Genre:

Notes, Drollery

Subjects:

Mathematics, Technology, Environmentalism, Music, Sound

    Invites Charles Babbage to 'ask his calculating machine' to work out whether the hurdy-gurdy, 'an instrument of torture inflicted on Europe by Savoy', will make more noise, 'now that Louis Napoleon, by his recent little turn of annexation, has converted it into a French organ'. This is a reference to Napoleon's recent annexation of the Italian states of Savoy and Nice for France.