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Charles Babbage

January 19, 2024

"Babbage" redirects here. For other uses, see Babbage (disambiguation).

Charles Babbage KH FRS (/ˈbæbɪdʒ/; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath.[1] A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.[2]

Charles Babbage

KH FRS
Babbage in 1860
Born(1791-12-26)26 December 1791
London, England
Died18 October 1871(1871-10-18) (aged 79)
Marylebone, London, England
Alma materPeterhouse, Cambridge
Known forAnalytical engine
Difference engine
Spouse
Georgiana Whitmore
​
​
(m. 1814; died 1827)​
Children8, including Benjamin Herschel Babbage
RelativesWilliam Wolryche-Whitmore (brother-in-law)
AwardsGold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1824)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics, engineering, political economy, computer science
InstitutionsTrinity College, Cambridge, Peterhouse, Cambridge
Signature

Babbage is considered by some to be "father of the computer".[2][3][4][5] Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer, the Difference Engine, that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage's Analytical Engine, programmed using a principle openly borrowed from the Jacquard loom.[2][6] Babbage had a broad range of interests in addition to his work on computers covered in his 1832 book Economy of Manufactures and Machinery.[7] His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century.[1]

Babbage, who died before the complete successful engineering of many of his designs, including his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, remained a prominent figure in the ideating of computing. Parts of Babbage's incomplete mechanisms are on display in the Science Museum in London. In 1991, a functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked.

Early life edit

 
Portrait of Charles Babbage (c. 1820)

Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography he was most likely born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England.[8] A blue plaque on the junction of Larcom Street and Walworth Road commemorates the event.[9]

His date of birth was given in his obituary in The Times as 26 December 1792; but then a nephew wrote to say that Babbage was born one year earlier, in 1791. The parish register of St. Mary's, Newington, London, shows that Babbage was baptised on 6 January 1792, supporting a birth year of 1791.[10][11][12]

 
Babbage c. 1850

Babbage was one of four children of Benjamin Babbage and Betsy Plumleigh Teape. His father was a banking partner of William Praed in founding Praed's & Co. of Fleet Street, London, in 1801.[13] In 1808, the Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth. Around the age of eight, Babbage was sent to a country school in Alphington near Exeter to recover from a life-threatening fever. For a short time, he attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes, South Devon, but his health forced him back to private tutors for a time.[14]

Babbage then joined the 30-student Holmwood Academy, in Baker Street, Enfield, Middlesex, under the Reverend Stephen Freeman.[15] The academy had a library that prompted Babbage's love of mathematics. He studied with two more private tutors after leaving the academy. The first was a clergyman near Cambridge; through him Babbage encountered Charles Simeon and his evangelical followers, but the tuition was not what he needed.[16] He was brought home, to study at the Totnes school: this was at age 16 or 17.[17] The second was an Oxford tutor, under whom Babbage reached a level in Classics sufficient to be accepted by the University of Cambridge.

At the University of Cambridge edit

Babbage arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1810.[18] He was already self-taught in some parts of contemporary mathematics;[19] he had read Robert Woodhouse, Joseph Louis Lagrange, and Marie Agnesi. As a result, he was disappointed in the standard mathematical instruction available at the university.[8]

Babbage, John Herschel, George Peacock, and several other friends formed the Analytical Society in 1812; they were also close to Edward Ryan.[20] As a student, Babbage was also a member of other societies such as The Ghost Club, concerned with investigating supernatural phenomena, and the Extractors Club, dedicated to liberating its members from the madhouse, should any be committed to one.[21][22]

In 1812, Babbage transferred to Peterhouse, Cambridge.[18] He was the top mathematician there, but did not graduate with honours. He instead received a degree without examination in 1814. He had defended a thesis that was considered blasphemous in the preliminary public disputation, but it is not known whether this fact is related to his not sitting the examination.[8]

After Cambridge edit

Considering his reputation, Babbage quickly made progress. He lectured to the Royal Institution on astronomy in 1815, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816.[23] After graduation, on the other hand, he applied for positions unsuccessfully, and had little in the way of a career. In 1816 he was a candidate for a teaching job at Haileybury College; he had recommendations from James Ivory and John Playfair, but lost out to Henry Walter.[24] In 1819, Babbage and Herschel visited Paris and the Society of Arcueil, meeting leading French mathematicians and physicists.[25] That year Babbage applied to be professor at the University of Edinburgh, with the recommendation of Pierre Simon Laplace; the post went to William Wallace.[26][27][28]

With Herschel, Babbage worked on the electrodynamics of Arago's rotations, publishing in 1825. Their explanations were only transitional, being picked up and broadened by Michael Faraday. The phenomena are now part of the theory of eddy currents, and Babbage and Herschel missed some of the clues to unification of electromagnetic theory, staying close to Ampère's force law.[29]

Babbage purchased the actuarial tables of George Barrett, who died in 1821 leaving unpublished work, and surveyed the field in 1826 in Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives.[30] This interest followed a project to set up an insurance company, prompted by Francis Baily and mooted in 1824, but not carried out.[31] Babbage did calculate actuarial tables for that scheme, using Equitable Society mortality data from 1762 onwards.[32]

During this whole period, Babbage depended awkwardly on his father's support, given his father's attitude to his early marriage, of 1814: he and Edward Ryan wedded the Whitmore sisters. He made a home in Marylebone in London and established a large family.[33] On his father's death in 1827, Babbage inherited a large estate (value around £100,000, equivalent to £9.21 million or $12.6 million today), making him independently wealthy.[8] After his wife's death in the same year he spent time travelling. In Italy he met Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, foreshadowing a later visit to Piedmont.[23] In April 1828 he was in Rome, and relying on Herschel to manage the difference engine project, when he heard that he had become a professor at Cambridge, a position he had three times failed to obtain (in 1820, 1823 and 1826).[34]

Royal Astronomical Society edit

Babbage was instrumental in founding the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820, initially known as the Astronomical Society of London.[35] Its original aims were to reduce astronomical calculations to a more standard form, and to circulate data.[36] These directions were closely connected with Babbage's ideas on computation, and in 1824 he won its Gold Medal, cited "for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables".[37]

Babbage's motivation to overcome errors in tables by mechanisation had been a commonplace since Dionysius Lardner wrote about it in 1834 in the Edinburgh Review (under Babbage's guidance).[38][39] The context of these developments is still debated. Babbage's own account of the origin of the difference engine begins with the Astronomical Society's wish to improve The Nautical Almanac. Babbage and Herschel were asked to oversee a trial project, to recalculate some part of those tables. With the results to hand, discrepancies were found. This was in 1821 or 1822, and was the occasion on which Babbage formulated his idea for mechanical computation.[40] The issue of the Nautical Almanac is now described as a legacy of a polarisation in British science caused by attitudes to Sir Joseph Banks, who had died in 1820.[41]

 
A portion of the difference engine

Babbage studied the requirements to establish a modern postal system, with his friend Thomas Frederick Colby, concluding there should be a uniform rate that was put into effect with the introduction of the Uniform Fourpenny Post supplanted by the Uniform Penny Post[42] in 1839 and 1840. Colby was another of the founding group of the Society.[43] He was also in charge of the Survey of Ireland. Herschel and Babbage were present at a celebrated operation of that survey, the remeasuring of the Lough Foyle baseline.[44]

British Lagrangian School edit

The Analytical Society had initially been no more than an undergraduate provocation. During this period it had some more substantial achievements. In 1816 Babbage, Herschel and Peacock published a translation from French of the lectures of Sylvestre Lacroix, which was then the state-of-the-art calculus textbook.[45]

Reference to Lagrange in calculus terms marks out the application of what are now called formal power series. British mathematicians had used them from about 1730 to 1760. As re-introduced, they were not simply applied as notations in differential calculus. They opened up the fields of functional equations (including the difference equations fundamental to the difference engine) and operator (D-module) methods for differential equations. The analogy of difference and differential equations was notationally changing Δ to D, as a "finite" difference becomes "infinitesimal". These symbolic directions became popular, as operational calculus, and pushed to the point of diminishing returns. The Cauchy concept of limit was kept at bay.[46] Woodhouse had already founded this second "British Lagrangian School" with its treatment of Taylor series as formal.[47]

In this context function composition is complicated to express, because the chain rule is not simply applied to second and higher derivatives. This matter was known to Woodhouse by 1803, who took from Louis François Antoine Arbogast what is now called Faà di Bruno's formula. In essence it was known to Abraham De Moivre (1697). Herschel found the method impressive, Babbage knew of it, and it was later noted by Ada Lovelace as compatible with the analytical engine.[48] In the period to 1820 Babbage worked intensively on functional equations in general, and resisted both conventional finite differences and Arbogast's approach (in which Δ and D were related by the simple additive case of the exponential map). But via Herschel he was influenced by Arbogast's ideas in the matter of iteration, i.e. composing a function with itself, possibly many times.[47] Writing in a major paper on functional equations in the Philosophical Transactions (1815/6), Babbage said his starting point was work of Gaspard Monge.[49]

Academic edit

From 1828 to 1839, Babbage was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Not a conventional resident don, and inattentive to his teaching responsibilities, he wrote three topical books during this period of his life. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1832.[50] Babbage was out of sympathy with colleagues: George Biddell Airy, his predecessor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge,[51] thought an issue should be made of his lack of interest in lecturing. Babbage planned to lecture in 1831 on political economy. Babbage's reforming direction looked to see university education more inclusive, universities doing more for research, a broader syllabus and more interest in applications; but William Whewell found the programme unacceptable. A controversy Babbage had with Richard Jones lasted for six years.[52] He never did give a lecture.[53]

It was during this period that Babbage tried to enter politics. Simon Schaffer writes that his views of the 1830s included disestablishment of the Church of England, a broader political franchise, and inclusion of manufacturers as stakeholders.[54] He twice stood for Parliament as a candidate for the borough of Finsbury. In 1832 he came in third among five candidates, missing out by some 500 votes in the two-member constituency when two other reformist candidates, Thomas Wakley and Christopher Temple, split the vote.[55][56] In his memoirs Babbage related how this election brought him the friendship of Samuel Rogers: his brother Henry Rogers wished to support Babbage again, but died within days.[57] In 1834 Babbage finished last among four.[58][59][60] In 1832, Babbage, Herschel and Ivory were appointed Knights of the Royal Guelphic Order, however they were not subsequently made knights bachelor to entitle them to the prefix Sir, which often came with appointments to that foreign order (though Herschel was later created a baronet).[61]

"Declinarians", learned societies and the BAAS edit

 
Letter to Sir Humphry Davy, 1822

Babbage now emerged as a polemicist. One of his biographers notes that all his books contain a "campaigning element". His Reflections on the Decline of Science and some of its Causes (1830) stands out, however, for its sharp attacks. It aimed to improve British science, and more particularly to oust Davies Gilbert as President of the Royal Society, which Babbage wished to reform.[62] It was written out of pique, when Babbage hoped to become the junior secretary of the Royal Society, as Herschel was the senior, but failed because of his antagonism to Humphry Davy.[63] Michael Faraday had a reply written, by Gerrit Moll, as On the Alleged Decline of Science in England (1831).[64] On the front of the Royal Society Babbage had no impact, with the bland election of the Duke of Sussex to succeed Gilbert the same year. As a broad manifesto, on the other hand, his Decline led promptly to the formation in 1831 of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS).[64]

The Mechanics' Magazine in 1831 identified as Declinarians the followers of Babbage. In an unsympathetic tone it pointed out David Brewster writing in the Quarterly Review as another leader; with the barb that both Babbage and Brewster had received public money.[65]

In the debate of the period on statistics (qua data collection) and what is now statistical inference, the BAAS in its Statistical Section (which owed something also to Whewell) opted for data collection. This Section was the sixth, established in 1833 with Babbage as chairman and John Elliot Drinkwater as secretary. The foundation of the Statistical Society followed.[66][67][68] Babbage was its public face, backed by Richard Jones and Robert Malthus.[69]

On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures edit

 
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 1835
 
Babbage's notation for machine parts, explanation from On a method of expressing by signs the action of machinery (1827) of his "Mechanical Notation", invented for his own use in understanding the work on the difference engine, and an influence on the conception of the analytical engine[70]

Babbage published On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832), on the organisation of industrial production. It was an influential early work of operational research.[71] John Rennie the Younger in addressing the Institution of Civil Engineers on manufacturing in 1846 mentioned mostly surveys in encyclopaedias, and Babbage's book was first an article in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, the form in which Rennie noted it, in the company of related works by John Farey Jr., Peter Barlow and Andrew Ure.[72] From An essay on the general principles which regulate the application of machinery to manufactures and the mechanical arts (1827), which became the Encyclopædia Metropolitana article of 1829, Babbage developed the schematic classification of machines that, combined with discussion of factories, made up the first part of the book. The second part considered the "domestic and political economy" of manufactures.[73]

The book sold well, and quickly went to a fourth edition (1836).[74] Babbage represented his work as largely a result of actual observations in factories, British and abroad. It was not, in its first edition, intended to address deeper questions of political economy; the second (late 1832) did, with three further chapters including one on piece rate.[75] The book also contained ideas on rational design in factories, and profit sharing.[76]

