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Charles Babbage

, Mathematician / Inventor
Charles Babbage
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  • Born: 26 December 1792
  • Birthplace: Teignmouth, Devonshire, England
  • Died: 18 October 1871
  • Best Known As: Inventor of the Difference Engine

Charles Babbage was a 19th century mathematician and inventor whose calculating machines earned him a top spot in the history of mechanical computing. Babbage's early career was devoted to practical applied science, particularly in manufacturing. But he is most famous for his work on what he called the Difference Engine and, later, the Analytical Engine. As early as 1822 he speculated that a machine could be used to compute complex mathematical problems and calculate and correct errors in logarithm tables and astronomical charts. He obtained government grants and began work on the Difference Engine, only to decide later that it would be easier to scrap the work and start fresh on a new idea, the Analytical Engine. The British government withdrew funding in 1842 and stuck the incomplete Difference Engine in the Science Museum, where it still sits. Babbage, using his own money, spent the rest of his life working on the Analytical Engine, but never finished it. He was assisted by Lord Byron's daughter, Ada Augusta, the countess of Lovelace and an amateur mathematician. In spite of his failure to completely develop a working machine, Babbage (and Lady Lovelace) are legendary heroes in the prehistory of the computing age; he is sometimes called "the grandfather of modern computing."

Babbage created the first reliable actuarial tables, invented skeleton keys and the locomotive cowcatcher... In 1847 he invented an ophthalmoscope to study the retina, but didn't announce the invention and didn't get any credit for it... Lady Lovelace also joined Babbage in his failed attempts to create an infallible system of betting on horse races... The work of Babbage and Lady Lovelace is central to the speculative novel The Difference Engine (1992), written by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson.

 
 
Scientist: Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage
Library of Congress

[b. Teignmouth, England, December 26, 1792, d. London, October 18, 1871]

Babbage designed and partially built the first mechanical computers. In 1832 he built a demonstration model of his first advanced calculator, the Difference Engine, designed to compute logarithms and other functions. This model worked to some degree, and Babbage's plans were later used to create fully functioning versions. Babbage also designed a device he called the Analytical Engine. This was supposed to use punched cards as input for problem-solving programs and have the equivalent of memory and a central processing system, but it was never built. Babbage was the first to use mathematics to study a complex system (the English postal system); his ideas led to the flat-rate postage stamp. He was also an inventor credited with the first ophthalmoscope, speedometer, skeleton key, and cowcatcher for locomotives.


 
Biography: Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was an English inventor and mathematician whose mathematical machines foreshadowed the modern computer. He was a pioneer in the scientific analysis of production systems.

Charles Babbage was born on Dec. 26, 1791, in Totnes, Devonshire. Much of his early education was under private tutors. In 1810 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Appalled by the state of mathematical instruction there, Babbage helped to organize the Analytical Society, which played a decisive role in weakening the grip of blind Newton-worship at Cambridge and Oxford.

In 1814, the same year in which he took his degree, Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore. They had eight children, only three of whom survived to maturity. Mrs. Babbage died in 1827.

Mathematical Engines

In 1822 Babbage produced the first model of the calculating engine that would be the consuming interest of his life. The machine produced mathematical tables, and since its operation was based upon the mathematical theory of finite differences, he called it a "difference engine." The government was interested, and a vague promise of financial assistance encouraged Babbage to begin building a full-scale machine.

But he had underestimated the difficulties. Many of the precision machine tools needed to shape the wheels, gears, and cranks of the engine did not exist. Babbage and his craftsmen had to design them. The consequent delays worried the government, and the financial support was tied up in red tape.

Meanwhile the conception of a far grander engine had entered Babbage's restless brain, the "analytical engine." It would possess (in modern language) a feedback mechanism and would be able to perform any mathematical operation. Babbage asked the government for a decision on which engine to finish. After an 8-year pause for thought, the government indicated that it wanted neither.

Between bouts with the government and work on his engines, the versatile Babbage managed to squeeze in an incredible variety of activities. He wrote on mathematics, the decline of science in England, codes and ciphers, the rationalization of manufacturing processes, religion, archeology, tool design, and submarine navigation, among other subjects. He was Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge for 10 years, but he was better known for his interminable campaign against organ-grinders in the streets of London.

Always he returned to his great engines, but none of them was ever finished. He died on Oct. 18, 1871, having played a prominent part in the 19th-century revival of British science.

Further Reading

The best source on Babbage is Philip Morrison and Emily Morrison, eds., Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines: Selected Writings by Charles Babbage and Others (1961). It contains an excellent short biography by the Morrisons, a selection of Babbage's works, and associated material on the engines. For more details on Babbage's life see Maboth Moseley, Irascible Genius: A Life of Charles Babbage, Inventor (1964).

