Table - An arrangement of data in memory (or other storage), organized to facilitate the retrieval of individual items, either by means of identifying digits stored as part of each item, or by specifying the item's position in the table.

Thames tunnel project - The first underwater tunnel in the world, completed in 1843, running under the Thames River from Wapping to Rotherhithe. An earlier tunnel had been attempted, but was abandoned in 1807 when the river broke through. In 1827, work started on the new tunnel, using a unique tunneling shield devised by Marc Brunel and built by Henry Maudley. The shield, consisting of twelve cast-iron frames, reduced the danger of cave in. Workers excavated 4.5 inches behind each frame, screwing a board forward in each frame as they finished. When all twelve frames had been excavated, the overall frame could be jacked forward. The tunnel is still in use as part of the London Underground's network of tunnels.
A vista in the Thames Tunnel
Engineering the tunnel
Visit the tunnel's engine house

The Great Exhibition of 1851 - The most famous, if not the first, of the early international trade exhibitions, held in Hyde Park, with the Crystal Palace its Trylon and Perisphere, its Space Needle, its iron-and-glass embodiment of the commercial zeitgeist and paean to Victorian taste and laissez faire capitalism.
Prince Albert's Visit to the Crystal Palace
Engineering the dinosaurs at the Crystal Palace

Felix Tournachon (1820-1910) - French caricaturist, writer, and balloonist, who wrote under the pseudonym of Nadar. Founded Revue Comique and led a company of airmen during the Siege of Paris, 1870-71.
Bruce Sterling on Tournachon and Jules Verne

Tsukiji - A section of Tokyo, then isolated from the rest of the city, where the foreign quarter was built in the late Tokugawa period. Never popular with Europeans, except for missionaries, it included a number of Chinese opium dealers. A large and unprofitable licensed pleasure quarter, the New Shimbara, was built nearby.

The Difference Dictionary was first published
in slightly different form in Science Fiction Eye, Issue #8.
Text copyright 1990, 1996, 2000, 2003,
by Eileen K. Gunn.