I have a friend in Sweden who inherited a house with a knitting factory in the cellar, with machines run by punchcards. He got it all working and would set the machines off in the morning before coming to work and go home to take loads of knitted jumpers from the machines, ready to be sewn together (fronts, backs and arms). He was still running it a couple of years ago.
I was hoping you were going to say it was running fine until some knob heads turned up and started throwing shoes at it. Now I'm imagining a pyphonesc sketch where they magically turn up like the Spanish inquisition whenever someone gets one working.
@Jake-Amir Blumenfeldwitz that's kind of the joke, trees are crucial to human civilization but he chooses to employ the idea specifically to talk about the necessity of wooden clogs for destroying machines. the thought that we would be nowhere without trees isn't profound because it's quite obvious, but the comment's funny because it's employed in such a dumb way.
Like John Lloyd said, Stephen is about facts and Alan is about twisting facts into new shapes ("'Can sperms feel pain?' Now that's an answer nobody knows the answer to...." -- J. L. "The Making of QI".) I'm an American who grew up loving the fact that I share my name with Alan Turing, but Alan Davies is one of the close runner ups (Alda, Rickman, Shepard, and steamboat preservationist engineer Alan L. Bates).
Even worse off, because our ancestors would likely not have evolved into primates. We would be small creatures living in holes in the ground, like the Juramaia.
Aoderic Perhaps not. Other plants such as ferns, palms, succulents, cacti, etc could and would have evolved to fill the broad niche that trees fill. So although evolution on Earth would have been drastically different, it's possible that humans (or more accurately some loosely analogous species) could still have evolved.
That loomed tapestry of the inventor is quite remarkable. And the fact that such old technology was still being used well into the 20th century is just amazing to me.
This is not meant as a personal criticism DJ, but society today seems to believe that unless something wasn't thought of/invented/developed in their life time it must be rubbish and be replaceable with something newer and better. That's just not true. Very often "improvements" use more resources or create more pollution.
@@MKR5210 'Society' doesn't believe any such thing. It isn't what DJ meant either. That machines from long ago are still in use is remarkable. That's not a put down of older technology, but rather it is a compliment. Stop making up bad stuff about people who are younger than you.
I've seen one of those Jacquard portraits, I think in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, next to the patent model for the loom that made it. Both are exquisite objects. It's so weird to think that we still have digital images, rendered in thread, from the 1700s. Then the near computer revolution of the 1830s, and then damn near nothing more impressive for 100 years.
I think it's quite amazing to think that, the steam engine was created to help mine coal but then it led to the creation of trains that helped facilitate the coal mining industry even further, and then steam powered engines allowed for automation in general, even if you weren't near a river with a mill. In any case, steam powered the earliest looms, but in order for looms to be extra useful we needed a "programmer" to produce "code" on a punch card machine for loom patterns, and computation was involved as well, and this was all generations before the first electronic computer ( I wouldn't be surprised if an abacus was involved here and there) . It's all just something to keep in mind today, that when something new is invented but it doesn't seem to have an incredibly broad usage, just wait a 100 years or so and it might be incredibly useful in the next technology leap.
What's even more amazing is that early miniature steam engines were built by an inventor named Hero who lived in Alexandria around 10-70 AD. He built them using earlier descriptions of such devices, but they were only really seen as a novelty and not scaled up. He also made the first vending machine, which was a device that dispensed a dose of holy water when you put a coin into a slot at the top of it, after which the coin dropped into a basket, and the lever it had pushed down sprang back up for the dispenser to be used again.
A friend of mine is an engineer, and he basically invented a device that would automatically cut off high-voltage circuits during a surge - then on again once the system was safe. (Siemens bought him out) Anyway, as I expressed my admiration he quickly stopped me. He said, very simply: "I was already standing on the shoulders of giants." Those giants can be traced back into prehistory. The first to fracture flint and discover a knife. The first to plant a seed.The first to scoop up and carry water in an animal skin. Waaay down that line from there was Issac Newton, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Hedy Lamarr, Richard Pearse ... .. and you and me. No-one is ever working alone.
@@GedMaybury23 Newton was the first to say he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Apparently his main rival was quite short, and Newton wanted to piss him off. Genius is no guarantee against pettiness.
From Britannica.com: "The term was coined to differentiate these instructions from hardware-i.e., the physical components of a computer system. A set of instructions that directs a computer’s hardware to perform a task is called a program, or software program."
I think originally hardware is practical items. Like tools, ingredients or building blocks/materials. Software is information instead. Like blueprints, recipes or texts. The software is usually the instructions to the hardware. In computing the hardware is the tool while the software is the instructions for the usage of the tool. The terminology probably dates back to when computer where programmed at the spot by the use of code on paper or punching cards. When you design software you do not change anything with the hardware. You just write code. Then the code is compiled/translated over to the hardware.
Stephen: "Which software drove people to violence?" Me: _"Clippy?!"_ Stephen: "No. As a hint, Ada Lovelace owed a great debt to this person who happened to be her father..." Me: "al-Khwarizmi?!" Stephen. *"NO."*
My children are related to Ada Lovelace through her grandmother. I was connected through marriage, but I’m divorced now. My daughter loves her familial connection to Ada and Lord Byron!