"Babbage principle" edit

In Economy of Machinery was described what is now called the "Babbage principle". It pointed out commercial advantages available with more careful division of labour. As Babbage himself noted, it had already appeared in the work of Melchiorre Gioia in 1815.[77] The term was introduced in 1974 by Harry Braverman.[78] Related formulations are the "principle of multiples" of Philip Sargant Florence, and the "balance of processes".[79][80]

What Babbage remarked is that skilled workers typically spend parts of their time performing tasks that are below their skill level. If the labour process can be divided among several workers, labour costs may be cut by assigning only high-skill tasks to high-cost workers, restricting other tasks to lower-paid workers.[81] He also pointed out that training or apprenticeship can be taken as fixed costs; but that returns to scale are available by his approach of standardisation of tasks, therefore again favouring the factory system.[82] His view of human capital was restricted to minimising the time period for recovery of training costs.[83]

Publishing edit

Another aspect of the work was its detailed breakdown of the cost structure of book publishing. Babbage took the unpopular line, from the publishers' perspective, of exposing the trade's profitability.[84] He went as far as to name the organisers of the trade's restrictive practices.[85] Twenty years later he attended a meeting hosted by John Chapman to campaign against the Booksellers Association, still a cartel.[86]

Influence edit

It has been written that "what Arthur Young was to agriculture, Charles Babbage was to the factory visit and machinery".[87] Babbage's theories are said to have influenced the layout of the 1851 Great Exhibition,[88] and his views had a strong effect on his contemporary George Julius Poulett Scrope.[89] Karl Marx argued that the source of the productivity of the factory system was exactly the combination of the division of labour with machinery, building on Adam Smith, Babbage and Ure.[90] Where Marx picked up on Babbage and disagreed with Smith was on the motivation for division of labour by the manufacturer: as Babbage did, he wrote that it was for the sake of profitability, rather than productivity, and identified an impact on the concept of a trade.[91]

John Ruskin went further, to oppose completely what manufacturing in Babbage's sense stood for.[92] Babbage also affected the economic thinking of John Stuart Mill.[93] George Holyoake saw Babbage's detailed discussion of profit sharing as substantive, in the tradition of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, if requiring the attentions of a benevolent captain of industry, and ignored at the time.[94]

Works by Babbage and Ure were published in French translation in 1830;[95] On the Economy of Machinery was translated in 1833 into French by Édouard Biot, and into German the same year by Gottfried Friedenberg.[96] The French engineer and writer on industrial organisation Léon Lalanne was influenced by Babbage, but also by the economist Claude Lucien Bergery, in reducing the issues to "technology".[97] William Jevons connected Babbage's "economy of labour" with his own labour experiments of 1870.[98] The Babbage principle is an inherent assumption in Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific management.[99]

Mary Everest Boole claimed that there was profound influence – via her uncle George Everest – of Indian thought in general and Indian logic, in particular, on Babbage and on her husband George Boole, as well as on Augustus De Morgan:

Think what must have been the effect of the intense Hinduizing of three such men as Babbage, De Morgan, and George Boole on the mathematical atmosphere of 1830–65. What share had it in generating the Vector Analysis and the mathematics by which investigations in physical science are now conducted?[100]

Natural theology edit

In 1837, responding to the series of eight Bridgewater Treatises, Babbage published his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, under the title On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation. In this work Babbage weighed in on the side of uniformitarianism in a current debate.[101] He preferred the conception of creation in which a God-given natural law dominated, removing the need for continuous "contrivance".[102]

The book is a work of natural theology, and incorporates extracts from related correspondence of Herschel with Charles Lyell.[103] Babbage put forward the thesis that God had the omnipotence and foresight to create as a divine legislator. In this book, Babbage dealt with relating interpretations between science and religion; on the one hand, he insisted that "there exists no fatal collision between the words of Scripture and the facts of nature;" on the other hand, he wrote that the Book of Genesis was not meant to be read literally in relation to scientific terms. Against those who said these were in conflict, he wrote "that the contradiction they have imagined can have no real existence, and that whilst the testimony of Moses remains unimpeached, we may also be permitted to confide in the testimony of our senses."[104]

The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise was quoted extensively in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.[105] The parallel with Babbage's computing machines is made explicit, as allowing plausibility to the theory that transmutation of species could be pre-programmed.[106]

 
Plate from the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, showing a parametric family of algebraic curves acquiring isolated real points

Jonar Ganeri, author of Indian Logic, believes Babbage may have been influenced by Indian thought; one possible route would be through Henry Thomas Colebrooke.[107] Mary Everest Boole argues that Babbage was introduced to Indian thought in the 1820s by her uncle George Everest:

Some time about 1825, [Everest] came to England for two or three years, and made a fast and lifelong friendship with Herschel and with Babbage, who was then quite young. I would ask any fair-minded mathematician to read Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise and compare it with the works of his contemporaries in England; and then ask himself whence came the peculiar conception of the nature of miracle which underlies Babbage's ideas of Singular Points on Curves (Chap, viii) – from European Theology or Hindu Metaphysic? Oh! how the English clergy of that day hated Babbage's book![100]

Religious views edit

Babbage was raised in the Protestant form of the Christian faith, his family having inculcated in him an orthodox form of worship.[108] He explained:

My excellent mother taught me the usual forms of my daily and nightly prayer; and neither in my father nor my mother was there any mixture of bigotry and intolerance on the one hand, nor on the other of that unbecoming and familiar mode of addressing the Almighty which afterwards so much disgusted me in my youthful years.[109]

Rejecting the Athanasian Creed as a "direct contradiction in terms", in his youth he looked to Samuel Clarke's works on religion, of which Being and Attributes of God (1704) exerted a particularly strong influence on him. Later in life, Babbage concluded that "the true value of the Christian religion rested, not on speculative [theology] … but … upon those doctrines of kindness and benevolence which that religion claims and enforces, not merely in favour of man himself but of every creature susceptible of pain or of happiness."[110]

In his autobiography Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), Babbage wrote a whole chapter on the topic of religion, where he identified three sources of divine knowledge:[111]

  1. A priori or mystical experience
  2. From Revelation
  3. From the examination of the works of the Creator

He stated, on the basis of the design argument, that studying the works of nature had been the more appealing evidence, and the one which led him to actively profess the existence of God.[112][113] Advocating for natural theology, he wrote:

In the works of the Creator ever open to our examination, we possess a firm basis on which to raise the superstructure of an enlightened creed. The more man inquires into the laws which regulate the material universe, the more he is convinced that all its varied forms arise from the action of a few simple principles ... The works of the Creator, ever present to our senses, give a living and perpetual testimony of his power and goodness far surpassing any evidence transmitted through human testimony. The testimony of man becomes fainter at every stage of transmission, whilst each new inquiry into the works of the Almighty gives to us more exalted views of his wisdom, his goodness, and his power.[114]

Like Samuel Vince, Babbage also wrote a defence of the belief in divine miracles.[115] Against objections previously posed by David Hume, Babbage advocated for the belief of divine agency, stating "we must not measure the credibility or incredibility of an event by the narrow sphere of our own experience, nor forget that there is a Divine energy which overrides what we familiarly call the laws of nature."[116] He alluded to the limits of human experience, expressing: "all that we see in a miracle is an effect which is new to our observation, and whose cause is concealed. The cause may be beyond the sphere of our observation, and would be thus beyond the familiar sphere of nature; but this does not make the event a violation of any law of nature. The limits of man's observation lie within very narrow boundaries, and it would be arrogance to suppose that the reach of man's power is to form the limits of the natural world."[117]

Later life edit

 
The Illustrated London News (4 November 1871)[118]

The British Association was consciously modelled on the Deutsche Naturforscher-Versammlung, founded in 1822.[119] It rejected romantic science as well as metaphysics, and started to entrench the divisions of science from literature, and professionals from amateurs.[120] Belonging as he did to the "Wattite" faction in the BAAS, represented in particular by James Watt the younger, Babbage identified closely with industrialists. He wanted to go faster in the same directions, and had little time for the more gentlemanly component of its membership. Indeed, he subscribed to a version of conjectural history that placed industrial society as the culmination of human development (and shared this view with Herschel). A clash with Roderick Murchison led in 1838 to his withdrawal from further involvement.[121][122] At the end of the same year he sent in his resignation as Lucasian professor, walking away also from the Cambridge struggle with Whewell. His interests became more focussed, on computation and metrology, and on international contacts.[123]

Metrology programme edit

A project announced by Babbage was to tabulate all physical constants (referred to as "constants of nature", a phrase in itself a neologism), and then to compile an encyclopaedic work of numerical information. He was a pioneer in the field of "absolute measurement".[124] His ideas followed on from those of Johann Christian Poggendorff, and were mentioned to Brewster in 1832. There were to be 19 categories of constants, and Ian Hacking sees these as reflecting in part Babbage's "eccentric enthusiasms".[125] Babbage's paper On Tables of the Constants of Nature and Art was reprinted by the Smithsonian Institution in 1856, with an added note that the physical tables of Arnold Henry Guyot "will form a part of the important work proposed in this article".[126]

Exact measurement was also key to the development of machine tools. Here again Babbage is considered a pioneer, with Henry Maudslay, William Sellers, and Joseph Whitworth.[127]

Engineer and inventor edit

Through the Royal Society Babbage acquired the friendship of the engineer Marc Brunel. It was through Brunel that Babbage knew of Joseph Clement, and so came to encounter the artisans whom he observed in his work on manufactures.[128] Babbage provided an introduction for Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1830, for a contact with the proposed Bristol & Birmingham Railway.[129] He carried out studies, around 1838, to show the superiority of the broad gauge for railways, used by Brunel's Great Western Railway.[130][131]

In 1838, Babbage invented the pilot (also called a cow-catcher), the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles;[132] he also constructed a dynamometer car.[130] His eldest son, Benjamin Herschel Babbage, worked as an engineer for Brunel on the railways before emigrating to Australia in the 1850s.[133]

Babbage also invented an ophthalmoscope, which he gave to Thomas Wharton Jones for testing. Jones, however, ignored it. The device only came into use after being independently invented by Hermann von Helmholtz.[134][135]

Cryptography edit

Babbage achieved notable results in cryptography, though this was still not known a century after his death. Letter frequency was category 18 of Babbage's tabulation project. Joseph Henry later defended interest in it, in the absence of the facts, as relevant to the management of movable type.[125]

As early as 1845, Babbage had solved a cipher that had been posed as a challenge by his nephew Henry Hollier, and in the process, he made a discovery about ciphers that were based on Vigenère tables. Specifically, he realised that enciphering plain text with a keyword rendered the cipher text subject to modular arithmetic.[136] During the Crimean War of the 1850s, Babbage broke Vigenère's autokey cipher as well as the much weaker cipher that is called Vigenère cipher today.[137] His discovery was kept a military secret, and was not published. Credit for the result was instead given to Friedrich Kasiski, a Prussian infantry officer, who made the same discovery some years later.[138] However, in 1854, Babbage published the solution of a Vigenère cipher, which had been published previously in the Journal of the Society of Arts.[136][139] In 1855, Babbage also published a short letter, "Cypher Writing", in the same journal.[140] Nevertheless, his priority was not established until 1985.[136][141]

Public nuisances edit

Babbage involved himself in well-publicised but unpopular campaigns against public nuisances. He once counted all the broken panes of glass of a factory, publishing in 1857 a "Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows": Of 464 broken panes, 14 were caused by "drunken men, women or boys".[142][143][144]

Babbage's distaste for commoners (the Mob) included writing "Observations of Street Nuisances" in 1864, as well as tallying up 165 "nuisances" over a period of 80 days. He especially hated street music, and in particular the music of organ grinders, against whom he railed in various venues. The following quotation is typical:

It is difficult to estimate the misery inflicted upon thousands of persons, and the absolute pecuniary penalty imposed upon multitudes of intellectual workers by the loss of their time, destroyed by organ-grinders and other similar nuisances.[145]

Babbage was not alone in his campaign. A convert to the cause was the MP Michael Thomas Bass.[146]

In the 1860s, Babbage also took up the anti-hoop-rolling campaign. He blamed hoop-rolling boys for driving their iron hoops under horses' legs, with the result that the rider is thrown and very often the horse breaks a leg.[147] Babbage achieved a certain notoriety in this matter, being denounced in debate in Commons in 1864 for "commencing a crusade against the popular game of tip-cat and the trundling of hoops."[148]

Computing pioneer edit

 
Part of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (#1), assembled after his death by his son, Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918), using parts found in Charles' laboratory. Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge, England.

Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers. That they were not actually completed was largely because of funding problems and clashes of personality, most notably with George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer Royal.[149]

Babbage directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some modest success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanised. For more than ten years he received government funding for his project, which amounted to £17,000, but eventually the Treasury lost confidence in him.[150]

While Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was similar to that of a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction-based, the control unit could make conditional jumps, and the machine had a separate I/O unit.[150]

Background on mathematical tables edit

In Babbage's time, printed mathematical tables were calculated by human computers; in other words, by hand. They were central to navigation, science and engineering, as well as mathematics. Mistakes were known to occur in transcription as well as calculation.[53]

At Cambridge, Babbage saw the fallibility of this process, and the opportunity of adding mechanisation into its management. His own account of his path towards mechanical computation references a particular occasion:

In 1812 he was sitting in his rooms in the Analytical Society looking at a table of logarithms, which he knew to be full of mistakes, when the idea occurred to him of computing all tabular functions by machinery. The French government had produced several tables by a new method. Three or four of their mathematicians decided how to compute the tables, half a dozen more broke down the operations into simple stages, and the work itself, which was restricted to addition and subtraction, was done by eighty computers who knew only these two arithmetical processes. Here, for the first time, mass production was applied to arithmetic, and Babbage was seized by the idea that the labours of the unskilled computers [people] could be taken over completely by machinery which would be quicker and more reliable.[151]

There was another period, seven years later, when his interest was aroused by the issues around computation of mathematical tables. The French official initiative by Gaspard de Prony, and its problems of implementation, were familiar to him. After the Napoleonic Wars came to a close, scientific contacts were renewed on the level of personal contact: in 1819 Charles Blagden was in Paris looking into the printing of the stalled de Prony project, and lobbying for the support of the Royal Society. In works of the 1820s and 1830s, Babbage referred in detail to de Prony's project.[152][153]

Difference engine edit

Main article: Difference engine
 
The Science Museum's Difference Engine No. 2, built from Babbage's design
 
Portion of Babbage's difference engine

Babbage began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions. It was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of finite differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division.[154]

For a prototype difference engine, Babbage brought in Joseph Clement to implement the design, in 1823. Clement worked to high standards, but his machine tools were particularly elaborate. Under the standard terms of business of the time, he could charge for their construction, and would also own them. He and Babbage fell out over costs around 1831.[155]

Some parts of the prototype survive in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.[156] This prototype evolved into the "first difference engine". It remained unfinished and the finished portion is located at the Science Museum in London. This first difference engine would have been composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen short tons (13,600 kg), and would have been 8 ft (2.4 m) tall. Although Babbage received ample funding for the project, it was never completed. He later (1847–1849) produced detailed drawings for an improved version,"Difference Engine No. 2", but did not receive funding from the British government. His design was finally constructed in 1989–1991, using his plans and 19th-century manufacturing tolerances. It performed its first calculation at the Science Museum, London, returning results to 31 digits.[citation needed]

Nine years later, in 2000, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine.[157]

Completed models edit

The Science Museum has constructed two Difference Engines according to Babbage's plans for the Difference Engine No 2. One is owned by the museum. The other, owned by the technology multimillionaire Nathan Myhrvold, went on exhibition at the Computer History Museum[158] in Mountain View, California on 10 May 2008.[159] The two models that have been constructed are not replicas.

Analytical Engine edit

Main article: Analytical Engine
 
Portion of the mill with a printing mechanism of the Analytical Engine, built by Charles Babbage, as displayed at the Science Museum (London)

After the attempt at making the first difference engine fell through, Babbage worked to design a more complex machine called the Analytical Engine. He hired C. G. Jarvis, who had previously worked for Clement as a draughtsman.[160] The Analytical Engine marks the transition from mechanised arithmetic to fully-fledged general purpose computation. It is largely on it that Babbage's standing as computer pioneer rests.[161]

The major innovation was that the Analytical Engine was to be programmed using punched cards: the Engine was intended to use loops of Jacquard's punched cards to control a mechanical calculator, which could use as input the results of preceding computations.[162][163] The machine was also intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers, including sequential control, branching and looping. It would have been the first mechanical device to be, in principle, Turing-complete. The Engine was not a single physical machine, but rather a succession of designs that Babbage tinkered with until his death in 1871.[citation needed]

 
Part of the Analytical Engine on display, in 1843, left of centre in this engraving of the King George III Museum in King's College, London

Ada Lovelace and Italian followers edit

Ada Lovelace, who corresponded with Babbage during his development of the Analytical Engine, is credited with developing an algorithm that would enable the Engine to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers.[164] Despite documentary evidence in Lovelace's own handwriting,[164] some scholars dispute to what extent the ideas were Lovelace's own.[165][166][167] For this achievement, she is often described as the first computer programmer;[168][failed verification] though no programming language had yet been invented.[164][169]

Lovelace also translated and wrote literature supporting the project. Describing the engine's programming by punch cards, she wrote: "We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."[163]

Babbage visited Turin in 1840 at the invitation of Giovanni Plana, who had developed in 1831 an analog computing machine that served as a perpetual calendar. Here in 1840 in Turin, Babbage gave the only public explanation and lectures about the Analytical Engine.[170][171] In 1842 Charles Wheatstone approached Lovelace to translate a paper of Luigi Menabrea, who had taken notes of Babbage's Turin talks; and Babbage asked her to add something of her own. Fortunato Prandi who acted as interpreter in Turin was an Italian exile and follower of Giuseppe Mazzini.[172]

Swedish followers edit

Per Georg Scheutz wrote about the difference engine in 1830, and experimented in automated computation. After 1834 and Lardner's Edinburgh Review article he set up a project of his own, doubting whether Babbage's initial plan could be carried out. This he pushed through with his son, Edvard Scheutz.[173] Another Swedish engine was that of Martin Wiberg (1860).[174]

Legacy edit

In 2011, researchers in Britain proposed a multimillion-pound project, "Plan 28",[175] to construct Babbage's Analytical Engine. Since Babbage's plans were continually being refined and were never completed, they intended to engage the public in the project and crowd-source the analysis of what should be built.[176] It would have the equivalent of 675 bytes of memory, and run at a clock speed of about 7 Hz. They hoped to complete it by the 150th anniversary of Babbage's death, in 2021.[177]

Advances in MEMS and nanotechnology have led to recent high-tech experiments in mechanical computation. The benefits suggested include operation in high radiation or high temperature environments.[178] These modern versions of mechanical computation were highlighted in The Economist in its special "end of the millennium" black cover issue in an article entitled "Babbage's Last Laugh".[179]

Due to his association with the town Babbage was chosen in 2007 to appear on the 5 Totnes pound note.[180] An image of Babbage features in the British cultural icons section of the newly designed British passport in 2015.[181]

Family edit

 
Babbage's grave at Kensal Green Cemetery, London, photographed in 2014

On 25 July 1814, Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore, sister of British parliamentarian William Wolryche-Whitmore, at St. Michael's Church in Teignmouth, Devon.[20] The couple lived at Dudmaston Hall,[182] Shropshire (where Babbage engineered the central heating system), before moving to 5 Devonshire Street, London in 1815.[183]

Charles and Georgiana had eight children,[184] but only four – Benjamin Herschel, Georgiana Whitmore, Dugald Bromhead and Henry Prevost – survived childhood. Charles' wife Georgiana died in Worcester on 1 September 1827, the same year as his father, their second son (also named Charles) and their newborn son Alexander.

  • Benjamin Herschel Babbage (1815–1878)
  • Charles Whitmore Babbage (1817–1827)
  • Georgiana Whitmore Babbage (1818 – 26 September 1834)[185]
  • Edward Stewart Babbage (1819–1821)
  • Francis Moore Babbage (1821–????)
  • Dugald Bromhead (Bromheald?) Babbage (1823–1901)
  • (Maj-Gen) Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918)
  • Alexander Forbes Babbage (1827–1827)

His youngest surviving son, Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918), went on to create six small demonstration pieces for Difference Engine No. 1 based on his father's designs,[186] one of which was sent to Harvard University where it was later discovered by Howard H. Aiken, pioneer of the Harvard Mark I. Henry Prevost's 1910 Analytical Engine Mill, previously on display at Dudmaston Hall, is now on display at the Science Museum.[187]

Death edit

 
Charles Babbage's brain is on display at The Science Museum.

Babbage lived and worked for over 40 years at 1 Dorset Street, Marylebone, where he died, at the age of 79, on 18 October 1871; he was buried in London's Kensal Green Cemetery. According to Horsley, Babbage died "of renal inadequacy, secondary to cystitis."[188] He had declined both a knighthood[failed verification] and baronetcy. He also argued against hereditary peerages, favouring life peerages instead.[189]

Autopsy report edit

In 1983, the autopsy report for Charles Babbage was discovered and later published by his great-great-grandson.[190][191] A copy of the original is also available.[192] Half of Babbage's brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London.[193] The other half of Babbage's brain is on display in the Science Museum, London.[194]

Memorials edit

 
Green plaque in London

There is a black plaque commemorating the 40 years Babbage spent at 1 Dorset Street, London.[195] Locations, institutions and other things named after Babbage include:

In fiction and film edit

Babbage frequently appears in steampunk works; he has been called an iconic figure of the genre.[206] Other works in which Babbage appears include:

Publications edit

 
Account of the repetition of M. Arago's experiments on the magnetism manifested by various substances during the act of rotation, 1825
  • Account of the repetition of M. Arago's experiments on the magnetism manifested by various substances during the act of rotation. London: William Nicol. 1825.
  • Babbage, Charles (1826). A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives. London: J. Mawman. charles babbage.
  • Babbage, Charles (1830). Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. London: B. Fellowes. charles babbage.
  • Abstract of a paper entitled Observations on the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli. London: Richard Taylor. 1834.
  • Babbage, Charles (1835). On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures  (4th ed.). London: Charles Knight.
  • Babbage, Charles (1837). The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, a Fragment. London: John Murray. charles babbage. (Reissued by Cambridge University Press 2009, ISBN 978-1-108-00000-0.)
  • Babbage, Charles (1841). Table of the Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108000. London: William Clowes and Sons. charles babbage. (The LOCOMAT site contains a reconstruction of this table.)
  • Babbage, Charles (1851). The Exposition of 1851. London: John Murray. charles babbage.
  • Laws of mechanical notation. 1851.
  • Babbage, Charles (1864). Passages from the Life of a Philosopher . London: Longman.
  • Babbage, Charles (1989). Hyman, Anthony (ed.). Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-34311-4.
  • Babbage, Charles (1989) [1815]. Charles Babbage's Lectures On Astronomy. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)[213]

See also edit

Notes edit

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References edit

  • Craik, Alex D. D. (February 2005). "Prehistory of Faà di Bruno's Formula". The American Mathematical Monthly. 112 (2): 119–130. doi:10.2307/30037410. JSTOR 30037410..

External links edit

 
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  • Works by Charles Babbage in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
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  • "Archival material relating to Charles Babbage". UK National Archives.  
  • The Babbage Papers The papers held by the Science Museum Library and Archives which relate mostly to Babbage's automatic calculating engines
  • The Babbage Engine: Computer History Museum, Mountain View CA, US. Multi-page account of Babbage, his engines and his associates, including a video of the Museum's functioning replica of the Difference Engine No 2 in action
  • Analytical Engine Museum John Walker's (of AutoCAD fame) comprehensive catalogue of the complete technical works relating to Babbage's machine.
  • A history at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews Scotland.
  • Mr. Charles Babbage: obituary from The Times (1871)
  • The Babbage Pages
  • Charles Babbage, The Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania
  • : an overview of how it works
  • "On a Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery", 1826. Original edition
  • Charles Babbage Institute: pages on "Who Was Charles Babbage?" including biographical note, description of Difference Engine No. 2, publications by Babbage, archival and published sources on Babbage, sources on Babbage and Ada Lovelace
  • Babbage's Calculating Machine (1872) – full digital facsimile from Linda Hall Library
  • Author profile in the database zbMATH
  • The 'difference engine' built by Georg & Edvard Scheutz in 1843
  • Portraits of Charles Babbage at the National Portrait Gallery, London  

