108 things from this book went into her brain. Here are the first 6.
Charles Babbage said he would rather spend his strength on better work than on writing the story of his own life.
Charles Babbage observed that a famous name is an empty basket until you fill it with your own work.
Charles Babbage said he would keep any fact, even an unflattering one, because it might prove useful one day.
Charles Babbage said truth was the only object of his search, and he never turned aside from fear of where it might lead.
As a boy, Charles Babbage settled a doubt with a simple test, deciding in advance he would accept whatever result it gave.
Charles Babbage held that every school room should have a library, since his own school's books gave him so much.
Charles Babbage noticed a learner can solve the same problem in any notation, so the idea behind the symbols matters more than the symbols.
Charles Babbage saw that even small duties can absorb the time needed for the work that matters most, so guard your focus.
Charles Babbage re-marked his exam papers with new numbers and reached the same answer, a good way to test a judgement before acting on it.
Charles Babbage won over reluctant teachers by giving them ready-made examples, so the new method spread because it saved them effort.
Charles Babbage judged a calculating machine by one test: could it finish its work once set, with no person steering it along the way?
When his finished wheels failed, Charles Babbage traced the fault to a small mismatch at the workshop, not to his own reasoning.
Charles Babbage guarded against errors by building a check into the parts themselves, so a wrong piece would jam the test wire.
Charles Babbage showed that stepwise working is fast but lets one slip spread through everything after it, so a direct check at the end catches errors.
Charles Babbage held that a learner who knows what he does not know has overcome one of the greatest obstacles to learning, and has the courage to say so.
Charles Babbage tested a guessed rule against a case he already knew, found it three times too big, and corrected it before trusting it.
Charles Babbage saw that a slow job can be sped up by doing the easy parts all at once and dealing with the carries as a separate step.
Charles Babbage tried to teach his machine to foresee the carries it would need and then act on that foresight, an early picture of planning ahead.
Charles Babbage's funding talks went wrong because no minute was taken and the terms were never made clear, so write down agreements at the time they are made.
Charles Babbage's funders had each supplier bill checked by independent engineers before paying it, a simple control any business can copy.
While his work was stalled, Charles Babbage used the pause to think about first principles, and found an idea he had not reached while busy.
When an idea is too uncertain to put in writing, Charles Babbage asked for a face-to-face talk, since a conversation can show what a letter cannot.
Charles Babbage found that his plans had been misunderstood because he had not stated clearly what he was asking for, so say the ask plainly.
Charles Babbage pressed for a final decision because an open-ended job with no end date kept him from planning anything else.
Charles Babbage would not give opinions on costs outside his expertise, having learned not to trust his own judgment in areas he had not mastered.
Lord Rosse set out a practical order for a big decision: first ask whether it can be estimated, then whether anyone can build it, and only then whether it is worth the cost.
Charles Babbage's machine was slow to build because it needed new tools first, and those tools later proved useful for other work, so early effort can pay off elsewhere.
Charles Babbage warned that inventions with no precedent always take longer than planned, and each change made along the way brings hard choices.
Charles Babbage held that a clear system of signs is a thinking tool, and said he could not have invented the Analytical Engine without his own notation.
Charles Babbage set himself a rule: except in rare cases, never do a task himself if he could afford to hire someone who could do it well.
Charles Babbage found that tweaking a stuck design got him nowhere, so he went back to the principle itself, and that is what finally broke the problem open.
Charles Babbage found that explaining his plan to an assistant exposed flaws in it, and each question he was asked showed him another gap to fix.
Charles Babbage separated the instructions a machine follows from the material it works on, so one design could handle many different jobs.
Charles Babbage designed his engine to check each input against the number it had asked for and refuse any mismatch, so a wrong input could not pass unnoticed.
Charles Babbage showed that a limited machine can do unlimited work if it is given enough time, trading the infinity of space for the infinity of time.
Charles Babbage noted that the hard part of a process was rarely the steps themselves, but knowing when to change course, which is the judgment that no fixed list can supply.
Charles Babbage held that whenever a result is sought, the question should be which course of working reaches it in the shortest time.
Charles Babbage showed that errors in hand-copied tables bred further errors in every correction, so accurate records need checking at the source.
Charles Babbage labelled his drawings by a consistent rule, so fixed parts and moving parts could be told apart at a glance, which made complex machines much easier to understand.
Charles Babbage wanted his finished engine placed where the most people could see it daily, because work hidden away is hard for anyone to learn from or champion.
Charles Babbage saw crowds gather when his machine ran with someone explaining it, but a cramped spot with no one to talk people through it wasted the interest.
Charles Babbage argued that cost-cutting is only respectable when judgment guides it, not favouritism, since cutting the cheap, useful expense while favouring insiders is a false economy.
Charles Babbage said that before choosing a design, you should ask several strong firms for proposals and open the plans to public criticism, which guards against a poor choice.
Charles Babbage found that a capable friend's clear explanations reached far more people than he could alone, so he trusted that friend with access.
Charles Babbage kept no notes of his private talks with the Duke of Wellington, believing that writing down a friend's words breaks faith and wears away trust.
Charles Babbage found that a hard problem in his own field, too many combinations to check, was the same problem a great commander faces, showing how ideas carry across fields.
Charles Babbage recalled the Duke of Wellington as an economist of time, who changed his dress in his carriage on the way so he arrived on time without rushing.
Charles Babbage said the Duke of Wellington kept backup plans ready: once he had weighed the alternatives, he could quickly build a new plan when the first one broke.
Charles Babbage faulted the good men on a council for lacking the moral courage to oppose a president's dictation, or to set it aside later when it was irregular.
Charles Babbage offered to retract a public remark once the papers proved him wrong, and wanted the correction made in a suitable manner.
Charles Babbage thought his friend, the poet Samuel Rogers, had a genuine kindness that was not appreciated enough, and kept walking him home as his strength failed.
Charles Babbage described two ways to write: draft the whole plan roughly and polish later, or finish each sentence before moving on, which he thought the poet Samuel Rogers did.
Charles Babbage recorded that the older Biot found new inquiry slow and painful, but could still advance the studies of his youth with help from younger friends.
Charles Babbage saw that Alexander Humboldt took real pleasure in helping any inquirer, however humble, with his information and advice.
Charles Babbage remembered that Alexander Humboldt's sharp remarks about colleagues were caustic at times but never ill-natured, a fair standard for wit.
Charles Babbage recorded a princess who set out alone to nurse her ailing uncle and father-in-law, and he admired her devotion to family duty.
Charles Babbage tested a bold idea in the water and found it both risky and workable, and he concluded that a real trial is the only way to learn which is true.
Charles Babbage admired the younger Brunel, who met a sudden breach in the Thames Tunnel by calmly getting workmen to form a line and pass tools to the spot.
Charles Babbage understood a large effect by building a small model of it and tracing its motion with smoke, a sound way to learn how something really works.
Charles Babbage checked a difficult field measurement by repeating it and finding it agreed to within about a foot, which is the habit of verifying before trusting a number.
