Charles Babbage, FRSThe Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
(26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an
EnglishEnglishman may refer to:*English people*Grey Partridge*Jason Englishman, Canadian rock music singer and guitarist*Jenny-Bea Englishman, real name of the Canadien singer Esthero*Erald Briscoe, reggae musician who records under the name Englishman...
mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered a "father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.
Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioning
difference engineA difference engine is an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.-History:...
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. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the
printerIn computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...
Babbage had designed for the difference engine.
Birth
Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but he was most likely born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England. A
blue plaqueA blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event, serving as a historical marker....
on the junction of Larcom Street and Walworth Road commemorates the event.
His date of birth was given in his obituary in
The TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
as 26 December 1792. However after the obituary appeared, a nephew wrote to say that Charles Babbage was born one year earlier, in 1791. The parish register of St. Mary's
Newington, LondonNewington is a district of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Southwark. It was an ancient parish and the site of the early administration of the county of Surrey...
, shows that Babbage was
baptisedIn Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
on 6 January 1792, supporting a birth year of 1791.
Babbage's father, Benjamin Babbage, was a banking partner of the Praeds who owned the Bitton Estate in
TeignmouthTeignmouth is a town and civil parish in Teignbridge in the English county of Devon, situated on the north bank of the estuary mouth of the River Teign about 14 miles south of Exeter. It has a population of 14,413. In 1690, it was the last place in England to be invaded by a foreign power...
. His mother was Betsy Plumleigh Teape. In 1808, the Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in
East TeignmouthTeignmouth is a town and civil parish in Teignbridge in the English county of Devon, situated on the north bank of the estuary mouth of the River Teign about 14 miles south of Exeter. It has a population of 14,413. In 1690, it was the last place in England to be invaded by a foreign power...
, and Benjamin Babbage became a warden of the nearby St. Michael's Church.
Education
His father's money allowed Charles to receive instruction from several schools and tutors during the course of his elementary education. Around the age of eight he was sent to a country school in
AlphingtonAlphington is a suburb of the City of Exeter in southwest England. The ward of Alphington has a population of 8250 according to the 2001 census, making it the third largest in Exeter, with the village itself accounting for about a quarter of this figure...
near Exeter to recover from a life-threatening fever. His parents ordered that his "brain was not to be taxed too much " and Babbage felt that "this great idleness may have led to some of my childish reasonings." For a short time he attended King Edward VI Grammar School in
TotnesTotnes is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
, South Devon, but his health forced him back to private tutors for a time. He then joined a 30-student Holmwood academy, in Baker Street,
EnfieldEnfield was a local government district in Middlesex, England from 1850 to 1965.The parish of Enfield adopted the Public Health Act 1848 in 1850, and formed a local board of health of 12 members to govern the area. The local board's area was reconstituted by the Local Government Act 1894, and...
,
MiddlesexMiddlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...
under the Reverend Stephen Freeman. The academy had a well-stocked library that prompted Babbage's love of mathematics. He studied with two more private tutors after leaving the academy. Of the first, a clergyman near
CambridgeThe city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, Babbage said, "I fear I did not derive from it all the advantages that I might have done." The second was an Oxford tutor from whom Babbage learned enough of the Classics to be accepted to Cambridge.
Babbage arrived at
Trinity College, CambridgeTrinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
in October 1810. He had read extensively in Leibniz,
Joseph Louis LagrangeJoseph-Louis Lagrange , born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia, was a mathematician and astronomer, who was born in Turin, Piedmont, lived part of his life in Prussia and part in France, making significant contributions to all fields of analysis, to number theory, and to classical and celestial mechanics...
,
Thomas SimpsonThomas Simpson FRS was a British mathematician, inventor and eponym of Simpson's rule to approximate definite integrals...
, and
LacroixNotable people with last name containing Lacroix:* André Lacroix * André Lacroix * Antoine François Alfred Lacroix * Caroline Lacroix * Charles de la Croix...
and was seriously disappointed in the mathematical instruction available at Cambridge. In response, he,
John HerschelSir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH, FRS ,was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, and experimental photographer/inventor, who in some years also did valuable botanical work...
,
George PeacockGeorge Peacock was an English mathematician.-Life:Peacock was born on 9 April 1791 at Thornton Hall, Denton, near Darlington, County Durham. His father, the Rev. Thomas Peacock, was a clergyman of the Church of England, incumbent and for 50 years curate of the parish of Denton, where he also kept...