January 19, 2024
charles, babbage, babbage, redirects, here, other, uses, babbage, disambiguation, december, 1791, october, 1871, english, polymath, mathematician, philosopher, inventor, mechanical, engineer, babbage, originated, concept, digital, programmable, computer, frsba. Babbage redirects here For other uses see Babbage disambiguation Charles Babbage KH FRS ˈ b ae b ɪ dʒ 26 December 1791 18 October 1871 was an English polymath 1 A mathematician philosopher inventor and mechanical engineer Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer 2 Charles BabbageKH FRSBabbage in 1860Born 1791 12 26 26 December 1791London EnglandDied18 October 1871 1871 10 18 aged 79 Marylebone London EnglandAlma materPeterhouse CambridgeKnown forAnalytical engineDifference engineSpouseGeorgiana Whitmore m 1814 died 1827 wbr Children8 including Benjamin Herschel BabbageRelativesWilliam Wolryche Whitmore brother in law AwardsGold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society 1824 Scientific careerFieldsMathematics engineering political economy computer scienceInstitutionsTrinity College Cambridge Peterhouse CambridgeSignatureBabbage is considered by some to be father of the computer 2 3 4 5 Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer the Difference Engine that eventually led to more complex electronic designs though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage s Analytical Engine programmed using a principle openly borrowed from the Jacquard loom 2 6 Babbage had a broad range of interests in addition to his work on computers covered in his 1832 book Economy of Manufactures and Machinery 7 His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as pre eminent among the many polymaths of his century 1 Babbage who died before the complete successful engineering of many of his designs including his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine remained a prominent figure in the ideating of computing Parts of Babbage s incomplete mechanisms are on display in the Science Museum in London In 1991 a functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage s original plans Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage s machine would have worked Contents 1 Early life 2 At the University of Cambridge 3 After Cambridge 3 1 Royal Astronomical Society 3 2 British Lagrangian School 4 Academic 4 1 Declinarians learned societies and the BAAS 4 2 On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures 4 2 1 Babbage principle 4 2 2 Publishing 4 2 3 Influence 4 3 Natural theology 4 4 Religious views 5 Later life 5 1 Metrology programme 5 2 Engineer and inventor 5 3 Cryptography 5 4 Public nuisances 6 Computing pioneer 6 1 Background on mathematical tables 6 2 Difference engine 6 2 1 Completed models 6 3 Analytical Engine 6 4 Ada Lovelace and Italian followers 6 5 Swedish followers 6 6 Legacy 7 Family 8 Death 8 1 Autopsy report 9 Memorials 10 In fiction and film 11 Publications 12 See also 13 Notes 14 References 15 External linksEarly life edit nbsp Portrait of Charles Babbage c 1820 Babbage s birthplace is disputed but according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography he was most likely born at 44 Crosby Row Walworth Road London England 8 A blue plaque on the junction of Larcom Street and Walworth Road commemorates the event 9 His date of birth was given in his obituary in The Times as 26 December 1792 but then a nephew wrote to say that Babbage was born one year earlier in 1791 The parish register of St Mary s Newington London shows that Babbage was baptised on 6 January 1792 supporting a birth year of 1791 10 11 12 nbsp Babbage c 1850Babbage was one of four children of Benjamin Babbage and Betsy Plumleigh Teape His father was a banking partner of William Praed in founding Praed s amp Co of Fleet Street London in 1801 13 In 1808 the Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth Around the age of eight Babbage was sent to a country school in Alphington near Exeter to recover from a life threatening fever For a short time he attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes South Devon but his health forced him back to private tutors for a time 14 Babbage then joined the 30 student Holmwood Academy in Baker Street Enfield Middlesex under the Reverend Stephen Freeman 15 The academy had a library that prompted Babbage s love of mathematics He studied with two more private tutors after leaving the academy The first was a clergyman near Cambridge through him Babbage encountered Charles Simeon and his evangelical followers but the tuition was not what he needed 16 He was brought home to study at the Totnes school this was at age 16 or 17 17 The second was an Oxford tutor under whom Babbage reached a level in Classics sufficient to be accepted by the University of Cambridge At the University of Cambridge editBabbage arrived at Trinity College Cambridge in October 1810 18 He was already self taught in some parts of contemporary mathematics 19 he had read Robert Woodhouse Joseph Louis Lagrange and Marie Agnesi As a result he was disappointed in the standard mathematical instruction available at the university 8 Babbage John Herschel George Peacock and several other friends formed the Analytical Society in 1812 they were also close to Edward Ryan 20 As a student Babbage was also a member of other societies such as The Ghost Club concerned with investigating supernatural phenomena and the Extractors Club dedicated to liberating its members from the madhouse should any be committed to one 21 22 In 1812 Babbage transferred to Peterhouse Cambridge 18 He was the top mathematician there but did not graduate with honours He instead received a degree without examination in 1814 He had defended a thesis that was considered blasphemous in the preliminary public disputation but it is not known whether this fact is related to his not sitting the examination 8 After Cambridge editConsidering his reputation Babbage quickly made progress He lectured to the Royal Institution on astronomy in 1815 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816 23 After graduation on the other hand he applied for positions unsuccessfully and had little in the way of a career In 1816 he was a candidate for a teaching job at Haileybury College he had recommendations from James Ivory and John Playfair but lost out to Henry Walter 24 In 1819 Babbage and Herschel visited Paris and the Society of Arcueil meeting leading French mathematicians and physicists 25 That year Babbage applied to be professor at the University of Edinburgh with the recommendation of Pierre Simon Laplace the post went to William Wallace 26 27 28 With Herschel Babbage worked on the electrodynamics of Arago s rotations publishing in 1825 Their explanations were only transitional being picked up and broadened by Michael Faraday The phenomena are now part of the theory of eddy currents and Babbage and Herschel missed some of the clues to unification of electromagnetic theory staying close to Ampere s force law 29 Babbage purchased the actuarial tables of George Barrett who died in 1821 leaving unpublished work and surveyed the field in 1826 in Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives 30 This interest followed a project to set up an insurance company prompted by Francis Baily and mooted in 1824 but not carried out 31 Babbage did calculate actuarial tables for that scheme using Equitable Society mortality data from 1762 onwards 32 During this whole period Babbage depended awkwardly on his father s support given his father s attitude to his early marriage of 1814 he and Edward Ryan wedded the Whitmore sisters He made a home in Marylebone in London and established a large family 33 On his father s death in 1827 Babbage inherited a large estate value around 100 000 equivalent to 9 21 million or 12 6 million today making him independently wealthy 8 After his wife s death in the same year he spent time travelling In Italy he met Leopold II Grand Duke of Tuscany foreshadowing a later visit to Piedmont 23 In April 1828 he was in Rome and relying on Herschel to manage the difference engine project when he heard that he had become a professor at Cambridge a position he had three times failed to obtain in 1820 1823 and 1826 34 Royal Astronomical Society edit Babbage was instrumental in founding the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820 initially known as the Astronomical Society of London 35 Its original aims were to reduce astronomical calculations to a more standard form and to circulate data 36 These directions were closely connected with Babbage s ideas on computation and in 1824 he won its Gold Medal cited for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables 37 Babbage s motivation to overcome errors in tables by mechanisation had been a commonplace since Dionysius Lardner wrote about it in 1834 in the Edinburgh Review under Babbage s guidance 38 39 The context of these developments is still debated Babbage s own account of the origin of the difference engine begins with the Astronomical Society s wish to improve The Nautical Almanac Babbage and Herschel were asked to oversee a trial project to recalculate some part of those tables With the results to hand discrepancies were found This was in 1821 or 1822 and was the occasion on which Babbage formulated his idea for mechanical computation 40 The issue of the Nautical Almanac is now described as a legacy of a polarisation in British science caused by attitudes to Sir Joseph Banks who had died in 1820 41 nbsp A portion of the difference engineBabbage studied the requirements to establish a modern postal system with his friend Thomas Frederick Colby concluding there should be a uniform rate that was put into effect with the introduction of the Uniform Fourpenny Post supplanted by the Uniform Penny Post 42 in 1839 and 1840 Colby was another of the founding group of the Society 43 He was also in charge of the Survey of Ireland Herschel and Babbage were present at a celebrated operation of that survey the remeasuring of the Lough Foyle baseline 44 British Lagrangian School edit The Analytical Society had initially been no more than an undergraduate provocation During this period it had some more substantial achievements In 1816 Babbage Herschel and Peacock published a translation from French of the lectures of Sylvestre Lacroix which was then the state of the art calculus textbook 45 Reference to Lagrange in calculus terms marks out the application of what are now called formal power series British mathematicians had used them from about 1730 to 1760 As re introduced they were not simply applied as notations in differential calculus They opened up the fields of functional equations including the difference equations fundamental to the difference engine and operator D module methods for differential equations The analogy of difference and differential equations was notationally changing D to D as a finite difference becomes infinitesimal These symbolic directions became popular as operational calculus and pushed to the point of diminishing returns The Cauchy concept of limit was kept at bay 46 Woodhouse had already founded this second British Lagrangian School with its treatment of Taylor series as formal 47 In this context function composition is complicated to express because the chain rule is not simply applied to second and higher derivatives This matter was known to Woodhouse by 1803 who took from Louis Francois Antoine Arbogast what is now called Faa di Bruno s formula In essence it was known to Abraham De Moivre 1697 Herschel found the method impressive Babbage knew of it and it was later noted by Ada Lovelace as compatible with the analytical engine 48 In the period to 1820 Babbage worked intensively on functional equations in general and resisted both conventional finite differences and Arbogast s approach in which D and D were related by the simple additive case of the exponential map But via Herschel he was influenced by Arbogast s ideas in the matter of iteration i e composing a function with itself possibly many times 47 Writing in a major paper on functional equations in the Philosophical Transactions 1815 6 Babbage said his starting point was work of Gaspard Monge 49 Academic editFrom 1828 to 1839 Babbage was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge Not a conventional resident don and inattentive to his teaching responsibilities he wrote three topical books during this period of his life He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1832 50 Babbage was out of sympathy with colleagues George Biddell Airy his predecessor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College Cambridge 51 thought an issue should be made of his lack of interest in lecturing Babbage planned to lecture in 1831 on political economy Babbage s reforming direction looked to see university education more inclusive universities doing more for research a broader syllabus and more interest in applications but William Whewell found the programme unacceptable A controversy Babbage had with Richard Jones lasted for six years 52 He never did give a lecture 53 It was during this period that Babbage tried to enter politics Simon Schaffer writes that his views of the 1830s included disestablishment of the Church of England a broader political franchise and inclusion of manufacturers as stakeholders 54 He twice stood for Parliament as a candidate for the borough of Finsbury In 1832 he came in third among five candidates missing out by some 500 votes in the two member constituency when two other reformist candidates Thomas Wakley and Christopher Temple split the vote 55 56 In his memoirs Babbage related how this election brought him the friendship of Samuel Rogers his brother Henry Rogers wished to support Babbage again but died within days 57 In 1834 Babbage finished last among four 58 59 60 In 1832 Babbage Herschel and Ivory were appointed Knights of the Royal Guelphic Order however they were not subsequently made knights bachelor to entitle them to the prefix Sir which often came with appointments to that foreign order though Herschel was later created a baronet 61 Declinarians learned societies and the BAAS edit nbsp Letter to Sir Humphry Davy 1822Babbage now emerged as a polemicist One of his biographers notes that all his books contain a campaigning element His Reflections on the Decline of Science and some of its Causes 1830 stands out however for its sharp attacks It aimed to improve British science and more particularly to oust Davies Gilbert as President of the Royal Society which Babbage wished to reform 62 It was written out of pique when Babbage hoped to become the junior secretary of the Royal Society as Herschel was the senior but failed because of his antagonism to Humphry Davy 63 Michael Faraday had a reply written by Gerrit Moll as On the Alleged Decline of Science in England 1831 64 On the front of the Royal Society Babbage had no impact with the bland election of the Duke of Sussex to succeed Gilbert the same year As a broad manifesto on the other hand his Decline led promptly to the formation in 1831 of the British Association for the Advancement of Science BAAS 64 The Mechanics Magazine in 1831 identified as Declinarians the followers of Babbage In an unsympathetic tone it pointed out David Brewster writing in the Quarterly Review as another leader with the barb that both Babbage and Brewster had received public money 65 In the debate of the period on statistics qua data collection and what is now statistical inference the BAAS in its