Abstract
Williams describes Charles Babbage as he neared the end of his life: living on Dorset Street in Marylebone alongside an old Difference Engine and an incomplete Analytical Machine, one working automated dancer (purchased from the remnants of Merlin’s Mechanical Exhibition, and restored), and – by Babbage’s own furious account – many hundreds of noisy and disruptive street performers. Williams posits a connection between what he calls “Babbage’s favored geriatric occupations”: continued work on the Difference Engine, and a campaign for increased legal restrictions on “foreign” street musicians. Drawing on early designs for the Difference Engine, which required its operator to count the pealing of multiple bells, but also upon Babbage’s pamphlet “On Street Nuisances” and his assertion that itinerant musicians had destroyed “one-fourth part of [his] working power,” Williams supplies a chapter in the history of listening that emphasizes the labor value of silent audition. The author examines governmental measures to regulate street music for the furtherance of an “industrious” political economy, and assesses the role of audile technique in the development of disciplinary notions of mental labor and artificial intelligence.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Sound Knowledge |
| Subtitle of host publication | Music and Science in London, 1789-1851 |
| Editors | James Q. Davies, Ellen Lockhart |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
| Chapter | 8 |
| Pages | 203-225 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780226402109 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780226402079 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2017 |