# On An Age Of Wonders

Figure 1: The Cards
Inspired by Monsieur J-------'s famous loom our very own Professor B------ has built a machine that weaves numbers rather than threads. Like Monsieur J-------'s ingenious creation, the operation of this Experimental Clockwork Mathematical Apparatus, or ECMA, is directed by cards in which holes have been punched in particular patterns to identify particular arithmetical and control operations and is fed numbers identified by similar cards. By carefully arranging these cards we can contrive to perform all manner of mathematical calculations literally dozens of times faster than we might manage with pencil and paper!

Transcribing a mathematical algorithm into punched cards would be a terrifically tedious endeavour were it not for an insight made by Countess L-------; that letters could be encoded as numbers and consequently be subjected to mathematical manipulation. She proceeded to define an algorithmical language, ECMAScript, and put together a deck of cards that enabled the machine itself to transcribe algorithms expressed in it!

Truly, we live in an age of wonders!
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