Statistical Section which owed something also to Whewell opted for data collection This Section was the sixth established in 1833 with Babbage as chairman and John Elliot Drinkwater as secretary The foundation of the Statistical Society followed 66 67 68 Babbage was its public face backed by Richard Jones and Robert Malthus 69 On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures edit nbsp On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures 1835 nbsp Babbage s notation for machine parts explanation from On a method of expressing by signs the action of machinery 1827 of his Mechanical Notation invented for his own use in understanding the work on the difference engine and an influence on the conception of the analytical engine 70 Babbage published On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures 1832 on the organisation of industrial production It was an influential early work of operational research 71 John Rennie the Younger in addressing the Institution of Civil Engineers on manufacturing in 1846 mentioned mostly surveys in encyclopaedias and Babbage s book was first an article in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana the form in which Rennie noted it in the company of related works by John Farey Jr Peter Barlow and Andrew Ure 72 From An essay on the general principles which regulate the application of machinery to manufactures and the mechanical arts 1827 which became the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana article of 1829 Babbage developed the schematic classification of machines that combined with discussion of factories made up the first part of the book The second part considered the domestic and political economy of manufactures 73 The book sold well and quickly went to a fourth edition 1836 74 Babbage represented his work as largely a result of actual observations in factories British and abroad It was not in its first edition intended to address deeper questions of political economy the second late 1832 did with three further chapters including one on piece rate 75 The book also contained ideas on rational design in factories and profit sharing 76 Babbage principle edit In Economy of Machinery was described what is now called the Babbage principle It pointed out commercial advantages available with more careful division of labour As Babbage himself noted it had already appeared in the work of Melchiorre Gioia in 1815 77 The term was introduced in 1974 by Harry Braverman 78 Related formulations are the principle of multiples of Philip Sargant Florence and the balance of processes 79 80 What Babbage remarked is that skilled workers typically spend parts of their time performing tasks that are below their skill level If the labour process can be divided among several workers labour costs may be cut by assigning only high skill tasks to high cost workers restricting other tasks to lower paid workers 81 He also pointed out that training or apprenticeship can be taken as fixed costs but that returns to scale are available by his approach of standardisation of tasks therefore again favouring the factory system 82 His view of human capital was restricted to minimising the time period for recovery of training costs 83 Publishing edit Another aspect of the work was its detailed breakdown of the cost structure of book publishing Babbage took the unpopular line from the publishers perspective of exposing the trade s profitability 84 He went as far as to name the organisers of the trade s restrictive practices 85 Twenty years later he attended a meeting hosted by John Chapman to campaign against the Booksellers Association still a cartel 86 Influence edit It has been written that what Arthur Young was to agriculture Charles Babbage was to the factory visit and machinery 87 Babbage s theories are said to have influenced the layout of the 1851 Great Exhibition 88 and his views had a strong effect on his contemporary George Julius Poulett Scrope 89 Karl Marx argued that the source of the productivity of the factory system was exactly the combination of the division of labour with machinery building on Adam Smith Babbage and Ure 90 Where Marx picked up on Babbage and disagreed with Smith was on the motivation for division of labour by the manufacturer as Babbage did he wrote that it was for the sake of profitability rather than productivity and identified an impact on the concept of a trade 91 John Ruskin went further to oppose completely what manufacturing in Babbage s sense stood for 92 Babbage also affected the economic thinking of John Stuart Mill 93 George Holyoake saw Babbage s detailed discussion of profit sharing as substantive in the tradition of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier if requiring the attentions of a benevolent captain of industry and ignored at the time 94 Works by Babbage and Ure were published in French translation in 1830 95 On the Economy of Machinery was translated in 1833 into French by Edouard Biot and into German the same year by Gottfried Friedenberg 96 The French engineer and writer on industrial organisation Leon Lalanne was influenced by Babbage but also by the economist Claude Lucien Bergery in reducing the issues to technology 97 William Jevons connected Babbage s economy of labour with his own labour experiments of 1870 98 The Babbage principle is an inherent assumption in Frederick Winslow Taylor s scientific management 99 Mary Everest Boole claimed that there was profound influence via her uncle George Everest of Indian thought in general and Indian logic in particular on Babbage and on her husband George Boole as well as on Augustus De Morgan Think what must have been the effect of the intense Hinduizing of three such men as Babbage De Morgan and George Boole on the mathematical atmosphere of 1830 65 What share had it in generating the Vector Analysis and the mathematics by which investigations in physical science are now conducted 100 Natural theology edit In 1837 responding to the series of eight Bridgewater Treatises Babbage published his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise under the title On the Power Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation In this work Babbage weighed in on the side of uniformitarianism in a current debate 101 He preferred the conception of creation in which a God given natural law dominated removing the need for continuous contrivance 102 The book is a work of natural theology and incorporates extracts from related correspondence of Herschel with Charles Lyell 103 Babbage put forward the thesis that God had the omnipotence and foresight to create as a divine legislator In this book Babbage dealt with relating interpretations between science and religion on the one hand he insisted that there exists no fatal collision between the words of Scripture and the facts of nature on the other hand he wrote that the Book of Genesis was not meant to be read literally in relation to scientific terms Against those who said these were in conflict he wrote that the contradiction they have imagined can have no real existence and that whilst the testimony of Moses remains unimpeached we may also be permitted to confide in the testimony of our senses 104 The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise was quoted extensively in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation 105 The parallel with Babbage s computing machines is made explicit as allowing plausibility to the theory that transmutation of species could be pre programmed 106 nbsp Plate from the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise showing a parametric family of algebraic curves acquiring isolated real pointsJonar Ganeri author of Indian Logic believes Babbage may have been influenced by Indian thought one possible route would be through Henry Thomas Colebrooke 107 Mary Everest Boole argues that Babbage was introduced to Indian thought in the 1820s by her uncle George Everest Some time about 1825 Everest came to England for two or three years and made a fast and lifelong friendship with Herschel and with Babbage who was then quite young I would ask any fair minded mathematician to read Babbage s Ninth Bridgewater Treatise and compare it with the works of his contemporaries in England and then ask himself whence came the peculiar conception of the nature of miracle which underlies Babbage s ideas of Singular Points on Curves Chap viii from European Theology or Hindu Metaphysic Oh how the English clergy of that day hated Babbage s book 100 Religious views edit Babbage was raised in the Protestant form of the Christian faith his family having inculcated in him an orthodox form of worship 108 He explained My excellent mother taught me the usual forms of my daily and nightly prayer and neither in my father nor my mother was there any mixture of bigotry and intolerance on the one hand nor on the other of that unbecoming and familiar mode of addressing the Almighty which afterwards so much disgusted me in my youthful years 109 Rejecting the Athanasian Creed as a direct contradiction in terms in his youth he looked to Samuel Clarke s works on religion of which Being and Attributes of God 1704 exerted a particularly strong influence on him Later in life Babbage concluded that the true value of the Christian religion rested not on speculative theology but upon those doctrines of kindness and benevolence which that religion claims and enforces not merely in favour of man himself but of every creature susceptible of pain or of happiness 110 In his autobiography Passages from the Life of a Philosopher 1864 Babbage wrote a whole chapter on the topic of religion where he identified three sources of divine knowledge 111 A priori or mystical experience From Revelation From the examination of the works of the CreatorHe stated on the basis of the design argument that studying the works of nature had been the more appealing evidence and the one which led him to actively profess the existence of God 112 113 Advocating for natural theology he wrote In the works of the Creator ever open to our examination we possess a firm basis on which to raise the superstructure of an enlightened creed The more man inquires into the laws which regulate the material universe the more he is convinced that all its varied forms arise from the action of a few simple principles The works of the Creator ever present to our senses give a living and perpetual testimony of his power and goodness far surpassing any evidence transmitted through human testimony The testimony of man becomes fainter at every stage of transmission whilst each new inquiry into the works of the Almighty gives to us more exalted views of his wisdom his goodness and his power 114 Like Samuel Vince Babbage also wrote a defence of the belief in divine miracles 115 Against objections previously posed by David Hume Babbage advocated for the belief of divine agency stating we must not measure the credibility or incredibility of an event by the narrow sphere of our own experience nor forget that there is a Divine energy which overrides what we familiarly call the laws of nature 116 He alluded to the limits of human experience expressing all that we see in a miracle is an effect which is new to our observation and whose cause is concealed The cause may be beyond the sphere of our observation and would be thus beyond the familiar sphere of nature but this does not make the event a violation of any law of nature The limits of man s observation lie within very narrow boundaries and it would be arrogance to suppose that the reach of man s power is to form the limits of the natural world 117 Later life edit nbsp The Illustrated London News 4 November 1871 118 The British Association was consciously modelled on the Deutsche Naturforscher Versammlung founded in 1822 119 It rejected romantic science as well as metaphysics and started to entrench the divisions of science from literature and professionals from amateurs 120 Belonging as he did to the Wattite faction in the BAAS represented in particular by James Watt the younger Babbage identified closely with industrialists He wanted to go faster in the same directions and had little time for the more gentlemanly component of its membership Indeed he subscribed to a version of conjectural history that placed industrial society as the culmination of human development and shared this view with Herschel A clash with Roderick Murchison led in 1838 to his withdrawal from further involvement 121 122 At the end of the same year he sent in his resignation as Lucasian professor walking away also from the Cambridge struggle with Whewell His interests became more focussed on computation and metrology and on international contacts 123 Metrology programme edit A project announced by Babbage was to tabulate all physical constants referred to as constants of nature a phrase in itself a neologism and then to compile an encyclopaedic work of numerical information He was a pioneer in the field of absolute measurement 124 His ideas followed on from those of Johann Christian Poggendorff and were mentioned to Brewster in 1832 There were to be 19 categories of constants and Ian Hacking sees these as reflecting in part Babbage s eccentric enthusiasms 125 Babbage s paper On Tables of the Constants of Nature and Art was reprinted by the Smithsonian Institution in 1856 with an added note that the physical tables of Arnold Henry Guyot will form a part of the important work proposed in this article 126 Exact measurement was also key to the development of machine tools Here again Babbage is considered a pioneer with Henry Maudslay William Sellers and Joseph Whitworth 127 Engineer and inventor edit Through the Royal Society Babbage acquired the friendship of the engineer Marc Brunel It was through Brunel that Babbage knew of Joseph Clement and so came to encounter the artisans whom he observed in his work on manufactures 128 Babbage provided an introduction for Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1830 for a contact with the proposed Bristol amp Birmingham Railway 129 He carried out studies around 1838 to show the superiority of the broad gauge for railways used by Brunel s Great Western Railway 130 131 In 1838 Babbage invented the pilot also called a cow catcher the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles 132 he also constructed a dynamometer car 130 His eldest son Benjamin Herschel Babbage worked as an engineer for Brunel on the railways before emigrating to Australia in the 1850s 133 Babbage also invented an ophthalmoscope which he gave to Thomas Wharton Jones for testing Jones however ignored it The device only came into use after being independently invented by Hermann von Helmholtz 134 135 Cryptography edit Babbage achieved notable results in cryptography though this was still not known a century after his death Letter frequency was category 18 of Babbage s tabulation project Joseph Henry later defended interest in it in the absence of the facts as relevant to the management of movable type 125 As early as 1845 Babbage had solved a cipher that had been posed as a challenge by his nephew Henry Hollier and in the process he made a discovery about ciphers that were based on Vigenere tables Specifically he realised that enciphering plain text with a keyword rendered the cipher text subject to modular arithmetic 136 During the Crimean War of the 1850s Babbage broke Vigenere s autokey cipher as well as the much weaker cipher that is called Vigenere cipher today 137 His discovery was kept a military secret and was not published