Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage KH FRS | |
---|---|
Born | London, England | 26 December 1791
Died | 18 October 1871 Marylebone, London, England | (aged 79)
Alma mater | Peterhouse, Cambridge |
Known for | Analytical engine Difference engine |
Spouse |
Georgiana Whitmore
(m. 1814; died 1827) |
Children | 8, including Benjamin Herschel Babbage |
Relatives | William Wolryche-Whitmore (brother-in-law) |
Awards | Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1824) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics, engineering, political economy, computer science |
Institutions | Trinity College, Cambridge, Peterhouse, Cambridge |
Signature | |
Charles Babbage
Babbage is considered by some to be "
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 his incomplete mechanisms are on display in the
Early life
Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but according to the
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.[12][13][14]
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.[15] 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.[16]
Babbage then joined the 30-student Holmwood Academy, in Baker Street, Enfield, Middlesex, under the Reverend Stephen Freeman.[17] 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.[18] He was brought home, to study at the Totnes school: this was at age 16 or 17.[19] 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
Babbage arrived at
Babbage,
In 1812, Babbage transferred to Peterhouse, Cambridge.[20] 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.[10]
After Cambridge
Considering his reputation, Babbage quickly made progress. He lectured to the
With Herschel, Babbage worked on the
Babbage purchased the actuarial tables of
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.[35] 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.[10] 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.[25] 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).[36]
Royal Astronomical Society
Babbage was instrumental in founding the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820, initially known as the Astronomical Society of London.[37] Its original aims were to reduce astronomical calculations to a more standard form, and to circulate data.[38] 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".[39]
Babbage's motivation to overcome errors in tables by mechanisation had been a commonplace since
Babbage studied the requirements to establish a modern
British Lagrangian School
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
Reference to
In this context
Academic
From 1828 to 1839, Babbage was
It was during this period that Babbage tried to enter politics.
"Declinarians", learned societies and the BAAS
Babbage now emerged as a
The
In the debate of the period on
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
Babbage published On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832), on the organisation of
The book sold well, and quickly went to a fourth edition (1836).
"Babbage principle"
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.[79] The term was introduced in 1974 by Harry Braverman.[80] Related formulations are the "principle of multiples" of Philip Sargant Florence, and the "balance of processes".[81][82]
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.[83] 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.[84] His view of human capital was restricted to minimising the time period for recovery of training costs.[85]
Publishing
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.[86] He went as far as to name the organisers of the trade's restrictive practices.[87] Twenty years later he attended a meeting hosted by John Chapman to campaign against the Booksellers Association, still a cartel.[88]
Influence
It has been written that "what
John Ruskin went further, to oppose completely what manufacturing in Babbage's sense stood for.[94] Babbage also affected the economic thinking of John Stuart Mill.[95] 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.[96]
Charles Babbage's Saturday night soirées, held from 1828 into the 1840s, were important gathering places for prominent scientists, authors and aristocracy. Babbage is credited with importing the "scientific soirée" from France with his well-attended Saturday evening soirées.[8][9]
Works by Babbage and Ure were published in French translation in 1830;
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?[102]
Natural theology
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.[103] He preferred the conception of creation in which a God-given natural law dominated, removing the need for continuous "contrivance".[104]
The book is a work of
The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise was quoted extensively in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.[107] The parallel with Babbage's computing machines is made explicit, as allowing plausibility to the theory that transmutation of species could be pre-programmed.[108]
Jonar Ganeri, author of Indian Logic, believes Babbage may have been influenced by Indian thought; one possible route would be through Henry Thomas Colebrooke.[109] 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![102]
Religious views
Babbage was raised in the Protestant form of the Christian faith, his family having inculcated in him an orthodox form of worship.[110] 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.[111]
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."[112]
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:[113]
- A priori or mystical experience
- From Revelation
- From the examination of the works of the Creator
He stated, on the basis of the
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.[116]
Like Samuel Vince, Babbage also wrote a defence of the belief in divine miracles.[117] 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."[118] 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."[119]
Later life
The British Association was consciously modelled on the Deutsche Naturforscher-Versammlung, founded in 1822.
Metrology programme
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".[126] 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".[127] 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".[128]
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.[129]
Engineer and inventor
Through the Royal Society Babbage acquired the friendship of the engineer
In 1838, Babbage invented the
Babbage also invented an
Cryptography
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.[127]
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.[138] 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.[139] 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.[140] However, in 1854, Babbage published the solution of a Vigenère cipher, which had been published previously in the Journal of the Society of Arts.[138][141] In 1855, Babbage also published a short letter, "Cypher Writing", in the same journal.[142] Nevertheless, his priority was not established until 1985.[138][143]
Public nuisances
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".[144][145][146]
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
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.[147]
Babbage was not alone in his campaign. A convert to the cause was the MP Michael Thomas Bass.[148]
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.[149] 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."[150]
Computing pioneer
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.[151]
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.[152]
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.[152]
Background on mathematical tables
In Babbage's time, printed
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.[153]
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.[154][155]
Difference engine
Babbage began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of
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.[157]
Some parts of the prototype survive in the
Nine years later, in 2000, the Science Museum completed the
Completed models
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[160] in Mountain View, California on 10 May 2008.[161] The two models that have been constructed are not replicas.