Same here. I never knew any of the shows on Brit TV and all of a sudden WILTY showed up. If you haven't seen it yet, a good starter episode to watch is "Mitchellian rants and outbursts". They are logical, reasoned and funny as hell. I've not seen them all yet but so far all the episodes of Would I Lie To You have been great.
Sara: amusing anecdote about modern life *light chortle* vicker: filthy quip followed by scholarly knowledge. *polite awe* Alan: something a 5 y/o would say. *raucous laughter*
Yeah they managed to fit the history of computing, the history of textiles, the origin of two different words, and some good ol' fashioned Lord Byron(he shows up so often he should have his own segment) all in one question!
According to Wikipedia the word sabotage does come the shoe, sabot, but not because disgruntled workers threw them in to machines but rather from the noise and clumsiness associated with the shoe
@@petejammo88 and any jerk can mess with Wikipedia's information base. That error has undoubtedly been corrected a couple of times in the past, and will be again.
The reduction in Stephen's pride in alans wit and shame he felt in 1:04 was completely spun round by the astonishing point Alan made at 4:23 🤣🤣🤣. I really do enjoy this show
The problem is the explanation is not true. Honestly, one could assume that even thinking about it. Shoes used to be expensive, no way people would waste them throwing them at anything.
@@TheTambourinist In the 1700s wooden shoes - sabot - were worn by the poor working class. As such they were not expensive and were often made by the wearer themselves or a family member. However, the saboteurs - ie the workers wearing sabot - irreprably damaged the looms by means other than throwing their shoes. Throwing a shoe into the works would only temporarily disable a loom.
Can we have 24 hours of Stephen Fry talking about history, science and anything that appeals to him. It's would be so fascinating to have him as your teacher!
Well most of the time. Often the panel are too busy trying to crack a million and one jokes to actually pay attention to the relevance of what he's saying
Also, the looms weren't computers, they didn't have memory and couldn't do any calculations (they just happened to use punch cards, which were later adopted for computers).
@kricku - So are books. That doesn't make them computers. Unless a machine can follow instructions to store data and use it later (either for other calculations or for flow control - i.e., to decide _which_ part of the program to execute next), it's not a computer in the modern sense of the word. Incidentally, Babbage never actually made (or even finished designing) a computer. The Difference Engine (which he never built but did design) was just a fixed-function calculator. His "computer" would have been the Analytical Engine, but that never came close to existing, and was basically forgotten. I'd still acknowledge him as the first CPU architect (and Ada Lovelace as the first software engineer, with some credit to Luigi Menabrea, whose work she used as a starting point), but only in a chronological sense. The first actual functioning mechanical computers were developed independently from their work.
I sold a software package to a police department in the 90's. This was the Windows 3.0 era, I think. I got an urgent call from the police chief who said that all the reports had his name spelled wrong. No matter what he did, it spelled his name wrong. I traveled 3 hours to his office and found a smart-assed officer of his had gone into MS Office and changed the spell checker to automatically correct the spelling of the chief's name to something wrong. Funny. I drove 6 hours round trip for a 2 minute fix.
Back in the DOS era, someone in my department was changing the programmable keyboards to type "DEL *.*Y" when a specific key was hit (different every time).
@@Dudemon-1 Worse: Back in the DOS 1.0 era ----you had to buy your hard drive from an alternative maker, IBM wasn't even making a hard drive but made the only PC. You spent a long time working with floppy (I mean FLOPPY) drives. And you needed to FORMAT each one. However, if you keyed FORMAT with no drive letter, it defaulted to C: Several times I forgot to key FORMAT A: and my C: drive began to be reformated. Fun times.
Did you realize that it's spelled "sabot", since you're so fluent? There is so much wrong with this sentence, but I thought this was the part that should be corrected.
Archie Scriven Except… a sabot is not a shoe, it is specifically a wooden clog type of footwear. Footwear is a generic term but shoe is quite specific in the range of items it describes. A wellington boot is an item of footwear but it is not a shoe.
What's really interesting is that in at least a couple of places around the world people still use punch card systems for their weaving machines, especially if they produce on a small scale, presumably because the machines are cheaper & they have a lot of experience with them.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There are .many people in the world who still use manual looms, ie no punched cards, on a commercial basis. There are MANY people in the world who are not as spoiled as those in 'developed' countries. They don't have the finances to rush out and buy the 'latest model' of ANYTHING. While they are struggling to put food on their table a 'middle man' will buy their product for peanuts and sell it to the privileged people of the 'developed' countries for an exorbitant mark up. And the privileged people in one day will throw away more food than the underprivileged worker will have in one week.
Makes sense, they stopped making floppy disks a long time ago but blank card stock is forever: this civilization is never going to stop manufacturing it.
@@sierraromeoromeo2444 'you're simple' - but yes, it is really annoying that people can't be a bit more imaginative, instead of endlessly regurgitating the same 'meme' type comment formats. The hackneyed 'legend has it', or 'nasa called, they want their computer back', or 'I'm a simple man...', or 'that moment when....'. Everything has to be a meme nowadays.