Credit for the result was instead given to Friedrich Kasiski a Prussian infantry officer who made the same discovery some years later 138 However in 1854 Babbage published the solution of a Vigenere cipher which had been published previously in the Journal of the Society of Arts 136 139 In 1855 Babbage also published a short letter Cypher Writing in the same journal 140 Nevertheless his priority was not established until 1985 136 141 Public nuisances edit Babbage involved himself in well publicised but unpopular campaigns against public nuisances He once counted all the broken panes of glass of a factory publishing in 1857 a Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows Of 464 broken panes 14 were caused by drunken men women or boys 142 143 144 Babbage s distaste for commoners the Mob included writing Observations of Street Nuisances in 1864 as well as tallying up 165 nuisances over a period of 80 days He especially hated street music and in particular the music of organ grinders against whom he railed in various venues The following quotation is typical It is difficult to estimate the misery inflicted upon thousands of persons and the absolute pecuniary penalty imposed upon multitudes of intellectual workers by the loss of their time destroyed by organ grinders and other similar nuisances 145 Babbage was not alone in his campaign A convert to the cause was the MP Michael Thomas Bass 146 In the 1860s Babbage also took up the anti hoop rolling campaign He blamed hoop rolling boys for driving their iron hoops under horses legs with the result that the rider is thrown and very often the horse breaks a leg 147 Babbage achieved a certain notoriety in this matter being denounced in debate in Commons in 1864 for commencing a crusade against the popular game of tip cat and the trundling of hoops 148 Computing pioneer edit nbsp Part of Charles Babbage s Difference Engine 1 assembled after his death by his son Henry Prevost Babbage 1824 1918 using parts found in Charles laboratory Whipple Museum of the History of Science Cambridge England Babbage s machines were among the first mechanical computers That they were not actually completed was largely because of funding problems and clashes of personality most notably with George Biddell Airy the Astronomer Royal 149 Babbage directed the building of some steam powered machines that achieved some modest success suggesting that calculations could be mechanised For more than ten years he received government funding for his project which amounted to 17 000 but eventually the Treasury lost confidence in him 150 While Babbage s machines were mechanical and unwieldy their basic architecture was similar to that of a modern computer The data and program memory were separated operation was instruction based the control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I O unit 150 Background on mathematical tables edit In Babbage s time printed mathematical tables were calculated by human computers in other words by hand They were central to navigation science and engineering as well as mathematics Mistakes were known to occur in transcription as well as calculation 53 At Cambridge Babbage saw the fallibility of this process and the opportunity of adding mechanisation into its management His own account of his path towards mechanical computation references a particular occasion In 1812 he was sitting in his rooms in the Analytical Society looking at a table of logarithms which he knew to be full of mistakes when the idea occurred to him of computing all tabular functions by machinery The French government had produced several tables by a new method Three or four of their mathematicians decided how to compute the tables half a dozen more broke down the operations into simple stages and the work itself which was restricted to addition and subtraction was done by eighty computers who knew only these two arithmetical processes Here for the first time mass production was applied to arithmetic and Babbage was seized by the idea that the labours of the unskilled computers people could be taken over completely by machinery which would be quicker and more reliable 151 There was another period seven years later when his interest was aroused by the issues around computation of mathematical tables The French official initiative by Gaspard de Prony and its problems of implementation were familiar to him After the Napoleonic Wars came to a close scientific contacts were renewed on the level of personal contact in 1819 Charles Blagden was in Paris looking into the printing of the stalled de Prony project and lobbying for the support of the Royal Society In works of the 1820s and 1830s Babbage referred in detail to de Prony s project 152 153 Difference engine edit Main article Difference engine nbsp The Science Museum s Difference Engine No 2 built from Babbage s design nbsp Portion of Babbage s difference engineBabbage began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine made to compute values of polynomial functions It was created to calculate a series of values automatically By using the method of finite differences it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division 154 For a prototype difference engine Babbage brought in Joseph Clement to implement the design in 1823 Clement worked to high standards but his machine tools were particularly elaborate Under the standard terms of business of the time he could charge for their construction and would also own them He and Babbage fell out over costs around 1831 155 Some parts of the prototype survive in the Museum of the History of Science Oxford 156 This prototype evolved into the first difference engine It remained unfinished and the finished portion is located at the Science Museum in London This first difference engine would have been composed of around 25 000 parts weighed fifteen short tons 13 600 kg and would have been 8 ft 2 4 m tall Although Babbage received ample funding for the project it was never completed He later 1847 1849 produced detailed drawings for an improved version Difference Engine No 2 but did not receive funding from the British government His design was finally constructed in 1989 1991 using his plans and 19th century manufacturing tolerances It performed its first calculation at the Science Museum London returning results to 31 digits citation needed Nine years later in 2000 the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine 157 Completed models edit The Science Museum has constructed two Difference Engines according to Babbage s plans for the Difference Engine No 2 One is owned by the museum The other owned by the technology multimillionaire Nathan Myhrvold went on exhibition at the Computer History Museum 158 in Mountain View California on 10 May 2008 159 The two models that have been constructed are not replicas Analytical Engine edit Main article Analytical Engine nbsp Portion of the mill with a printing mechanism of the Analytical Engine built by Charles Babbage as displayed at the Science Museum London After the attempt at making the first difference engine fell through Babbage worked to design a more complex machine called the Analytical Engine He hired C G Jarvis who had previously worked for Clement as a draughtsman 160 The Analytical Engine marks the transition from mechanised arithmetic to fully fledged general purpose computation It is largely on it that Babbage s standing as computer pioneer rests 161 The major innovation was that the Analytical Engine was to be programmed using punched cards the Engine was intended to use loops of Jacquard s punched cards to control a mechanical calculator which could use as input the results of preceding computations 162 163 The machine was also intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers including sequential control branching and looping It would have been the first mechanical device to be in principle Turing complete The Engine was not a single physical machine but rather a succession of designs that Babbage tinkered with until his death in 1871 citation needed nbsp Part of the Analytical Engine on display in 1843 left of centre in this engraving of the King George III Museum in King s College LondonAda Lovelace and Italian followers edit Ada Lovelace who corresponded with Babbage during his development of the Analytical Engine is credited with developing an algorithm that would enable the Engine to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers 164 Despite documentary evidence in Lovelace s own handwriting 164 some scholars dispute to what extent the ideas were Lovelace s own 165 166 167 For this achievement she is often described as the first computer programmer 168 failed verification though no programming language had yet been invented 164 169 Lovelace also translated and wrote literature supporting the project Describing the engine s programming by punch cards she wrote We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves 163 Babbage visited Turin in 1840 at the invitation of Giovanni Plana who had developed in 1831 an analog computing machine that served as a perpetual calendar Here in 1840 in Turin Babbage gave the only public explanation and lectures about the Analytical Engine 170 171 In 1842 Charles Wheatstone approached Lovelace to translate a paper of Luigi Menabrea who had taken notes of Babbage s Turin talks and Babbage asked her to add something of her own Fortunato Prandi who acted as interpreter in Turin was an Italian exile and follower of Giuseppe Mazzini 172 Swedish followers edit Per Georg Scheutz wrote about the difference engine in 1830 and experimented in automated computation After 1834 and Lardner s Edinburgh Review article he set up a project of his own doubting whether Babbage s initial plan could be carried out This he pushed through with his son Edvard Scheutz 173 Another Swedish engine was that of Martin Wiberg 1860 174 Legacy edit In 2011 researchers in Britain proposed a multimillion pound project Plan 28 175 to construct Babbage s Analytical Engine Since Babbage s plans were continually being refined and were never completed they intended to engage the public in the project and crowd source the analysis of what should be built 176 It would have the equivalent of 675 bytes of memory and run at a clock speed of about 7 Hz They hoped to complete it by the 150th anniversary of Babbage s death in 2021 177 Advances in MEMS and nanotechnology have led to recent high tech experiments in mechanical computation The benefits suggested include operation in high radiation or high temperature environments 178 These modern versions of mechanical computation were highlighted in The Economist in its special end of the millennium black cover issue in an article entitled Babbage s Last Laugh 179 Due to his association with the town Babbage was chosen in 2007 to appear on the 5 Totnes pound note 180 An image of Babbage features in the British cultural icons section of the newly designed British passport in 2015 181 Family edit nbsp Babbage s grave at Kensal Green Cemetery London photographed in 2014On 25 July 1814 Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore sister of British parliamentarian William Wolryche Whitmore at St Michael s Church in Teignmouth Devon 20 The couple lived at Dudmaston Hall 182 Shropshire where Babbage engineered the central heating system before moving to 5 Devonshire Street London in 1815 183 Charles and Georgiana had eight children 184 but only four Benjamin Herschel Georgiana Whitmore Dugald Bromhead and Henry Prevost survived childhood Charles wife Georgiana died in Worcester on 1 September 1827 the same year as his father their second son also named Charles and their newborn son Alexander Benjamin Herschel Babbage 1815 1878 Charles Whitmore Babbage 1817 1827 Georgiana Whitmore Babbage 1818 26 September 1834 185 Edward Stewart Babbage 1819 1821 Francis Moore Babbage 1821 Dugald Bromhead Bromheald Babbage 1823 1901 Maj Gen Henry Prevost Babbage 1824 1918 Alexander Forbes Babbage 1827 1827 His youngest surviving son Henry Prevost Babbage 1824 1918 went on to create six small demonstration pieces for Difference Engine No 1 based on his father s designs 186 one of which was sent to Harvard University where it was later discovered by Howard H Aiken pioneer of the Harvard Mark I Henry Prevost s 1910 Analytical Engine Mill previously on display at Dudmaston Hall is now on display at the Science Museum 187 Death edit nbsp Charles Babbage s brain is on display at The Science Museum Babbage lived and worked for over 40 years at 1 Dorset Street Marylebone where he died at the age of 79 on 18 October 1871 he was buried in London s Kensal Green Cemetery According to Horsley Babbage died of renal inadequacy secondary to cystitis 188 He had declined both a knighthood failed verification and baronetcy He also argued against hereditary peerages favouring life peerages instead 189 Autopsy report edit In 1983 the autopsy report for Charles Babbage was discovered and later published by his great great grandson 190 191 A copy of the original is also available 192 Half of Babbage s brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London 193 The other half of Babbage s brain is on display in the Science Museum London 194 Memorials edit nbsp Green plaque in LondonThere is a black plaque commemorating the 40 years Babbage spent at 1 Dorset Street London 195 Locations institutions and other things named after Babbage include The Moon crater Babbage 196 The Charles Babbage Institute an information technology archive and research center at the University of Minnesota 197 Babbage River Falls Yukon Canada 198 The Charles Babbage Premium an annual computing award 199 British Rail named a locomotive after Charles Babbage in the 1990s 200 Babbage Island Western Australia 201 The Babbage Building at the University of Plymouth where the university s school of computing is based 202 The Babbage programming language for GEC 4000 series minicomputers 203 Babbage The Economist s Science and Technology blog 204 The former chain retail computer and video games store Babbage s now GameStop was named after him 205 In fiction and film editBabbage frequently appears in steampunk works he has been called an iconic figure of the genre 206 Other works in which Babbage appears include The 2008 short film Babbage 207 screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival a 2009 finalist with Haydenfilms and shown at the 2009 HollyShorts Film Festival and other international film festivals 208 The film shows Babbage at a dinner party with guests discussing his life and work 209 Sydney Padua created The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage a cartoon alternate history in which Babbage and Lovelace succeed in building the Analytical Engine It quotes heavily from the writings of Lovelace Babbage and their contemporaries 210 211 Kate Beaton cartoonist of webcomic Hark A Vagrant devoted one of her comic strips to Charles and Georgiana Babbage 212 The Doctor Who episode Spyfall Part 2 Season 12 episode 2 features Charles Babbage and Ada Gordon as characters who assist the Doctor when she s stuck in the year 1834 Publications edit nbsp Account of the repetition of M Arago s experiments on the magnetism manifested by various substances during the act of rotation 1825Account of the repetition of M Arago s experiments on the magnetism manifested by various substances during the act of rotation London William Nicol 1825 Babbage Charles 1826 A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives London J