, and several other friends formed the
Analytical SocietyThe Analytical Society was a group of individuals in early-19th century Britain whose aim was to promote the use of Leibnizian or analytical calculus as opposed to Newtonian calculus. The latter system came into being in the 18th century as an invention of Sir Isaac Newton, and was in use...
in 1812. Babbage, Herschel, and Peacock were also close friends with future judge and patron of science
Edward RyanSir Edward Ryan PC FRS was an English lawyer, judge, reformer of the British Civil Service and patron of science.-Early life:...
. Babbage and Ryan married two sisters. 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.
In 1812 Babbage transferred to
Peterhouse, CambridgePeterhouse is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the oldest college of the University, having been founded in 1284 by Hugo de Balsham, Bishop of Ely...
. He was the top mathematician at Peterhouse, but did not graduate with honours. He instead received an honorary degree without examination in 1814.
Marriage, family, death
On 25 July 1814, Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore at St. Michael's Church in Teignmouth, Devon. The couple lived at
Dudmaston HallDudmaston Hall is a 17th century country house in the care of the National Trust in the Severn Valley, Shropshire, England, United Kingdom....
, Shropshire (where Babbage engineered the central heating system), before moving to 5 Devonshire Street, Portland Place, London.
Charles and Georgiana had eight children, but only four — Benjamin Herschel, Georgiana Whitmore, Dugald Bromhead and Henry Prevost — survived childhood. Charles' wife Georgiana died in
WorcesterThe City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the...
on 1 September 1827, the same year as his father, their second son (also named Charles) and their newborn son Alexander. His subsequent decision to spend a year travelling on the Continent incurred a delay in his machines' construction.
Charles Babbage died at age 79 on 18 October 1871, and was buried in London's
Kensal Green CemeteryKensal Green Cemetery is a cemetery in Kensal Green, in the west of London, England. It was immortalised in the lines of G. K. Chesterton's poem The Rolling English Road from his book The Flying Inn: "For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of...
. According to Horsley, Babbage died "of renal inadequacy, secondary to
cystitisCystitis is a term that refers to urinary bladder inflammation that results from any one of a number of distinct syndromes. It is most commonly caused by a bacterial infection in which case it is referred to as a urinary tract infection.-Signs and symptoms:...
." In 1983 the autopsy report for Charles Babbage was discovered and later published by his great-great-grandson. A copy of the original is also available. Half of Babbage's brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The other half of Babbage's brain is on display in the Science Museum, London.
His youngest son, Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918), went on to create six working difference engines based on his father's designs, one of which was sent to
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
where it was later discovered by Howard H. Aiken, pioneer of the
Harvard Mark IThe IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator , called the Mark I by Harvard University, was an electro-mechanical computer....
. Henry Prevost's 1910 Analytical Engine Mill, previously on display at
Dudmaston HallDudmaston Hall is a 17th century country house in the care of the National Trust in the Severn Valley, Shropshire, England, United Kingdom....
, is now on display at
the Science MuseumThe Science Museum is one of the three major museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....
.
Design of computers
Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers, although they were not actually completed, largely because of funding problems and personality issues. He directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanised. Although Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was very similar to 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/OIn computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
unit. For more than ten years he received government funding for his project, which amounted to £17,000.00, but eventually the Treasury lost confidence in Babbage.
Difference engine
In Babbage's time, numerical tables were calculated by humans who were called 'computers', meaning "one who computes", much as a conductor is "one who conducts". At Cambridge, he saw the high error-rate of this human-driven process and started his life's work of trying to calculate the tables mechanically. He began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions. Unlike similar efforts of the time, Babbage's difference engine was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of
finite differenceA finite difference is a mathematical expression of the form f − f. If a finite difference is divided by b − a, one gets a difference quotient...
s, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division.
At the beginning of the 1820s, Babbage worked on a prototype of his first difference engine. Some parts of this prototype still survive in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. This prototype evolved into the "first difference engine." It remained unfinished and the completed fragment is located at the Science Museum in London. This first difference engine would have been composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen
tonsThe short ton is a unit of mass equal to . In the United States it is often called simply ton without distinguishing it from the metric ton or the long ton ; rather, the other two are specifically noted. There are, however, some U.S...
(13,600 kg), and been 8 ft (2.4 m) tall. Although Babbage received ample funding for the project, it was never completed. He later designed an improved version,"Difference Engine No. 2", which was not constructed until 1989–91, using Babbage's plans and 19th century manufacturing tolerances. It performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum returning results to 31 digits, far more than the average modern pocket calculator.