Boondock I liked your comment then unliked it because, although I find the majority of the statement to be true for me, I’m a woman. I need to like all of something to click like 😆
@@tjfSIM Dont forget the "Me: I think this", "Someone: blah blah blah", "Me: witty remark". Meme culture has got everyone thinking theyre a comedian when the truth is, knowing when to stop milking it is what makes a great comedian.
As a Cynthia, I can tell you it's very common for people to hit the u on the keyboard (right next to the y) accidentally. Makes for some hilarious correspondence. Or perhaps not accidental?
No oddly. Clogge is a middle English word meaning "lump of wood". To stop cattle from straying farmers would attach wood to their feet; or to put it another way, clogged up. Which is also why clogs, wooden shoes, are called such in English
Slightly related info, in Dutch the clogs are called klompen. One clog is a klomp. A klomp is also a chunk of something, usuall rounded up, like a klomp (or homp) clay or a klomp hardened fat or other materials. It's a bit oldfashioned though, today's youth would've wrecked the sentence and gone; 'Eh..that's like...a lot of..a pile or something, of claystuff.'
I got to use punched cards with a computer when I was studying IT many moons ago. I forget what the machine was now. But I learned programming on a VAX/VMS system that used a chain printer.......
Befitting the shows name, this was quite interesting to me. I always associated wooden clogs with the Dutch, but of course they were probably common throughout Europe when leather shoes were probably far too expensive for the working class.
Wooden shoes were common in parts of England. They are cheaper and easier to make and more durable than leather or cloth. They can be made by even a semi-skilled (for the times) 'handyman'.
2:50. It IS a digital image, like a photograph. It is just that its pixels are woven from different tones of thread, instead of different densities of pigmented ink.
Although it's Alan and most of the things he says are ignored or in jest, "Where would we be without trees?" is actually a very good question. Wood has always been used for shelter, certain clothing or making clothing, handles for weapons and tools-- people talk about the advancements of the bronze age and progressing into iron, but the handles for those bronze and iron weapons- wood (or bone, I'll allow), the mines- supported by wooden beams, carts for transporting the ores and the finished products- wood (until the industrial age I suppose.) Even back when we were living in caves, we burned wood to keep warm. You could burn peat, I suppose (though stinky), but primarily, everything was- and nearly still is- wood. Good job, Alan.🤣
It's most likely Jacquard looms controlled by holes in cards are still in use today and will be for decades to come. Just because we have cars doesn't mean horse riding is no longer done.
@@RubenTheCartographer we were still using card jacquard Axminster looms to weave carpet commercially in 2001. Then we converted the last of the looms to electronic jacquard. Very labour intensive and gradually all moved offshore.
Jaquard also made the firtst prcision lathes which arguably was far more important. The extension of measurement/precision mirrors leaps in living standards rather well.
Russians still don't smile on official photographs : | A coworker of mine smiled when getting a picture taken for some paperwork - and got chastized by the local staff for it
@@qwertyTRiG was gonna say, it’s not just Russians that aren’t allowed to smile in photos. Not allowed to here in Aus in photos on Official documents, so passport, drivers licence etc.
Facebook's insistence of changing my newsfeed from 'most recent' back to 'top stories' for absolutely no good reason. Drives me absolutely crazy and angry beyond belief. If I ever go on a violent rampage, chances will be that's what pushed me over the edge...
fbpurity can stop both happening. It keeps your feed on 'most recent' if you so choose (as I do) and therefore should stop you going on a failbook violent rampage. :)
The 1978 Connections television series with James Burke did a bit on the Jacquard loom in the fourth episode called "Faith in Numbers" so I actually knew about this for once. The word sabot also describes a type of enhanced projectile ammunition.
Northerners also wore (and still wear) wooden soled clogs. There is still a traditional factory in Mytholmroyd (try and pronounce that one Americans) that produces all kinds of clogs. They will even custom make you some to fit your feet.
I have a friend in Sweden who inherited a house with a knitting factory in the cellar, with machines run by punchcards.
He got it all working and would set the machines off in the morning before coming to work and go home to take loads of knitted jumpers from the machines, ready to be sewn together (fronts, backs and arms).
He was still running it a couple of years ago.
I was waiting for a punchline here, but it sounds like you're serious. So "house, with attached knitting factory"?
Do you really think they'd be "fabricating" the story for a thumbs up?@@Brasswatchman
@@ravenhendershott1058 I never said -- oh. OHHHH. 😆
I was hoping you were going to say it was running fine until some knob heads turned up and started throwing shoes at it. Now I'm imagining a pyphonesc sketch where they magically turn up like the Spanish inquisition whenever someone gets one working.
@@drafezard7315 *pythonesque
“Where would we be without trees.” And Stephen looks at Alan as if Alan just thought up the most profound thought ever.
I think he's genuinely fascinated by Alan's mind
@Jake-Amir Blumenfeldwitz that's kind of the joke, trees are crucial to human civilization but he chooses to employ the idea specifically to talk about the necessity of wooden clogs for destroying machines. the thought that we would be nowhere without trees isn't profound because it's quite obvious, but the comment's funny because it's employed in such a dumb way.
