The following two entries are almost the last in the book & both come from the late lamented Listener magazine.
The third famous son of Totnes was the remarkable Charles Babbage, who invented the first mechanical computer, in 1822, but not in Totnes.
He invented a lot of things: the first speedometer, for instance; the first cow-catcher.
However, like all inventors, he was never satisfied with his inventions & he died a bitter & resentful man, leaving behind the completed drawings for a computer he called the analytical engine, capable of working to 50 decimal places.
Babbage’s bust is in Totnes museum, staring hard at something just above the horizon: the 51st place of decimals perhaps?
It seems a piffling thing to die bitter & resentful about …Derek Robinson: Toytown-upon-Dart. The Listener 8 Sept 1977 p300
I once met a civil servant on a long train journey who said that ever since seeing Hutton make 364 at the Oval & weep because he had failed to make a run for every day of the year, he had been aware of the drawbacks of ambition. So he had tried to lead his life like a timeless Test Match moving towards an inevitable draw.
Like the batsman who sits padded up all day, waiting to go in, only to be bowled by the first ball he faces, he had drifted from day to day, relishing his aimlessness & looking for fulfilment in a life well wasted. ‘And’, he added bitterly, ‘I have been constantly dogged by success!’John Stevenson: TV column. The Listener 8 December 1977
I can see why these contrasting attitudes to ambition amused me, with their references to computers, cricket & mathematical obsession & a nice paradox about ambition.
Googling for any information about either author brought me the news that there is now an online archive for The Listener; Derek Robinson, who I think I remember as a regular broadcaster, may be the novelist of that name; & John Stevenson might be the one who is now a tv scriptwriter, for Coronation Street among others.