 

Charles Babbage, detail of an oil painting by Samuel Lawrence, 1845; in the National Portrait …
(click to enlarge)
Charles Babbage, detail of an oil painting by Samuel Lawrence, 1845; in the National Portrait … (credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
(born Dec. 26, 1791, London, Eng. — died Oct. 18, 1871, London) British mathematician and inventor. Educated at Cambridge University, he devoted himself from about 1812 to devising machines capable of calculating mathematical tables. His first small calculator could perform certain computations to eight decimals. In 1823 he obtained government support for the design of a projected machine with a 20-decimal capacity. In the 1830s he developed plans for the so-called Analytical Engine, capable of performing any arithmetical operation on the basis of instructions from punched cards, a memory unit in which to store numbers, sequential control, and most of the other basic elements of the present-day computer. The forerunner of the modern digital computer, the Analytical Engine was never completed. In 1991 British scientists built Difference Engine No. 2 (accurate to 31 digits) to Babbage's specifications. His other contributions included establishing the modern postal system in England, compiling the first reliable actuarial tables, and inventing the locomotive cowcatcher.

For more information on Charles Babbage, visit Britannica.com.

 
British History: Charles Babbage

Babbage, Charles (1792-1871). Babbage made the first (clockwork) computers. He studied mathematics at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and in 1828 was elected to the Lucasian chair of mathematics. He hoped to eliminate errors in mathematical tables by calculating them mechanically, and in 1834 oversaw the construction of his difference engine. Before it was finished, he saw how much more powerful it would be as an analytical engine, but the government cut off finance: the principles were later realized electronically.

 
Philosophy Dictionary: Charles Babbage

Babbage, Charles (1792-1871) English mathematician and mechanical inventor. Babbage has become famous posthumously because he foresaw many of the fundamentals of computing. He designed a ‘difference engine’ and an ‘analytical engine’ for the computation of mathematical tables, his machines working on a store (memory) according to a ‘mill’ or set of operations ‘programmed’ by punch cards. He also wrote a ninth Bridgewater treatise, challenging Hume on miracles.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Babbage, Charles
(băb'ĭj) , 1792–1871, English mathematician and inventor. He devoted most of his life and expended much of his private fortune and a government subsidy in an attempt to perfect a mechanical calculating machine that foreshadowed present-day machines. He was a founder of the Royal Astronomical Society. He wrote Tables of Logarithms (1827) and an autobiography (1864).

Bibliography

See biographies by M. Moseley (1970) and D. Halacy (1970).

 
Wikipedia: Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage
CharlesBabbage.jpg
Sketch based on NPG Ax18347 by Henri Claudet, 1860s.
Born 26 December 1791(1791--)
England
Died 18 October 1871 (aged 79)
England
Occupation Mathematician
analytical philosopher
mechanical engineer and
(proto-) computer scientist
Spouse Georgiana Whitmore
Children Benjamin Herschel Babbage

Charles Whitmore Babbage
Georgiana Whitmore Babbage
Edward Stewart Babbage
Francis Moore Babbage
Dugald Bromheald Babbage
Henry Prevost Babbage

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

Charles Babbage FRS (26 December 179118 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, and mechanical engineer who originated the idea of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991 a perfectly 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. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine, an astonishingly complex device for the 19th century.


Birth

The birthplace of Charles Babbage is disputed, but he was most likely born in 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England. A blue plaque on the junction of Larcom Street and Walworth Road commemorates the event. There was a discrepancy regarding the date of Babbage's birth, which was published in The Times obituary as 26 December 1792. However, days later a nephew of Babbage wrote to say that Babbage was born precisely one year earlier, in 1791. The parish register of St. Mary's Newington, London, shows that Babbage was baptized on 6 January 1792.[1]

Charles's father, Benjamin Babbage, was a banking partner of the Praeds who owned the Bitton Estate in Teignmouth. His mother was Betsy Plumleigh Babbage née Teape. In 1808, the Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth, 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 Alphington 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 Totnes, 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, Enfield, Middlesex under 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 Cambridge, 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, Cambridge in October 1810. He had read extensively in Leibniz, Lagrange, Simpson, and Lacroix and was seriously disappointed in the mathematical instruction available at Cambridge. In response, he, John Herschel, George Peacock, and several other friends formed the Analytical Society in 1812. Babbage, Hershell and Peacock were also close friends with future judge and patron of science Edward Ryan. Ultimately, Babbage and Ryan married sisters.[2]

In 1812 Babbage transferred to Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was the top mathematician at Peterhouse, but failed to graduate with honors. He instead received an honorary degree without examination in 1814.