Completed models
The London 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 technology multimillionaire
Nathan MyhrvoldNathan Paul Myhrvold , formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures. Myhrvold, usually with coinventors, holds 17 U.S. patents assigned to Microsoft and has applied for more than 500 patents. In addition, Myhrvold and coinventors hold 115 U.S...
, went on exhibit at the
Computer History MuseumThe Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
in
Mountain View, California-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
on 10 May 2008. The two models that have been constructed are not replicas; until the assembly of the first Difference Engine No. 2 by the London Science Museum, no model of it existed.
Analytical engine
Soon after the attempt at making the difference engine crumbled, Babbage started designing a different, more complex machine called the
Analytical EngineThe Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, a design for a mechanical calculator...
. The engine is not a single physical machine but a succession of designs that he tinkered with until his death in 1871. The main difference between the two engines is that the Analytical Engine could be programmed using
punched cardA punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
s. He realised that programs could be put on these cards so the person had only to create the program initially, and then put the cards in the machine and let it run. The analytical engine would have used loops of
Jacquard'sThe Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns such as brocade, damask and matelasse. The loom is controlled by punched cards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row...
punched cards to control a mechanical calculator, which could formulate results based on the results of preceding computations. This machine was also intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers, including sequential control, branching, and looping, and would have been the first mechanical device to be Turing-complete.
Ada LovelaceAugusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace , born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine...
, an impressive mathematician and one of the few people who fully understood Babbage's ideas, created a program for the Analytical Engine. Had the Analytical Engine ever actually been built, her program would have been able to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers. Based on this work, Lovelace is now widely credited with being the first
computer programmerA programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...
. In 1979, a contemporary programming language was named Ada in her honour.
Researchers in Britain are embarking on a 10-year, multimillion-dollar project to construct Babbage's Analytical Engine.
Modern adaptations
While the abacus and mechanical calculator have been replaced by electronic calculators using
microchipMicrochip can also refer to:* Integrated circuit, a set of electronic components on a single unit.* Microchip Technology, a company that makes popular 8, 16 and 32-bit microcontroller lines.* Microchip implant , a microchip implanted into animals....
s, the recent advances in MEMs and
nanotechnologyNanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
have led to recent high-tech experiments in mechanical computation. The benefits suggested include operation in high radiation or high temperature environments. These modern versions of mechanical computation were highlighted in the magazine
The EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
in its special "end of the millennium" black cover issue in an article entitled "Babbage's Last Laugh".
Other accomplishments
In 1824, Babbage won the
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society-History:In the early years, more than one medal was often awarded in a year, but by 1833 only one medal was being awarded per year. This caused a problem when Neptune was discovered in 1846, because many felt an award should jointly be made to John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier...
"for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables". He was a founding member of the society and one of its oldest living members on his death in 1871.
From 1828 to 1839 Babbage was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. He contributed largely to several scientific periodicals, and was instrumental in founding the Astronomical Society in 1820 and the Statistical Society in 1834. However, he dreamt of designing mechanical calculating machines.
I was sitting in the rooms of the Analytical Society, at Cambridge, my head leaning forward on the table in a kind of dreamy mood, with a table of logarithms lying open before me. Another member, coming into the room, and seeing me half asleep, called out, "Well, Babbage, what are you dreaming about?" to which I replied "I am thinking that all these tables" (pointing to the logarithms) "might be calculated by machinery".
Babbage was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1832. In 1837, responding to the Bridgewater Treatises, of which there were eight, he published his
Ninth Bridgewater TreatiseThe Ninth Bridgewater Treatise was published by Charles Babbage in 1837 as a response to the eight Bridgewater Treatises that the Earl of Bridgewater, Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl, had funded and in particular with reference to a comment in one of them by William WhewellIt can be described as a...
, On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation, putting forward the thesis that God had the omnipotence and foresight to create as a divine legislator, making laws (or programs) which then produced species at the appropriate times, rather than continually interfering with ad hoc miracles each time a new species was required. The book is a work of
natural theologyNatural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
, and incorporates extracts from correspondence he had been having with
John HerschelSir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH, FRS ,was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, and experimental photographer/inventor, who in some years also did valuable botanical work...
on the subject.