I thought Stephen was having a WTF moment!
I suspect that, for all Stephen’s education, Alan is probably smarter
Like John Lloyd said, Stephen is about facts and Alan is about twisting facts into new shapes ("'Can sperms feel pain?' Now that's an answer nobody knows the answer to...." -- J. L. "The Making of QI".) I'm an American who grew up loving the fact that I share my name with Alan Turing, but Alan Davies is one of the close runner ups (Alda, Rickman, Shepard, and steamboat preservationist engineer Alan L. Bates).
Mr. Software...
Stephen's face is priceless
Mr. Jeremiah Software 😂
".....so disappointing."
"Software was invented in 1998 by Mr. Henry Software."
- Little Britain, probably
I'm struggling not to laugh out loud in public!
"Where would we be without trees?" ... :D
Sitting in chairs made of woven grass.
Up shit creek without a paddle
Even worse off, because our ancestors would likely not have evolved into primates.
We would be small creatures living in holes in the ground, like the Juramaia.
bobalina
Probably without a boat as well.
Aoderic Perhaps not. Other plants such as ferns, palms, succulents, cacti, etc could and would have evolved to fill the broad niche that trees fill. So although evolution on Earth would have been drastically different, it's possible that humans (or more accurately some loosely analogous species) could still have evolved.
"where would we be without trees?" Thank you, Alan, for bringing that discussion back to earth.
That loomed tapestry of the inventor is quite remarkable. And the fact that such old technology was still being used well into the 20th century is just amazing to me.
This is not meant as a personal criticism DJ, but society today seems to believe that unless something wasn't thought of/invented/developed in their life time it must be rubbish and be replaceable with something newer and better. That's just not true. Very often "improvements" use more resources or create more pollution.
@@MKR5210 So true! Some people seem to think that anything invented before the 20th century is practically medieval.
@@MKR5210 'Society' doesn't believe any such thing. It isn't what DJ meant either. That machines from long ago are still in use is remarkable. That's not a put down of older technology, but rather it is a compliment. Stop making up bad stuff about people who are younger than you.
I've seen one of those Jacquard portraits, I think in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, next to the patent model for the loom that made it. Both are exquisite objects. It's so weird to think that we still have digital images, rendered in thread, from the 1700s. Then the near computer revolution of the 1830s, and then damn near nothing more impressive for 100 years.
Just so typical that Jacquard is scarcely remembered and Ada Lovelace steals all the credit.
But can it run Doom?
Erik Harker don’t you mean Crysis
I suppose it would need a couple hours to weave a frame, and you would need to add extra bits for the control logic, but in theory it's possible
Jacquard Doom?
I always liked Wolfenstine 3D better.
Thats all nice and good, but can you open a second tab on chrome with it?
Alan's monologue "I haven't said anything for a while..."
Oo, blue whale!
Anyone that loves Stephen Fry explaining things should definitely listen to his podcast called _Stephen Fry's Great Leap Years._
Thanks!
You can hear him read Mythos, his own novel on Classical Mythology
Can’t wait for the next installment, Stephen Fry’s Great Leap Forward
Is it so called because it takes him a leap year to explain one point?
I think it's quite amazing to think that, the steam engine was created to help mine coal but then it led to the creation of trains that helped facilitate the coal mining industry even further, and then steam powered engines allowed for automation in general, even if you weren't near a river with a mill. In any case, steam powered the earliest looms, but in order for looms to be extra useful we needed a "programmer" to produce "code" on a punch card machine for loom patterns, and computation was involved as well, and this was all generations before the first electronic computer ( I wouldn't be surprised if an abacus was involved here and there) .
It's all just something to keep in mind today, that when something new is invented but it doesn't seem to have an incredibly broad usage, just wait a 100 years or so and it might be incredibly useful in the next technology leap.
What's even more amazing is that early miniature steam engines were built by an inventor named Hero who lived in Alexandria around 10-70 AD. He built them using earlier descriptions of such devices, but they were only really seen as a novelty and not scaled up. He also made the first vending machine, which was a device that dispensed a dose of holy water when you put a coin into a slot at the top of it, after which the coin dropped into a basket, and the lever it had pushed down sprang back up for the dispenser to be used again.
I hate to nit pick but the earliest looms were not steam driven.
They were manually powered.
A friend of mine is an engineer, and he basically invented a device that would automatically cut off high-voltage circuits during a surge - then on again once the system was safe. (Siemens bought him out)
Anyway, as I expressed my admiration he quickly stopped me.
He said, very simply: "I was already standing on the shoulders of giants."
Those giants can be traced back into prehistory. The first to fracture flint and discover a knife. The first to plant a seed.The first to scoop up and carry water in an animal skin. Waaay down that line from there was Issac Newton, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Hedy Lamarr, Richard Pearse ... .. and you and me.
No-one is ever working alone.
100 years is a good figure, it's roughly the length of time from Babbage to the first two or three working automatic programmable digital computers.
