Righting the early history of computing or how sausage was made (with a letter from Martin Campbell-Kelly) (Q1343659)

In 1984 Herman Berg located a historically important letter from Charles Babbage to L. A. J. Quetelet of 1835 concerning Babbage's Analytical Engine. According to this article he obtained a copy of the letter by asking for it from a most likely place (a collection of Quetelet's correspondence in a Belgian archive) and had located the place in a straightforward fashion, namely by looking up Quetelet's name in a standard reference work for archival collections. The remarkable thing is not so much that he found it but that a number of others who had apparently been searching for it had failed and had assumed that the only extant version was published in French in 1835. The original letter was found to be written in English by Babbage with substantic differences from the French version. The first thing to go wrong was that the Annals of the History of Computing in 1983 published an English translation of the letter based on the French published version and declined to publish or publicize what Berg had found until 1992. Thus begins a most unfortunate tale that has no heroes and in which, as Berg would seem to have it, practically the whole of the world of learning bears some responsibility but largely would rather not get involved. The author, a specialist in professional ethics, takes up Berg's case here and in a longer version in his [Of Babbage and kings: a study of a plagiarism complaint, Accountability in Research 2, 273-286 (1993)]. The charge of plagiarism is applied against the editorship of Babbage's collection works which quotes the original letter without crediting Berg who claims to have informed them of it. The principal editor of the works, Martin Campbell-Kelly, here makes a response claiming that a member of his editorial group had independently located the letter. The contentious tone of the title of the article refers to the doubtful practices uncovered in the course of investigating the case and how for history, like sausages, it may sometimes be better not to look too closely at where it comes from. Altogether it is a sorry story in which there seems to be no innocent, objective bystanders. The fact that most of the principal dramatis personae are not professional historians but, rather, knowledgeable specialists on other areas making well-intentioned efforts to overcome disciplinary boundaries, should not keep this from being a cautionary tale for all scholars.