What did The World of Wonders say about the abacus, Pascal’s calculating wheels, Babbage’s Difference Engine, Camus’s coach, and Faber’s Euphonia? The available research record cannot verify the book’s descriptions.
🧵 1/5
The searches targeted the attached volume and asked how its examples mechanized calculation, thought, speech, and movement. They returned no usable passages from the book.
🧵 2/5
That means we cannot responsibly claim how the abacus or Pascal’s wheels operated in this volume, or how the author connected them to human calculation.
🧵 3/5
We also cannot verify the volume’s treatment of Babbage’s Difference Engine, Camus’s mechanical coach, or Faber’s Euphonia, including any interpretation of imitation or lifelike motion.
🧵 4/5
The historical question remains compelling: nineteenth-century machines invited readers to imagine mental and lifelike activities becoming mechanical processes. But this attached-source search did not establish how this book made that case.
🧵 5/5
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