@@GedMaybury23 Newton was the first to say he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Apparently his main rival was quite short, and Newton wanted to piss him off. Genius is no guarantee against pettiness.
* Clippy pops up *
"It looks like you are trying to begin a homicidal rampage... Do you need assistance?"
Well, I wasn't _planning_ on starting one, but you've already changed my mind, Clippy.
Never thought to see a Superhero Movie joke on this video but okay lol
is it a happy coincidence that software is called software, when the first machine that used software made soft wares?
Heck if I know
Whoa, I felt so high reading this.
From Britannica.com: "The term was coined to differentiate these instructions from hardware-i.e., the physical components of a computer system. A set of instructions that directs a computer’s hardware to perform a task is called a program, or software program."
I think originally hardware is practical items. Like tools, ingredients or building blocks/materials.
Software is information instead. Like blueprints, recipes or texts.
The software is usually the instructions to the hardware.
In computing the hardware is the tool while the software is the instructions for the usage of the tool.
The terminology probably dates back to when computer where programmed at the spot by the use of code on paper or punching cards.
When you design software you do not change anything with the hardware. You just write code. Then the code is compiled/translated over to the hardware.
@@falconx50 p
Oh David Mitchell you legend
"Old Jebediah Software!"
Stephen: "Which software drove people to violence?"
Me: _"Clippy?!"_
Stephen: "No. As a hint, Ada Lovelace owed a great debt to this person who happened to be her father..."
Me: "al-Khwarizmi?!"
Stephen. *"NO."*
My children are related to Ada Lovelace through her grandmother. I was connected through marriage, but I’m divorced now. My daughter loves her familial connection to Ada and Lord Byron!
1:01 Alan is like (still is) a naughty school boy and Stephen is like loving, wise teacher.
This was genuinely quite interesting
UA-cam recommend suddenly started throwing British TV shows at me and I'm like, "why?" and then "OMG, why not 10 years ago?"
Have you yet discovered Taskmaster? They're now putting full episodes on UA-cam.
Same here bro!! It’s the best!!
Hope you've discovered Would I Lie To You and 8 Out Of 10 Cats :)
Judging by your profile picture I am amazed it wasn’t sooner.
Same here. I never knew any of the shows on Brit TV and all of a sudden WILTY showed up. If you haven't seen it yet, a good starter episode to watch is "Mitchellian rants and outbursts". They are logical, reasoned and funny as hell. I've not seen them all yet but so far all the episodes of Would I Lie To You have been great.
Sara: amusing anecdote about modern life *light chortle*
vicker: filthy quip followed by scholarly knowledge. *polite awe*
Alan: something a 5 y/o would say. *raucous laughter*
@@nunyanunya4147 someone* else's* grammar* spelling*
@Hell Bro shalom i forgive you too
@Hell Bro Fascinating. And, well, weird.
*vicar.
You obviously didn’t learn the first time, then.
Is that where the phrase "it's clogged" comes from?
Ahh
No, that appears to come from "clay"
No, because it isn't true. The research on this show is pretty bad.
No, but in a just universe, that's totally where it ought to have come from.
Yes, as nobody has ever thrown jam into a printer.
That was possible the most interesting segment I've ever seen on QI.
Yeah they managed to fit the history of computing, the history of textiles, the origin of two different words, and some good ol' fashioned Lord Byron(he shows up so often he should have his own segment) all in one question!
One might even say it was quite interesting.
you may say it was
quite interesting
unfortunately wrong : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage
I disagree I zoned out.
4:22 - the expression on Stephen's face... Priceless. Thank goodness for Alan.
"Which Software Drove People To Violence?" Ah, SAP perhaps?
This is one for a niche audience
Jeepers, SAP improved our lives no end after we switched from Ellipse
My bet would have been Excel
Fifa
MS Access
I am convinced that Alan is high for all of these shows
it's an act.... he was told to act stupid to be relatable but it's annoying
would be far more entertaining (and people like him) if he went ham for a change... but alas, broadcasting conformity dictates his pay.
@@nriab23 He does have slightly slurred speech most of the time but that could have many causes.
I think u might b on to something
All those blue whale withdrawal...
I am French and I had no idea that sabotage came from sabot...
Truly a quite interesting (and funny) segment!
Do you not speak French?!
I thought the French education system was a good one.
When English stole the word from French, we also stole the documentation, no wonder you didn't know!
According to Wikipedia the word sabotage does come the shoe, sabot, but not because disgruntled workers threw them in to machines but rather from the noise and clumsiness associated with the shoe
It is a French word, after all.
@@petejammo88 and any jerk can mess with Wikipedia's information base. That error has undoubtedly been corrected a couple of times in the past, and will be again.
The reduction in Stephen's pride in alans wit and shame he felt in 1:04 was completely spun round by the astonishing point Alan made at 4:23 🤣🤣🤣. I really do enjoy this show
Yes, I see. In comparison to clogs, shoes would be "soft wear".
Making your hardware unusable for far longer than it makes it work for you.
“ Sabot” as in APFSDS, “Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot”
most impressed that they got through an origins of computers segment withOUT bringing up turing.