Marriage, family, death

Grave of Charles Babbage at Kensal Green Cemetery
Enlarge
Grave of Charles Babbage at Kensal Green Cemetery

On 25 July, 1814, Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore at St. Michael's Church in Teignmouth, Devon. His father did not approve of Babbage marrying without being economically stable [citation needed]. The couple lived at 5 Devonshire Street, Portland Place, London.

Charles and Georgiana had eight children[3], but only three — Benjamin Herschel, Georgiana Whitmore,and Henry Prevost — lived to adulthood. Georgiana died in Worcester on 1 September, 1827 - Charles' father, wife, and at least two sons all died in 1827.

Babbage died on 18 October, 1871, and is buried in London's Kensal Green Cemetery. He lived for 79 years.

Design of computers

Babbage sought a method by which mathematical tables could be calculated mechanically, removing the high rate of human error. Three different factors seem to have influenced him: a dislike of untidiness; his experience working on logarithmic tables; and existing work on calculating machines carried out by Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz. He first discussed the principles of a calculating engine in a letter to Sir Humphry Davy in 1822.

Part of Babbage's difference engine, assembled after his death by Babbage's son, using parts found in his laboratory.
Enlarge
Part of Babbage's difference engine, assembled after his death by Babbage's son, using parts found in his laboratory.

Babbage's engines 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 mechanized. 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/O unit.

Difference engine

Main article: Difference engine

In Babbage’s time numerical tables were calculated by humans 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 differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division.

The London Science Museum's replica Difference Engine, built from Babbage's design.
Enlarge
The London Science Museum's replica Difference Engine, built from Babbage's design.

The first difference engine was composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen tons (13,600 kg), and stood  ft ( m) high. Although he 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 1989-1991, 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.

Printer

Babbage designed a printer for the second difference engine which supported line-wrapping, variable column and row width, and programmable output formatting.

Analytical engine

Main article: Analytical engine

Soon after the attempt at making the difference engine crumbled, Babbage started designing a different, more complex machine called the Analytical Engine. 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 punch cards, an idea unheard of in his time. He realized that programs could be put on similar cards so the person had to only create the program initially, and then put the cards in the machine and let it run. The analytical engine was also proposed to use loops of Jacquard's 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 Lovelace, 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 programmer. In 1979, a contemporary programming language was named Ada in her honour. Shortly afterward, in 1981, a satirical article by Tony Karp in the magazine Datamation described the Babbage programming language as the "language of the future".

Modern adaptations

While the abacus and mechanical calculator have been replaced by electronic calculators using microchips, the recent 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.

These modern versions of mechanical computation were highlighted in magazine The Economist for their special "end of the millennium" black cover issue in an article entitled Babbage's Last Laugh . The article highlighted work done at University of California Berkeley by Ezekiel Kruglick. In this Doctoral Dissertation the researcher reports mechanical logic cells and architectures sufficient to implement the Babbage Analytical engine (see above) or any general logic circuit. Carry-shift digital adders and various logic elements are detailed as well as modern analysis on required performance for microscopic mechanical logic.

Other accomplishments

In 1824, Babbage won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society "for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables".

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. "

In 1837, responding to the Bridgewater Treatises, of which there were eight, he published his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, "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 theology, and incorporates extracts from correspondence he had been having with John Herschel on the subject.

Babbage also achieved notable results in cryptography. He broke Vigenère's autokey cipher as well as the much weaker cipher that is called Vigenère cipher 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 Kasiski, a Prussian infantry officer, who made the same discovery some years after Babbage.

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. He also constructed a dynamometer car and performed several studies on Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway 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 is also credited with the invention of standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, the heliograph, and the ophthalmoscope

Babbage only once endeavoured to enter public life, when, in 1832, he stood unsuccessfully for the borough of Finsbury. He came last in the polls.

Eccentricities

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": 14 of 464 were caused by "drunken men, women or boys". His 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. He was also obsessed with fire, once baking himself in an oven at 265°F (130°C) for four minutes "without any great discomfort" to "see what would happen." [citation needed] Later, he arranged to be lowered into Mount Vesuvius in order to view molten lava for himself. [citation needed]

Quotations


On two occasions I have been asked, – "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.[4]

Commemoration

Babbage has been commemorated by a number of references, as shown on this list. In particular, the Babbage crater, on the Moon, and the Charles Babbage Institute, an information technology archive and research center, were named after him. The large Babbage lecture theatre at Cambridge University, used for undergraduate science lectures, commemorates his time at the school

Publications

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

References

  1. ^ See the discussion of Babbage's birth year here for documentation.
  2. ^ Wilkes (2002) p.355
  3. ^ See here for more information.
  4. ^ Babbage, Charles (1864) Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, Chapter 5, page 67. ISBN 1-85196-040-6

External links


 
 

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Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Charles Babbage biography from Who2.  Read more
Scientist. History of Science and Technology, edited by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
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