Babbage also achieved notable results in
cryptographyCryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
. He broke Vigenère's
autokey cipherAn autokey cipher is a cipher which incorporates the message into the key. There are two forms of autokey cipher: key autokey and text autokey ciphers. A key-autokey cipher uses previous members of the keystream to determine the next element in the keystream...
as well as the much weaker cipher that is called
Vigenère cipherThe Vigenère cipher is a method of encrypting alphabetic text by using a series of different Caesar ciphers based on the letters of a keyword. It is a simple form of polyalphabetic substitution....
today. The autokey cipher was generally called "the undecipherable cipher", though owing to popular confusion, many thought that the weaker polyalphabetic cipher was the "undecipherable " one. Babbage's discovery was used to aid English military campaigns, and was not published until several years later; as a result credit for the development was instead given to
Friedrich KasiskiMajor Friedrich Wilhelm Kasiski was a Prussian infantry officer, cryptographer and archeologist. Kasiski was born in Schlochau, West Prussia .-Military service:...
, a Prussian infantry officer, who made the same discovery some years after Babbage.
In 1838, Babbage invented the
pilotIn railroading, the pilot is the device mounted at the front of a locomotive to deflect obstacles from the track that might otherwise derail the train. In some countries it is also called cowcatcher or cattle catcher....
(also called a cow-catcher), the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles. He also constructed a
dynamometer carA dynamometer car is a railroad maintenance of way car used for measuring various aspects of a locomotive's performance. Measurements include tractive effort , power, top speed, etc.-History:...
and performed several studies on
Isambard Kingdom BrunelIsambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS , was a British civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges...
's
Great Western RailwayThe Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...
in about 1838. Babbage's eldest son, Benjamin Herschel Babbage, worked as an engineer for Brunel on the railways before emigrating to Australia in the 1850s.
Babbage also invented an ophthalmoscope, but although he gave it to a physician for testing it was forgotten, and the device only came into use after being independently invented by
Hermann von HelmholtzHermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science...
.
Babbage twice stood for Parliament as a candidate for the borough of
FinsburyThe parliamentary borough of Finsbury was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1832 to 1885, and from 1918 to 1950. The constituency created in 1832 included part of the county of Middlesex north of the City of London and was named after the Finsbury...
. In 1832 he came in third among five candidates, but in 1834 he finished last among four.
In On the Economy of Machine and Manufacture, Babbage described what is now called the Babbage principle, which describes certain advantages with division of labour. Babbage noted that highly skilled—and thus generally highly paid—workers spend parts of their job performing tasks that are "below" their skill level. If the labour process can be divided among several workers, it is possible to assign only high-skill tasks to high-skill and -cost workers and leave other working tasks to less-skilled and paid workers, thereby cutting labour costs. This principle was criticised by
Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
who argued that it caused labour segregation and contributed to
alienationThe term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
. The Babbage principle is an inherent assumption in
Frederick Winslow TaylorFrederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants...
's
scientific managementScientific management, also called Taylorism, was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management...
.
Views
Babbage 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".
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 musicStreet performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...
, and in particular the music of organ grinders, against whom he railed in various venues. The following quotation is typical:
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. 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-catTip-cat is a pastime which consists of tapping a short billet of wood with a larger stick ; the shorter piece is tapered or sharpened on both ends so that it can be "tipped up" into the air when struck by the larger, at which point the player...
and the trundling of hoops."
Alleged influence from Indian Thought
The discoveries of Babbage (as to a lesser extent
HerschelSir Frederick William Herschel, KH, FRS, German: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel was a German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer. Born in Hanover, Wilhelm first followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, but emigrated to Britain at age 19...
,
de MorganAugustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him....
and
George BooleGeorge Boole was an English mathematician and philosopher.As the inventor of Boolean logic—the basis of modern digital computer logic—Boole is regarded in hindsight as a founder of the field of computer science. Boole said,...
) have been seen by some as being influenced by Indian thought, in particular
Indian logicThe development of Indian logic dates back to the anviksiki of Medhatithi Gautama the Sanskrit grammar rules of Pāṇini ; the Vaisheshika school's analysis of atomism ; the analysis of inference by Gotama , founder of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy; and the tetralemma of Nagarjuna...
.
Mary Everest BooleMary Everest Boole was a self-taught mathematician who is best known as an author of didactic works on mathematics, such as Philosophy and Fun of Algebra, and as the wife of fellow mathematician George Boole...
claims that Babbage, along with Herschel was introduced to Indian thought in the 1820s by her uncle
George EverestColonel Sir George Everest was a Welsh surveyor, geographer and Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843.Sir George was largely responsible for completing the section of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India along the meridian arc from the south of India extending north to Nepal, a distance...
:
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!