I remember learning about the origin of the word "sabotage" from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
The problem is the explanation is not true. Honestly, one could assume that even thinking about it. Shoes used to be expensive, no way people would waste them throwing them at anything.
@@TheTambourinist TVs are also expensive, but people get mad at stuff and break them too.
@@TheTambourinist
In the 1700s wooden shoes - sabot - were worn by the poor working class.
As such they were not expensive and were often made by the wearer themselves or a family member.
However, the saboteurs - ie the workers wearing sabot - irreprably damaged the looms by means other than throwing their shoes.
Throwing a shoe into the works would only temporarily disable a loom.
Hell yeah, me too, love me some Star Trek and VI is a good one, after the mess that was V.
Stephen's disappointed face, when Alan says "Mr. Software" pleaaaseee😭😭🤚🤚 they're so adorable 🥺
Can we have 24 hours of Stephen Fry talking about history, science and anything that appeals to him.
It's would be so fascinating to have him as your teacher!
With Alan there to divert the conversation randomly, every so often.
Buy his audiobooks
@@krishnajain4391 Does Fry have audiobooks on history/science?
@@sohamdas He's not much of a scientist, but he is obsessed with Greek mythology. His Mythos series is great.
When Stephen Fry talks, everyone listens. Like he's giving a really good sermon.
Well most of the time. Often the panel are too busy trying to crack a million and one jokes to actually pay attention to the relevance of what he's saying
@@shestewa6581 especially alan when he has a toy or device to play and act the fool with... i.e voodoo doll. annoying prick
2:53 world's first pixel art done on a computer.
Perunavallankumous Probably not the first, actually - one of the regular jacquard patterns probably received that honour.
Also, the looms weren't computers, they didn't have memory and couldn't do any calculations (they just happened to use punch cards, which were later adopted for computers).
@@RFC3514 Punch cards are totally ROMs
@kricku - So are books. That doesn't make them computers. Unless a machine can follow instructions to store data and use it later (either for other calculations or for flow control - i.e., to decide _which_ part of the program to execute next), it's not a computer in the modern sense of the word.
Incidentally, Babbage never actually made (or even finished designing) a computer. The Difference Engine (which he never built but did design) was just a fixed-function calculator. His "computer" would have been the Analytical Engine, but that never came close to existing, and was basically forgotten.
I'd still acknowledge him as the first CPU architect (and Ada Lovelace as the first software engineer, with some credit to Luigi Menabrea, whose work she used as a starting point), but only in a chronological sense. The first actual functioning mechanical computers were developed independently from their work.
I sold a software package to a police department in the 90's. This was the Windows 3.0 era, I think. I got an urgent call from the police chief who said that all the reports had his name spelled wrong. No matter what he did, it spelled his name wrong. I traveled 3 hours to his office and found a smart-assed officer of his had gone into MS Office and changed the spell checker to automatically correct the spelling of the chief's name to something wrong. Funny. I drove 6 hours round trip for a 2 minute fix.
Was that police chief called Clancy Wiggum, by any chance?
@@GedMaybury23 no names!
Back in the DOS era, someone in my department was changing the programmable keyboards to type "DEL *.*Y" when a specific key was hit (different every time).
@@Dudemon-1 Worse: Back in the DOS 1.0 era ----you had to buy your hard drive from an alternative maker, IBM wasn't even making a hard drive but made the only PC. You spent a long time working with floppy (I mean FLOPPY) drives. And you needed to FORMAT each one. However, if you keyed FORMAT with no drive letter, it defaulted to C: Several times I forgot to key FORMAT A: and my C: drive began to be reformated. Fun times.
@@oldcougar65 -- Oh, no!
Yeah, I remember those days, too, and I think I made that error once.
Sometimes Alan is like intellectual ballast to keep the show from getting too pedantic.
He also came up with “Mr Software” 😂
Me,being fluent in french,never relised that Sabo is a shoe, has now got an image of Challenger tank firing wooden shoes at a 1000ms
Archie Scriven Gives an entirely new meaning to ‘left, right, left, right’ hehehe
Did you realize that it's spelled "sabot", since you're so fluent? There is so much wrong with this sentence, but I thought this was the part that should be corrected.
@@Punnikin1969 how embarrassing
Archie Scriven Except… a sabot is not a shoe, it is specifically a wooden clog type of footwear.
Footwear is a generic term but shoe is quite specific in the range of items it describes.
A wellington boot is an item of footwear but it is not a shoe.
Would not want be hit by a clog at 1000 m/s. That could spoil even quite a good day.
That laugh you hear in the background when Alan says Mr Software is quite interesting XD
What's really interesting is that in at least a couple of places around the world people still use punch card systems for their weaving machines, especially if they produce on a small scale, presumably because the machines are cheaper & they have a lot of experience with them.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
There are .many people in the world who still use manual looms, ie no punched cards, on a commercial basis.
There are MANY people in the world who are not as spoiled as those in 'developed' countries.
They don't have the finances to rush out and buy the 'latest model' of ANYTHING.