Mawman charles babbage Babbage Charles 1830 Reflections on the Decline of Science in England and on Some of Its Causes London B Fellowes charles babbage Abstract of a paper entitled Observations on the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli London Richard Taylor 1834 Babbage Charles 1835 On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures 4th ed London Charles Knight Babbage Charles 1837 The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise a Fragment London John Murray charles babbage Reissued by Cambridge University Press 2009 ISBN 978 1 108 00000 0 Babbage Charles 1841 Table of the Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108000 London William Clowes and Sons charles babbage The LOCOMAT site contains a reconstruction of this table Babbage Charles 1851 The Exposition of 1851 London John Murray charles babbage Laws of mechanical notation 1851 Babbage Charles 1864 Passages from the Life of a Philosopher London Longman Babbage Charles 1989 Hyman Anthony ed Science and Reform Selected Works of Charles Babbage Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 34311 4 Babbage Charles 1989 1815 Charles Babbage s Lectures On Astronomy London a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link 213 See also editBabbage s congruence IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award List of pioneers in computer scienceNotes edit a b Terence Whalen 1999 Edgar Allan Poe and the masses the political economy of literature in antebellum America Princeton University Press p 254 ISBN 978 0 691 00199 9 Retrieved 18 April 2013 a b c Copeland B Jack 18 December 2000 The Modern History of Computing The Modern History of Computing Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University Retrieved 1 March 2017 Halacy Daniel Stephen 1970 Charles Babbage Father of the Computer Crowell Collier Press ISBN 978 0 02 741370 0 Charles Babbage Institute Who Was Charles Babbage cbi umn edu Swade Doron 2002 The Difference Engine Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer Penguin ISBN 9780142001448 Newman M H A 1948 General Principles of the Design of All Purpose Computing Machines Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A 195 1042 271 274 Bibcode 1948RSPSA 195 271N doi 10 1098 rspa 1948 0129 S2CID 64893534 Herman H Goldstine 1972 The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann Princeton University Press ISBN 0 691 02367 0 a b c d Swade Doron Babbage Charles Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 962 Subscription or UK public library membership required 1140 Plaque 1140 on Open Plaques Hyman Anthony 1985 Charles Babbage Pioneer of the Computer Princeton University Press p 5 ISBN 978 0 691 02377 9 Moseley Maboth 1964 Irascible Genius The Life of Charles Babbage Chicago Henry Regnery p 29 The Late Mr Charles Babbage F R S The Times UK Members Constituencies Parliaments Surveys Praed William 1747 1833 of Tyringham Bucks and Trevethoe nr St Ives Cornw Historyofparliamentonline org Retrieved 7 June 2014 Moseley 1964 p 39 Reverend Stephen Freeman s Schools Ponders End 74 London Metropolitan Archives City of London UK The National Archives Retrieved 9 August 2021 Hyman Anthony 1985 Charles Babbage Pioneer of the Computer Princeton University Press p 17 ISBN 978 0 691 02377 9 Collier Bruce MacLachlan James 2000 Charles Babbage And the Engines of Perfection Oxford University Press p 11 ISBN 978 0 19 514287 7 a b Babbage Charles BBG810C A Cambridge Alumni Database University of Cambridge Leedham Green E S 1996 A Concise History of the University of Cambridge Cambridge University Press p 142 ISBN 978 0 521 43978 7 a b Wilkes 2002 p 355 Hofstadter Douglas R 2000 1979 Godel Escher Bach an Eternal Golden Braid Penguin Books p 726 Charles Babbage S Computer Engines Archived from the original on 30 April 2013 Retrieved 13 March 2012 a b Essinger James 2007 Jacquard s Web Oxford University Press p 59 and 98 ISBN 978 0 19 280578 2 Flood Raymond Rice Adrian Wilson Robin 2011 Mathematics in Victorian Britain Oxford University Press p 145 ISBN 978 0 19 960139 4 George Green Mathematician and Physicist 1793 1841 The Background to His Life and Work SIAM 2001 p 255 note 19 ISBN 978 0 89871 463 0 Hahn Roger 2005 Pierre Simon Laplace 1749 1827 a Determined Scientist Harvard University Press pp 295 note 34 ISBN 978 0 674 01892 1 Retrieved 8 May 2013 Panteki Maria Wallace William Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 28545 Subscription or UK public library membership required The Edinburgh magazine and literary miscellany a new series of The Scots magazine 1819 p 369 Williams L Pearce 1965 Michael Faraday Da Capo Press pp 170 172 ISBN 978 0 306 80299 7 Brown Robert Barrett George Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 1523 Subscription or UK public library membership required Collier Bruce MacLachlan James 2000 Charles Babbage And the Engines of Perfection Oxford University Press pp 29 30 ISBN 978 0 19 514287 7 Hyman Anthony 1985 Charles Babbage Pioneer of the Computer Princeton University Press p 59 ISBN 978 0 691 02377 9 James 25 February 2010 Remarkable Engineers Cambridge University Press p 45 ISBN 978 1 139 48625 5 Retrieved 26 April 2013 Knox Kevin C 6 November 2003 From Newton to Hawking A History of Cambridge University s Lucasian Professors of Mathematics Cambridge University Press pp 242 258 72 ISBN 978 0 521 66310 6 Retrieved 26 April 2013 Babbage biography History mcs st and ac uk Retrieved 21 December 2017 Campbell Kelly Martin 2003 The History of Mathematical Tables From Sumer to Spreadsheets Oxford University Press p 8 ISBN 978 0 19 850841 0 Buxton Harry Wilmot Tomash Erwin 1988 Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage Esq F R S Cambridge MIT Press p 77 ISBN 978 0 262 02269 9 Flood Raymond Rice Adrian Wilson Robin 2011 Mathematics in Victorian Britain Oxford University Press p 34 ISBN 978 0 19 162794 1 Harro Maas 2005 William Stanley Jevons and the Making of Modern Economics Cambridge University Press p 201 ISBN 978 0 521 82712 6 M Norton Wise 1997 The values of precision Princeton University Press p 320 ISBN 978 0 691 01601 6 Eleanor Robson Jacqueline Stedall 18 December 2008 The Oxford Handbook of the History of Mathematics Oxford University Press p xxxiv ISBN 978 0 19 160744 8 Retrieved 25 April 2013 Anthony Hyman 1985 Charles Babbage Pioneer of the Computer Princeton University Press p 115 ISBN 978 0 691 02377 9 Anthony Hyman 1985 Charles Babbage Pioneer of the Computer Princeton University Press p 45 ISBN 978 0 691 02377 9 Royal Institution of Great Britain 1858 Proceedings p 518 Constructing a Bridge An Exploration of Engineering Culture Design and Research in Nineteenth century France and America MIT Press 1997 p 110 ISBN 978 0 262 11217 8 Niccolo Guicciardini 2003 The Development of Newtonian Calculus in Britain 1700 1800 Cambridge University Press p 138 ISBN 978 0 521 52484 1 a b Dov M Gabbay John Woods 2008 British Logic in the Nineteenth Century Elsevier pp 403 404 ISBN 978 0 08 055701 4 Craik 2005 pp 122 3 Jeremy J Gray Karen Hunger Parshall 2011 Episodes in the History of Modern Algebra 1800 1950 American Mathematical Soc p 19 ISBN 978 0 8218 7257 4 Book of Members 1780 2010 Chapter B PDF American Academy of Arts and Sciences Archived PDF from the original on 18 June 2006 Retrieved 28 April 2011 George Biddell Airy Biography Kevin C Knox 6 November 2003 From Newton to Hawking A History of Cambridge University s Lucasian Professors of Mathematics Cambridge University Press pp 284 285 ISBN 978 0 521 66310 6 Retrieved 19 April 2013 a b Gavin Budge et al editors The Dictionary of Nineteenth Century British Philosophers 2002 Thoemmes Press two volumes article Babbage Charles p 35 Kevin C Knox 6 November 2003 From Newton to Hawking A History of Cambridge University s Lucasian Professors of Mathematics Cambridge University Press p 243 ISBN 978 0 521 66310 6 Retrieved 25 April 2013 Members Constituencies Parliaments Surveys historyofparliamentonline org Middlesex County 1820 1832 Historyofparliamentonline org Retrieved 7 June 2014 Sylvanus Urban 1838 The Gentleman s Magazine p 659 Charles Babbage 1864 Passages from the life of a philosopher Longman Green Longman Roberts amp Green pp 190 191 Retrieved 1 May 2013 Crowther J G 1968 Scientific Types London Barrie amp Rockliff p 266 ISBN 978 0 248 99729 4 Hyman Anthony 1985 Charles Babbage Pioneer of the Computer Princeton New Jersey Princeton University Press pp 82 87 ISBN 978 0 691 08303 2 Moseley 1964 pp 120 121 Note some confusion as to the dates Shaw William Arthur 1906 The Knights of England A complete record from the earliest time to the present day of the knights of all the orders of chivalry in England Scotland and Ireland and of knights bachelors incorporating a complete list of knights bachelors dubbed in Ireland vol 2 London Sherratt and Hughes Anthony Hyman 1985 Charles Babbage Pioneer of the Computer Princeton University Press p 88 ISBN 978 0 691 02377 9 James 25 February 2010 Remarkable Engineers Cambridge University Press p 47 ISBN 978 1 139 48625 5 Retrieved 27 April 2013 a b Richard Holmes 2008 The Age of Wonder Pantheon Books pp 437 440 ISBN 978 0 375 42222 5 The Mechanics Magazine Museum Register Journal and Gazette M Salmon 1831 pp 373 374 Mary Poovey 1998 A History of the Modern Fact Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society University of Chicago Press p 309 ISBN 978 0 226 67526 8 Dov M Gabbay John Woods 2008 British Logic in the Nineteenth Century Elsevier p 164 ISBN 978 0 08 055701 4 Patricia Jones 1979 Population Malthus Routledge and Kegan Paul p 445 ISBN 978 0 7100 0266 2 James P Henderson 1996 Early Mathematical Economics William Whewell and the British case Rowman amp Littlefield p 33 ISBN 978 0 8476 8201 0 Michael Lingren 1990 Glory and Failure The Difference Engines of Johann Muller Charles Babbage and Georg and Edvard Scheutz MIT Press p 54 ISBN 978 0 262 12146 0 Gavin Budge et al editors The Dictionary of Nineteenth Century British Philosophers 2002 Thoemmes Press two volumes article Babbage Charles p 39 Charles Manby 1846 Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers p 57 M Lucertini Ana Millan Gasca Fernando Nicolo 2004 Technological Concepts and Mathematical Models in the Evolution of Modern Engineering Systems Springer p 30 ISBN 978 3 7643 6940 8 Mauro F Guillen 15 October 1994 Models of Management Work Authority and Organization in a Comparative Perspective University of Chicago Press p 207 ISBN 978 0 226 31036 7 Retrieved 18 April 2013 Maxine Berg 1982 The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815 1848 CUP Archive p 181 ISBN 978 0 521 28759 3 Bruce E Kaufman 2004 The Global Evolution of Industrial Relations Events Ideas and the IIRA Academic Foundation p 66 ISBN 978 81 7188 544 2 Julio Segura Carlos Rodriguez Braun 2004 An Eponymous Dictionary of Economics A Guide To Laws And Theorems Named After Economists Edward Elgar Publishing p 13 ISBN 978 1 84542 360 5 Retrieved 18 April 2013 Work Polity 2011 p 39 ISBN 978 0 7456 4678 7 P Sargant Florence 1953 The Logic of British and American Industry A Realistic Analysis of Economic Structure and Government Routledge p 51 ISBN 978 0 415 31350 6 The Theory of the Growth of the Firm Electronic book Oxford University Press 1995 p 68 ISBN 978 0 19 828977 7 Giddens Anthony Held David 1982 Classes Power and Conflict Classical and Contemporary Debates University of California Press p 155 ISBN 978 0 520 04627 6 Retrieved 18 April 2013 Guang Zhen Sun 2005 Readings in the Economics of the Division of Labor The classical tradition World Scientific p 10 ISBN 978 981 270 127 5 Pere Mir Artigues Josep Gonza lez Calvet 2007 Funds Flows and Time An Alternative Approach to the Microeconomic Analysis of Productive Activities Springer p 72 note 15 ISBN 978 3 540 71291 6 James A Secord 2000 Victorian Sensation The Extraordinary Publication Reception and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation University of Chicago Press p 52 ISBN 978 0 226 74410 0 Mary Poovey 1995 Making a Social Body British Cultural Formation 1830 1864 University of Chicago Press p 193 note 43 ISBN 978 0 226 67524 4 Rosemary Ashton 2000 G H Lewes An Unconventional Victorian Pimlico p 128 ISBN 978 0 7126 6689 3 Ashworth William J 1996 Memory Efficiency and Symbolic Analysis Charles Babbage John Herschel and the Industrial Mind Isis 87 4 629 653 doi 10 1086 357650 JSTOR 235196 S2CID 143404822 PeterH Hoffenberg 2001 An Empire on Display English Indian and Australian Exhibitions from the Crystal Palace to the Great War University of California Press p 178 ISBN 978 0 520 21891 8 Maxine Berg 1982 The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815 1848 CUP Archive p 127 ISBN 978 0 521 28759 3 Akos Rona Tas 1997 The Great Surprise of the Small Transformation The Demise of Communism and the Rise of the Private Sector of Hungary University of Michigan Press p 20 ISBN 978 0 472 10795 7 Ben Fine Alfredo Saad Filho Marco Boffo 2012 The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics Edward Elgar Publishing p 190 ISBN 978 1 78100 122 6 Sympathy of Things Ruskin and the Ecology of Design V2 publishing 2011 pp 52 53 ISBN 978 90 5662 827 7 Patrice L R Higonnet David Saul Landes Rosovsky Henry 1991 Favorites Or Fortune Technology Growth and Economic Development Since the Industrial Revolution Harvard University Press p 401 ISBN 978 0 674 29520 9 George Jacob Holyoake The History of Co operation in England its literature and its advocates vol 2 1879 pp 228 32 archive org Thierry Pillon Francois Vatin 2003 Traite de sociologie du travail Octares p 164 Anthony Hyman 1985 Charles Babbage Pioneer of the Computer Princeton University Press p 122 ISBN 978 0 691 02377 9 Francois Vatin May 2007 Morale industrielle et calcul economique dans le premier XIXeme siecle L economie industrielle de Claude Lucien Bergery 1787 1863 in French Editions L Harmattan p 123 ISBN 978 2 296 17103 9 Philip Mirowski 1994 Natural Images in Economic Thought Markets Read in Tooth and Claw Cambridge University Press p 206 ISBN 978 0 521 47884 7 Yeheskel Hasenfeld Andrew Delano Abbott 1992 Human Services as Complex Organizations SAGE Publications p 211 ISBN 978 0 8039 4065 9 a b Boole Mary Everest 1931 Indian Thought and Western Science in the Nineteenth Century In Cobham E M Dummer E S eds Boole Mary Everest Collected Works London Daniel pp 947 967 Genesis and Geology A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought Natural Theology and Social Opinion in Great Britain 1790 1850 Harvard University Press 1996 p 247 ISBN 978 0 674 34481 5 John G Trapani 2004 Truth matters essays in honor of Jacques Maritain CUA Press p 109 ISBN 978 0 9669226 6 0 Note I in darwin online org uk Babbage Charles 1838 The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise 2d edn London John Murray Babbage Ninth Bridgewater Treatise Chapter V Further View of the same Subject The Victorian Web James A Secord 2000 Victorian Sensation The Extraordinary Publication Reception and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation University of Chicago Press p 107 ISBN 978 0 226 74410 0 Robert Chambers 15 August 1994 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings University of Chicago Press pp xvi xvii ISBN 978 0 226 10073 9 Retrieved 19 April 2013 Jonar Ganeri 2001 Indian Logic A Reader Routledge p 7 ISBN 978 0 7007 1329 5 Passages from the Life of a Philosopher 1864 p 8 Babbage 1864 Passages from the Life of a Philosopher 1864 pp 404 405 Passages from the Life of a Philosopher 1864 p 396 Smithsonian Institution 1846 Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution Washington Government Printing Office Smithsonian Institution Passages from the Life of a Philosopher 1864 The Athanasian Creed p 403 In the course of my inquiries I met with the work upon the Trinity by Dr Samuel Clarke This I carefully examined and although very far from being satisfied I ceased from further inquiry This change arose probably from my having acquired the much more valuable work of the same author on the Being and Attributes of God This I studied and felt that its doctrine was much more intelligible and satisfactory than that of the former work I may now state as the result of a long life spent in studying the works of the Creator that I am satisfied they afford far more satisfactory and more convincing proofs of the existence of a supreme Being than any evidence transmitted through human testimony can possibly supply Passages from the Life of a Philosopher 1864 pp 396 402 Pickover Clifford A 2009 The Math Book From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics Sterling Publishing Company Inc p 218 Babbage Charles 1864 Passages from the Life of a Philosopher Appendix Miracles p 488 Babbage Charles 1864 Passages from the Life of a Philosopher Appendix Miracles pp 487 488 Hook Diana H Jeremy M Norman Michael R Williams 2002 Origins of cyberspace a library on the history of computing networking and telecommunications Norman Publishing pp 161 165 ISBN 978 0 930405 85 4 Andrew Ede Lesley B Cormack 2012 A History of Science in Society From the Scientific Revolution to the Present University of Toronto Press p 224 ISBN 978 1 4426 0452 0 Daniel Brown 2013 The Poetry of Victorian Scientists Style Science and Nonsense Cambridge University Press p 6 ISBN 978 1 107 02337 6 Discovering Water James Watt Henry Cavendish and the Nineteenth Century Water Controversy Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2004 pp 136 137 ISBN 978 0 7546 3177 4 Iwan Rhys Morus 2002 Bodies Machines Berg p 44 ISBN 978 1 85973 695 1 Kevin C Knox 6 November 2003 From Newton to Hawking A History of Cambridge University s Lucasian Professors of Mathematics Cambridge University Press p 287 ISBN 978 0 521 66310 6 Retrieved 26 April 2013 Mario Biagioli 1999 The Science studies reader Routledge Chapman amp Hall Incorporated pp 459 460 ISBN 978 0 415 91868 8 a b Ian Hacking 31 August 1990 The Taming of Chance Cambridge University Press pp 55 60 ISBN 978 0 521 38884 9 Retrieved 1 May 2013 Report of the Board of Regents The Institution 1857 pp 289 302 David F Noble 1979 America by Design Science Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism David F Noble Oxford University Press p 71 ISBN 978 0 19 502618 4 Bruce Collier James MacLachlan 2000 Charles Babbage And the Engines of Perfection Oxford University Press pp 28 29 ISBN 978 0 19 514287 7 L T C Rolt 1982 Isambard Kingdom Brunel Penguin Books p 74 ISBN 978 0 14 021195 5 a b Babbage 1864 pp 317 318 Stigler George J 1991 Charles Babbage 1791 200 1991 Journal of Economic Literature 29 3 1149 1152 JSTOR 2727614 Lee John A N 1995 International biographical dictionary of computer pioneers Taylor amp Francis US p 60 Babbage Benjamin Herschel Bright Sparcs Biographical entry Retrieved 15 May 2008 Bynum W F Jones Thomas Wharton Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 37617 Subscription or UK public library membership required Medical Discoveries Ophthalmoscope Discoveriesinmedicine com Retrieved 29 January 2009 a b c Franksen OLE Immanuel Rushton RAY November 1985 General Notes Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 133 5352 880 883 JSTOR 41374062 Introduction to Cryptography With Mathematical Foundations in Computer Implementations CRC Press 2011 p 187 ISBN 978 1 4398 1763 6 Kahn David L 1996 The Codebreakers The Story of Secret Writing New York Scribner ISBN 978 0 684 83130 5 See J H B Thwaites 11 August 1854 Secret or cypher writing Journal of the Society of Arts 2 90 663 664 C Charles Babbage 1 September 1854 Mr Thwaites s cypher Journal of the Society of Arts 2 93 707 708 Thwaites John H B 15 September 1854 Secret or cypher writing Journal of the Society of Arts 2 95 732 733 C Charles Babbage 6 October 1854 Mr Thwaites s cypher Journal of the Society of Arts 2 98 776 777 Charles Babbage Passages from the Life of a Philosopher London England Longman 1864 page 496 Hooper George N Babbage Charles Clarke Hyde Webster Thomas Bentham M S Good S A 1855 Journal of the Society for Arts Vol 4 no 159 The Journal of the Society of Arts 4 159 29 44 JSTOR 41334443 See also Ole Immanuel Franksen Mr Babbage s Secret The Tale of a Cypher and APL Birkerod Denmark Strandbergs Forlag 1984 reprinted by Prentice Hall Englewood New Jersey US 1985 Babbage Charles 1857 Table of the Relative Frequency of Occurrence of the Causes of Breaking of Plate Glass Windows Mechanics Magazine 66 82 Babbage Charles 1989 Martin Campbell Kelly ed The Works of Charles Babbage Vol V London William Pickering p 137 ISBN 978 1 85196 005 7 Walford Cornelius 1878 The Insurance cyclopaedia C and E Layton p 417 Retrieved 22 February 2011 Campbell Kelly Martin Babbage Charles 1994 Ch 26 Passages from the Life of a Philosopher Pickering amp Chatto Publishers p 342 ISBN 978 1 85196 040 8 Karen Chase Michael Levenson 15 August 2009 The Spectacle of Intimacy A Public Life for the Victorian Family Princeton University Press p 151 ISBN 978 1 4008 3112 8 Retrieved 22 April 2013 Babbage 1864 p 360 Hansard s parliamentary debates THIRD SERIES COMMENCING WITH THE ACCESSION OF WILLIAM IV 27 amp 28 VICTORIA 1864 VOL CLXXVI COMPRISING THE PERIOD FROM THE TWENTY FIRST DAY OF JUNE 1864 TO THE TWENTY NINTH DAY OF JULY 1864 Parliament Thomas Curson Hansard Street Music Metropolis Bill V4 p471 1 Swade Doron 2000 The Cogwheel Brain London Little Brown and Company p 186 ISBN 978 0 316 64847 9 a b Gleick J 2011 The Information A History a Theory a Flood London Fourth Estate p 104 B V Bowden Faster than Thought Pitman 1953 p 8 Martin Campbell Kelly 2003 The History of Mathematical Tables From Sumer to Spreadsheets Oxford University Press p 110 ISBN 978 0 19 850841 0 Charles Coulston Gillispie 2009 Science and Polity in France The End of the Old Regime Princeton University Press p 485 ISBN 978 1 4008 2461 8 Difference Engine calculating machine Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 13 May 2019 McConnell Anita Clement Joseph Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 37291 Subscription or UK public library membership required Roegel Denis April June 2009 Prototype Fragments from Babbage s First Difference Engine IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31 2 70 75 doi 10 1109 MAHC 2009 31 S2CID 45564453 SCI TECH Babbage printer finally runs BBC News 13 April 2000 Retrieved 27 April 2012 Overview The Babbage Engine Computer History Museum Retrieved 29 January 2009 Shiels Maggie 10 May 2008 Victorian supercomputer is reborn BBC News Retrieved 11 May 2008 Bruce Collier James MacLachlan 2000 Charles Babbage And the Engines of Perfection Oxford University Press p 65 ISBN 978 0 19 514287 7 The Baggage Engine Computer History Museum Retrieved 6 March 2013 Ceruzzi Paul 2012 Computing A Concise History United States Smithsonian Institution pp 7 8 ISBN 978 0 262 51767 6 a b Gross Benjamin Fall 2015 The French connection Distillations Magazine 1 3 10 13 Retrieved 22 March 2018 a b c Robin Hammerman Andrew L Russell 2016 Ada s Legacy Cultures of Computing from the Victorian to the Digital Age Association for Computing Machinery and Morgan amp Claypool Publishers ISBN 978 1 970001 51 8 Bromley Allan G 1990 Difference and Analytical Engines PDF In Aspray William ed Computing Before Computers Ames Iowa State University Press pp 59 98 ISBN 978 0 8138 0047 9 Archived PDF from the original on 10 October 2022 p 89 Stein Dorothy K 1984 Lady Lovelace s Notes Technical Text and Cultural Context Victorian Studies 28 1 33 67 p 34 Collier Bruce 1970 The Little Engines That Could ve The Calculating Machines of Charles Babbage PhD Harvard University Retrieved 18 December 2015 Chapter 3 Fuegi J Francis J October December 2003 Lovelace amp Babbage and the creation of the 1843 notes Annals of the History of Computing 25 4 16 26 doi 10 1109 MAHC 2003 1253887 See pages 19 25 Charles Babbage Biography amp Facts Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 21 December 2017 Wired Charles Babbage Left a Computer Program in Turin in 1840 Here It Is cacm acm org Retrieved 24 September 2021 Sterling Bruce Charles Babbage left a computer program in Turin in 1840 Here it is Wired ISSN 1059 1028 Retrieved 24 September 2021 Benjamin Woolley 1999 The Bride of Science Macmillan pp 258 260 338 ISBN 978 0 333 72436 1 Michael Lingren 1990 Glory and Failure The Difference Engines of Johann Muller Charles Babbage and Georg and Edvard Scheutz MIT Press pp 98 112 ISBN 978 0 262 12146 0 I Grattan Guinness 2003 Companion encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of the mathematical sciences JHU Press p 698 ISBN 978 0 8018 7396 6 Plan 28 Blog Blog plan28 org Retrieved 10 June 2022 Markoff John 7 November 2011 It Started Digital Wheels Turning The New York Times Retrieved 10 November 2011 Babbage Analytical Engine designs to be digitised BBC News 21 September 2011 Retrieved 19 March 2012 Electronics Times Micro machines are fit for space 11 October 1999 Archived from the original on 13 October 2007 Retrieved 29 January 2009 via Find Articles Babbage s Last Laugh The Economist 9 September 1999 Latest Devon News Devon Live Archived from the original on 10 August 2014 Retrieved 5 December 2015 Introducing the new UK passport design PDF Government of the United Kingdom 7 November 2016 Attraction information for Dudmaston Hall VisitBritain 8 October 2015 Retrieved 29 January 2009 Dubbey John Michael 12 February 2004 The Mathematical Work of Charles Babbage Cambridge University Press p 6 ISBN 978 0 521 52476 6 Valerie Bavidge Richardson Babbage Family Tree 2005 Archived from the original on 13 October 2007 Retrieved 9 February 2013 Also see Charles Babbage entry ClanBarker Retrieved 9 February 2013 Obituary The Gentleman s Magazine 1834 Retrieved 19 October 2021 Henry Prevost Babbage The Babbage Engine Computer History Museum Retrieved 29 January 2009 Henry Babbage s Analytical Engine Mill 1910 Science Museum 16 January 2007 Retrieved 29 January 2009 Horsley Victor 1909 Description of the Brain of Mr Charles Babbage F R S Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 200 262 273 117 132 Bibcode 1909RSPTB 200 117H doi 10 1098 rstb 1909 0003 Subscription required Ioan James 2010 Remarkable Engineers From Riquet to Shannon Cambridge University Press p 50 ISBN 978 1 139 48625 5 Babbage Neville June 1991 Autopsy Report on the Body of Charles Babbage the father of the computer Medical Journal of Australia 154 11 758 759 doi 10 5694 j 1326 5377 1991 tb121318 x PMID 2046574 S2CID 37539400 Williams Michael R 1998 The Last Word on Charles Babbage IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 20 4 10 14 doi 10 1109 85 728225 subscription required Postmortem report by John Gregory Smith F R C S anatomist Science and society co UK Retrieved 29 January 2009 Babbage s brain DanYEY co uk Retrieved 29 January 2009 Visit the museum Galleries Computing Overview Science Museum Archived from the original on 20 September 2010 Retrieved 25 October 2010 Plaque 3061 on Open Plaques Planetary Names Babbage Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature 18 October 2010 Retrieved 7 July 2023 About CBI cse umn edu University of Minnesota College of Science amp Engineering Retrieved 7 July 2023 Babbage River Falls Yukon Canada World Waterfall Database Retrieved 7 July 2023 IEEE CS Charles Babbage Award PDF IPDPS Retrieved 7 July 2023 Graham Farish 371 354 modelraildatabase com Retrieved 7 July 2023 Babbage Island WA 6701 Australia city facts com Retrieved 7 July 2023 Babbage Building where engineering meets design plymouth ac uk Retrieved 7 July 2023 Illingworth Valarie 1986 B 001 Babbage Dictionary of computing 2nd ed Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 853913 1 The Economist Babbage blog The Economist Retrieved 7 June 2014 Fisher Dan 6 May 1990 No 87 Babbage s Feels Growing Pains Dallas Times Herald Justin Edwards Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet 2012 The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture Pop Goth Routledge p 157 ISBN 978 0 415 80676 3 Retrieved 18 April 2013 Film Detail Babbage British Films Directory British Council 2010 Retrieved 9 August 2021 Hughes Trevor 10 December 2010 Babbage YouTube Archived from the original on 24 November 2021 Retrieved 9 August 2021 Horowitz Daniel 17 September 2008 Babbage Genius Decoded 10 Films About the Tech World Complex Networks Retrieved 9 August 2021 Redniss Lauren 5 June 2015 The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua The New York Times Archived from the original on 1 January 2022 Retrieved 2 December 2015 Padua Sydney 2015 The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage Pantheon Graphic Novels ISBN 978 0 307 90827 8 Beaton Kate Charles and Georgiana Babbage Hark A Vagrant Retrieved 3 December 2014 C J D Roberts Compiler Charles Babbage s Lectures On AstronomyReferences editCraik Alex D D February 2005 Prehistory of Faa di Bruno s Formula The American Mathematical Monthly 112 2 119 130 doi 10 2307 30037410 JSTOR 30037410 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charles Babbage nbsp Wikisource has original works by or about Charles Babbage nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Charles Babbage Works by Charles Babbage in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Charles Babbage at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Charles Babbage at Internet Archive Works by Charles Babbage at LibriVox public domain audiobooks nbsp Archival material relating to Charles Babbage UK National Archives nbsp The Babbage Papers The papers held by the Science Museum Library and Archives which relate mostly to Babbage s automatic calculating engines The Babbage Engine Computer History Museum Mountain View CA US Multi page account of Babbage his engines and his associates including a video of the Museum s functioning replica of the Difference Engine No 2 in action Analytical Engine Museum John Walker s of AutoCAD fame comprehensive catalogue of the complete technical works relating to Babbage s machine Charles Babbage A history at the School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews Scotland Mr Charles Babbage obituary from The Times 1871 The Babbage Pages Charles Babbage The Online Books Page University of Pennsylvania The Babbage Difference Engine an overview of how it works On a Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery 1826 Original edition Charles Babbage Institute pages on Who Was Charles Babbage including biographical note description of Difference Engine No 2 publications by Babbage archival and published sources on Babbage sources on Babbage and Ada Lovelace Babbage s Ballet by Ivor Guest Ballet Magazine 1997 Babbage s Calculating Machine 1872 full digital facsimile from Linda Hall Library Author profile in the database zbMATH The difference engine built by Georg amp Edvard Scheutz in 1843 Portraits of Charles Babbage at the National Portrait Gallery London nbsp Portals nbsp Computer programming nbsp Biography Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Charles Babbage amp oldid 1196221752, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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