Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if
you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able
rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Bell, Eric Temple (1883-1960)
I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a
wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Erds, Paul
A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
Poincar� Jules Henri (1854-1912)
Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even
advantageous to know what it means. The geometer might be replaced by the "logic
piano" imagined by Stanley Jevons; or, if you choose, a machine might be imagined
where the assumptions were put in at one end, while the theorems came out at the other,
like the legendary Chicago machine where the pigs go in alive and come out transformed
into hams and sausages. No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he
does.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
West, Nathanael
Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute
the only universal language.
Miss Lonelyhearts.
Weyl, Hermann (1885 - 1955)
A modern mathematical proof is not very different from a modern machine, or a modern
test setup: the simple fundamental principles are hidden and almost invisible under a mass
of technical details.