While they are struggling to put food on their table a 'middle man' will buy their product for peanuts and sell it to the privileged people of the 'developed' countries for an exorbitant mark up.
And the privileged people in one day will throw away more food than the underprivileged worker will have in one week.
Makes sense, they stopped making floppy disks a long time ago but blank card stock is forever: this civilization is never going to stop manufacturing it.
2:46 the way Sarah looks at Stephen is how much I want to be loved by someone
Aaaaaah! I love Stephem. I did not realise how much I miss him on our TV screens so frequently, until His show about the 21st century came on NYD.
1:03 I've never seen such a visible representation for the phrase "Oh, for pity's sake!".
Im a simple man. I see David Mitchell in a thumbnail and I click.
@@sierraromeoromeo2444 'you're simple' - but yes, it is really annoying that people can't be a bit more imaginative, instead of endlessly regurgitating the same 'meme' type comment formats. The hackneyed 'legend has it', or 'nasa called, they want their computer back', or 'I'm a simple man...', or 'that moment when....'. Everything has to be a meme nowadays.
Boondock I liked your comment then unliked it because, although I find the majority of the statement to be true for me, I’m a woman. I need to like all of something to click like 😆
@@tjfSIM
Dont forget the "Me: I think this", "Someone: blah blah blah", "Me: witty remark". Meme culture has got everyone thinking theyre a comedian when the truth is, knowing when to stop milking it is what makes a great comedian.
@@3allz You're absolutely right. I can't add anything to that, you hit the nail on the head :)
@@sierraromeoromeo2444 I like you.
“ Where would we be without trees.” Stephen Fry looking dumbfounded and speechless!
The saboteurs were easy to spot with one shoe on!!
Probably easy to catch too, hard to run in 1 clog!
Not if they distroyed two looms.
@@syedmohsin18 'this factory has a clog policy -- anybody caught with bare feet shall be hanged...'
This show is funny (hilariously so) and quite informative.
As a Cynthia, I can tell you it's very common for people to hit the u on the keyboard (right next to the y) accidentally. Makes for some hilarious correspondence. Or perhaps not accidental?
Mister software!!🎵
Write me some code~🎵
They make it say~🎵
Hello world I’m told~🎵
On line two there, is a syntax er-ror!~
You'll be debugging that shit! for! ever!~
Stephen Fry might have overlooked a career in Trivia literature
This *is* a career in trivia literature. He just puts it everywhere else, too.
Is that where the term 'clogged' comes from?
No oddly. Clogge is a middle English word meaning "lump of wood". To stop cattle from straying farmers would attach wood to their feet; or to put it another way, clogged up. Which is also why clogs, wooden shoes, are called such in English
Jallen That is quite interesting
Jallen thank you, that was informative AND quite interesting ;)
Slightly related info, in Dutch the clogs are called klompen. One clog is a klomp.
A klomp is also a chunk of something, usuall rounded up, like a klomp (or homp) clay or a klomp hardened fat or other materials.
It's a bit oldfashioned though, today's youth would've wrecked the sentence and gone; 'Eh..that's like...a lot of..a pile or something, of claystuff.'
+Widdekuu91 i.e., "clump" in English.
David Mitchell at peak attractiveness here IMO
That open button shirt 😍
but he's in his 40s
@@nriab23 he looks pretty good for someone in his 40s then
I've learned so much watching this show. Love Fry btw
I got to use punched cards with a computer when I was studying IT many moons ago. I forget what the machine was now. But I learned programming on a VAX/VMS system that used a chain printer.......
@TheBravesirobin Nice!
Aww, Alan. Bless.
“Where would we be without trees?”
Probably somewhere deep in the ocean amongst the blue whale
SpicyTunah Brilliant comment ! Best I’ve read all day.
*Klaxon*
Befitting the shows name, this was quite interesting to me. I always associated wooden clogs with the Dutch, but of course they were probably common throughout Europe when leather shoes were probably far too expensive for the working class.
not only a matter of price, clogs are just far more practical when walking through marshlands
Wooden shoes were common in parts of England.
They are cheaper and easier to make and more durable than leather or cloth.
They can be made by even a semi-skilled (for the times) 'handyman'.
Could have added that Byron spoke in defence of the framebreakers, who had similar grievances to the saboteurs, in the House of Lords.
Well I never knew that bit about saboteurs.
2:50. It IS a digital image, like a photograph. It is just that its pixels are woven from different tones of thread, instead of different densities of pigmented ink.
the end bit about trees.. just makes me laugh over and over
I think Stephen is getting driven to violence by Alan😂😂
Although it's Alan and most of the things he says are ignored or in jest, "Where would we be without trees?" is actually a very good question. Wood has always been used for shelter, certain clothing or making clothing, handles for weapons and tools-- people talk about the advancements of the bronze age and progressing into iron, but the handles for those bronze and iron weapons- wood (or bone, I'll allow), the mines- supported by wooden beams, carts for transporting the ores and the finished products- wood (until the industrial age I suppose.) Even back when we were living in caves, we burned wood to keep warm. You could burn peat, I suppose (though stinky), but primarily, everything was- and nearly still is- wood.
