'processors' and 'memory', then you'd be basically correct to do so.

Lady Ada was especially vocal in advocating the idea of using punch cards to 'programme' the Engine, inspired by the fact that a new generation of powered looms was at that time weaving intricate fabric patterns on the basis of punch - card programmes. The intention was ,therefore, that the Analytical Engine would be programmable (which the Difference Engine wasn't), and might even be able to alter its own programming, if it were given complicated enough initial instructions.

It appears that the Difference Engine might have been feasible in the early 1800's and didn't get made because of lack of investment, time, and the ability to machine - tool components to precise enough specifications (if I remember right). The Analytical Engine was always more of a pipe dream, and whether any 'computer' could have worked practically before the discovery of electricity, the development of plastic, the transistor, the full flowering of symbolic logic systems, etc. is an open question.

I am pretty sure that the Science Museum here in England have on display a 'replica' Difference Engine (well, the first one really, as it never got built in Babbage's day) but they haven't bothered to create an Analytical Engine (which would probably have been the real thing to see).

In Gibson and Sterling's book, they confuse the distinction a bit (and so did I, in my synopsis of it!). It's called 'The Difference Engine', but, really, it's the development of the Analytical Engine that's more important in that novel.

As to Kurt...Interesting. I'd have thought a computing geek might well have wanted an Analytical Engine in his collection, rather than a Difference Engine, as that's the one that the computer descends from more directly. Of course, as I just pointed out, there's nothing for him to replicate in that regard. So, maybe he has to make do with a Difference Engine. What do I know??

[perplexd]

[Seej]