Charles Babbage (1791–1871)
Author of Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
About the Author
Mathematician, inventor, and prolific writer, Charles Babbage is best known for his conception of the first automatic digital computer. He was born in England in 1791 and educated in mathematics at Cambridge University. Babbage helped found the British Analytical Society, which aimed at show more incorporating European developments into English mathematics. From the time he was a student, Babbage was drawn to the idea of mechanizing the production of values in mathematical tables. His difference engine of 1822 was to be an all-purpose calculating machine. Although he received government funding to build a large-scale working model of the difference engine, the project never was completed. By 1834 he had developed his ideas for an analytical engine, a computing device consisting of a processing area of wheels and racks, called a mill, for the calculation of decimals. Borrowing the idea of the punch card from the Jacquard mill, he proposed the use of separate card sets, one for controlling procedures and one for storing information that would make the engine "programmable." Lady Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron might have contributed some programming ideas. P> Babbage's analytic engine was never successfully built. Although his design was forgotten until his unpublished notebooks were discovered in 1937, his intellectual distinction is that he was the first person to plan a flexible modern mechanical computing device. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Fourmilab
Works by Charles Babbage
The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (Cambridge Library Collection - Science and Religion) (1989) 10 copies
Babbage's Calculating Engines: Being a Collection of Papers Relating to them; their History and Construction (Cambridge… (2010) 5 copies
The exposition of 1851, or, Views of the industry, the science and the government of England (2013) 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1791-12-26
- Date of death
- 1871-10-18
- Burial location
- Kensal Green Cemetery, London, England, UK
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- England
UK - Birthplace
- London, England, UK
- Place of death
- Marylebone, London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
- Education
- private tutors
Holmwood Academy
University of Cambridge (Trinity College) - Occupations
- inventor
mechanical engineer
mathematician - Relationships
- Lovelace, Ada (colleague)
- Organizations
- Royal Society (Fellow)
- Awards and honors
- Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, Cambridge
Fellow of the Royal Society
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1824)
Members
Reviews
Delightful chapters interspersed with some gnatterings about local body politics.
Protective box from Harcourt Bindery $65.
A decent book, but nothing too out of the ordinary. I was not wowed or surprised by any of its contents.
Nevertheless, not bad.
Nevertheless, not bad.
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 34
- Members
- 232
- Popularity
- #97,292
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 80
- Languages
- 3
I was drawn to this autobiography after reading the "comic book" (it's so much more than a comic book) "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage." It's very satisfying to make the connections between Babbage's own account of himself and the beautifully imagined drawings of Sydney Padua, the comic illustrator.
Charles Babbage (and his friend Ada Lovelace) did a lot of work on the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, devices that we would recognize as early computers. Only, they were about 100 years before their time, so everything they worked on was mechanical, not electrical, and mostly just existed in theory. Still, pretty awesome.
But there's more to Babbage than just that. He's fascinatingly all over the place. One chapter he is DEMOLISHING the Trinity doctrine (he thinks the people who formalized it were either having a huge joke, or else drunk), the next chapter he's communing with the spirit of a block of cheese. (Literally, these are adjoining chapters.)
He has himself lowered into an Italian volcano and times how long he can poke around before the next eruption. He is kind of in love with a dancing automaton and dresses her with all the care of a young girl with her first Barbie. Etc., etc., etc.
Now, honestly, there were dull bits, and I did skim some of the machine and math talk. But overall I enjoyed this pretty well. I'd like to meet this charming madman. He lived vigorously.… (more)