Good job, Alan.🤣
"Stone was all my old dad ever needed..." -- Mitchell and Webb: "Bronze Orientation"
@@AlanCanon2222 I remember that one 😂
Alan's comment, "Where would we be without trees?" Sounds like a song title.
We saw these looms used for making saris in Varanasi 10 years ago.
Me: Customer Support?
CS: Please hold.
Me: Cynthia!
I think those looms are still operating in the suburbs of Hanoi.
It's most likely Jacquard looms controlled by holes in cards are still in use today and will be for decades to come.
Just because we have cars doesn't mean horse riding is no longer done.
I think he means on like a proper scale. Not for the fun of it and because it's interesting.
@@RubenTheCartographer we were still using card jacquard Axminster looms to weave carpet commercially in 2001. Then we converted the last of the looms to electronic jacquard. Very labour intensive and gradually all moved offshore.
I am now going to use this sentence for the end of seemingly ongoing conversation. “Where would we be without trees.”
You can still see these Jacquard looms employed in Varanasi, India where they are used for making saris.
Stephen's face at the end. 😂
When he mentioned show auto-correct can drive you crazy I was reminded of the sentence I saw that said "Auto-correct is your worst enema".
Holy crap. I never knew that's where the word sabotage comes from.
Jaquard also made the firtst prcision lathes which arguably was far more important. The extension of measurement/precision mirrors leaps in living standards rather well.
I fucking LOVE QI ... you can learn so much from a TV programme that is so damn funny!!!!
1:03 one of the moments where stephen considered taking up religion, just so hed have a god to pray to for the strength to deal with alan xD
Can we talk about the guy who had to code those "loomart" punchcards?
Wow, I learned so much from this snippet! Sabotage! Who knew.
Well, at least he's contributing.
By picking up his paycheck for just turning up.
Poor Stephen looks so tired of Alan's shit 😂
The disappointment in his eyes when Alan answered "Mr. Software" was just heartbreaking to me. LOL.
He was apparently going through really bad depression at this time too, which doesn't help.
2:13 That person had a hell of a sneeze.
We have fabric at the quilt shop I work at and there are little icons for their discovery. They have a loom card with the name Lovelace next to it.
“Love lace” ... heh.
I misinterpreted the question and my first thought was JavaScript, and you know what. I stand by my answer.
Russians still don't smile on official photographs : | A coworker of mine smiled when getting a picture taken for some paperwork - and got chastized by the local staff for it
We're not allowed to smile in passport photos.
@@qwertyTRiG was gonna say, it’s not just Russians that aren’t allowed to smile in photos.
Not allowed to here in Aus in photos on Official documents, so passport, drivers licence etc.
@@jimmyrussel5606 I think that this is the same in many countries.
@@qwertyTRiG yeah, wouldn’t be surprising mate!
Jaquard also made a precision lathe, possible at the time of far more significance. The devlopment of precission maps mass wealth accross the world.
David is so handsome here..... I definitely would. Dream, that is, of course.
LivB you take David, I’ll take Victoria.
Oddly enough, there's nothing in this upload that I didn't all ready know!
Facebook's insistence of changing my newsfeed from 'most recent' back to 'top stories' for absolutely no good reason. Drives me absolutely crazy and angry beyond belief. If I ever go on a violent rampage, chances will be that's what pushed me over the edge...
fbpurity can stop both happening. It keeps your feed on 'most recent' if you so choose (as I do) and therefore should stop you going on a failbook violent rampage. :)
Weirduncle Bob I have FB Purity, and it used to work great concerning the newsfeed, but since a couple of months orso it doesn't anymore. Sadly.
the fine line between trivia and knowledge
there is no line between them. trivia is knowledge.
Came for the jokes, stayed for the knowledge !
"WhErE wOuLd We Be WiThOuT tReEs?!?!?!?" ... DeD!
“Which software drove people to violence?”
Printer drivers
Damn, first guess was Alan Turing, second was ada lovelace
I have to say, this is actually quite interesting.
I first learned about this from the movie _Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country_ .
Well, they didn't actually throw their shoes, but they did disrupt production.
Spellcheckers and auto-correct dictionaries can usually be edited.
not if you are above 40
I recall a certain student of Spock’s explaining “sabotage” to Chekov and Uhura in ‘The Undiscovered Country’.
wrong..it was the younger female vulcan that explained it
@@vonn4017
She was Spock’s student at the academy.
@@MrAudienceMember2662015 and that matters becuase......
im still right, shr said the line not spock
checkmate
@@vonn4017
I didn’t say that Spock said it.
Idiot.
"Where would we be without trees?" - Alan, asking the questions that are on everyone's lips @__@
The 1978 Connections television series with James Burke did a bit on the Jacquard loom in the fourth episode called "Faith in Numbers" so I actually knew about this for once.
The word sabot also describes a type of enhanced projectile ammunition.
Northerners also wore (and still wear) wooden soled clogs. There is still a traditional factory in Mytholmroyd (try and pronounce that one Americans) that produces all kinds of clogs. They will even custom make you some to fit your feet.