Mary Boole also states:
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 1830–1865. What share had it in generating the Vector Analysis and the mathematics by which investigations in physical science are now conducted?
Commemoration
Babbage has been commemorated by a number of references, as shown on
this listBabbage may refer to:* Charles Babbage, an English mathematician, mechanical engineer, and pioneering computer scientist* Babbage Crater, a crater on the moon named after Charles Babbage...
. In particular, the crater
BabbageBabbage is an ancient lunar crater that is located near the northwest limb of the Moon, named after Charles Babbage. It is attached to the southeastern rim of the prominent crater Pythagoras...
on the
MoonThe Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
, and the
Charles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, an information technology archive and research center at the
University of MinnesotaThe University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
, were named after him. The large Babbage lecture theatre at Cambridge University, used for undergraduate science lectures, commemorates his time at the university.
- British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
named a locomotiveThe British Rail Class 60 is a class of Co-Co heavy freight diesel-electric locomotives built by Brush Traction. They are nicknamed Tugs by Rail Enthusiasts.-History:...
after him in the 1990s as part of a program of naming locomotives after famous and significant scientists.
- The University of Plymouth
Plymouth University is the largest university in the South West of England, with over 30,000 students and is 9th largest in the United Kingdom by total number of students . It has almost 3,000 staff...
commemorates Charles Babbage with the Babbage building, the University's school of computing is based here.
- The IT Service of Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
County Council is based in Babbage House on the Castle Park office complex, CambridgeThe city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
.
- Also, in Monk's Walk School
Monk's Walk School is a comprehensive secondary school on the outskirts of Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England. It is a specialist Science College. The school's motto is: Vel optima cuique praebere, "Excellence for All"....
, there is a block called "Babbage " to commemorate his work in the world of science.
- In Chessington
Chessington is a town in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in Greater London, England. The Hogsmill river runs through it. Neighbouring settlements include: Tolworth, Ewell, Surbiton, Claygate, Epsom, Oxshott, Leatherhead, Esher, Kingston upon Thames and Worcester Park.-History:Its name...
, in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon ThamesThe Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames is a borough in southwest London, England. The main town is Kingston upon Thames and it includes Surbiton, Chessington, New Malden and Tolworth. It is the oldest of the three Royal Boroughs in England, the others are Kensington and Chelsea, also in London,...
, a road in a new housing development has been named Charles Babbage Close.
- The Babbage
Babbage is the high level assembly language for the GEC 4000 series minicomputers. It was named after Charles Babbage, an English computing pioneer.- Example :PROCESS CHAPTER FACTORIALENTRY LABEL ENTRYPOINT...
programming languageA programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
for GEC 4000 seriesThe GEC 4000 was a series of 16/32-bit minicomputers produced by GEC Computers Ltd. of the UK during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.- History :...
minicomputerA minicomputer is a class of multi-user computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems and the smallest single-user systems...
s is named after him.
- Charles Babbage appears as a Great Thinker in the 2008 strategy video game Civilization Revolution
Civilization Revolution is a 2008 iteration of Civilization developed by Firaxis with Sid Meier as designer for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, and iOS. A Wii version was originally expected but was put on indefinite hold...
.
- Babbage frequently appears in steampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
works (the enumeration of which would be an exhausting effort), where he does build the Difference EngineA difference engine is an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.-History:...
, spurring on computer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
in the Victorian EraThe Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
.
- There is a Babbage Room at Totnes Museum
Totnes Museum is a local museum in the town of Totnes, south Devon, in southwest England.The museum is housed with an Elizabethan merchant's house that was built c.1575 for the Kelland family. The house has many original features and has been carefully restored.Totnes Museum has twelve galleries,...
, in Totnes where Babbage spent his youth.
- There is a green plaque commemorating the 40 years he spent at 1 Dorset St, London.
Publications
(reissued by
Cambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
2009, ISBN 978-1-108-00000-0) (the
LOCOMAT site contains a reconstruction of this table)
- Babbage, Charles. Science and Reform. Selected Works of Charles Babbage; edited by Anthony Hyman; Cambridge University Press
External links
- Babbage Science Museum, London. Description of Babbage's calculating machine projects and the Science Museum's study of Babbage's works, including modern reconstruction and model-building projects
- The Babbage Engine: Computer History Museum, Mountain View CA, USA. 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
- Charles Babbage A history at the School of Mathematics and Statistics,University of St Andrews Scotland.
- Mr. Charles Babbage: obituary from The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
(1871)
- The Babbage Pages
- 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