Analytical Engine
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.[162] 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.[163]
The major innovation was that the Analytical Engine was to be programmed using
Ada Lovelace and Italian followers
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
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
Babbage visited
Swedish followers
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.[175] Another Swedish engine was that of Martin Wiberg (1860).[176]
Legacy
In 2011, researchers in Britain proposed a multimillion-pound project, "Plan 28",[177] 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.[178] 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.[179]
Advances in
Due to his association with the town Babbage was chosen in 2007 to appear on the 5
Family
On 25 July 1814, Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore, sister of British parliamentarian William Wolryche-Whitmore, at St. Michael's Church in Teignmouth, Devon.[22] The couple lived at Dudmaston Hall,[184] Shropshire (where Babbage engineered the central heating system), before moving to 5 Devonshire Street, London in 1815.[185]
Charles and Georgiana had eight children,
- Benjamin Herschel Babbage (1815–1878)
- Charles Whitmore Babbage (1817–1827)
- Georgiana Whitmore Babbage (1818 – 26 September 1834)[187]
- 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,[188] 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.[189]
Death
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
Autopsy report
In 1983, the autopsy report for Charles Babbage was discovered and later published by his great-great-grandson.
Memorials
There is a black plaque commemorating the 40 years Babbage spent at 1 Dorset Street, London.[197] Locations, institutions and other things named after Babbage include:
- The Moon crater, Babbage[198]
- The Charles Babbage Institute, an information technology archive and research center at the University of Minnesota[199]
- Babbage River Falls, Yukon, Canada[200]
- The Charles Babbage Premium, an annual computing award[201]
- British Rail named a locomotive after Charles Babbage in the 1990s.[202]
- Babbage Island, Western Australia[203]
- The Babbage Building at the University of Plymouth, where the university's school of computing is based[204]
- The
- "Babbage", The Economist 's Science and Technology blog[206]
- The former chain retail computer and video-games store "Babbage's" (now GameStop) was named after him.[207]
In fiction and film
Babbage frequently appears in steampunk works; he has been called an iconic figure of the genre.[208] Other works in which Babbage appears include:
- The 2008 short film Babbage,[209] 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.[210] The film shows Babbage at a dinner party, with guests discussing his life and work.[211]
- 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.[212][213]
- Kate Beaton, cartoonist of webcomic Hark! A Vagrant, devoted one of her comic strips to Charles and Georgiana Babbage.[214]
- The 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
- 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). (4th ed.). London: Charles Knight.
- Babbage, Charles (1837). The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, a Fragment. London: John Murray.
charles babbage.
(Reissued byISBN 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). Longman. . London:
- Babbage, Charles (1989). Hyman, Anthony (ed.). Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage. 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)[215]
See also
- Babbage's congruence
- IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award
- List of pioneers in computer science
Notes
- ^ 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.
- ISBN 978-0-02-741370-0.
- ^ "Charles Babbage Institute: Who Was Charles Babbage?". cbi.umn.edu.
- ISBN 9780142001448.
- S2CID 64893534.
- ISBN 0-691-02367-0.
- ^ S2CID 161438144.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-508997-4.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/962. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ 1140 Plaque # 1140 on Open Plaques
- ISBN 978-0-691-02377-9.
- ^ Moseley, Maboth (1964). Irascible Genius, The Life of Charles Babbage. Chicago: Henry Regnery. p. 29.
- ^ . 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.
- ISBN 978-0-691-02377-9.
- ISBN 978-0-19-514287-7.
- ^ a b "Babbage, Charles (BBG810C)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ISBN 978-0-521-43978-7.
- ^ a b Wilkes (2002) p.355
- Gödel, 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.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-280578-2.
- ISBN 978-0-19-960139-4.
- ISBN 978-0-89871-463-0.
- ISBN 978-0-674-01892-1. Retrieved 8 May 2013.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28545. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ The Edinburgh magazine, and literary miscellany, a new series of The Scots magazine. 1819. p. 369.
- ISBN 978-0-306-80299-7.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1523. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 978-0-19-514287-7.
- ISBN 978-0-691-02377-9.
- ISBN 978-1-139-48625-5. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-521-66310-6. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
- ^ "Babbage biography". History.mcs.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-19-850841-0.
- ISBN 978-0-262-02269-9.
- ISBN 978-0-19-162794-1.
- ISBN 978-0-521-82712-6.
- ISBN 978-0-691-01601-6.
- ISBN 978-0-19-160744-8. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-691-02377-9.
- ISBN 978-0-691-02377-9.
- ^ Royal Institution of Great Britain (1858). Proceedings. p. 518.
- ISBN 978-0-262-11217-8.
- ISBN 978-0-521-52484-1.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-08-055701-4.
- ^ Craik 2005, pp. 122–3.
- 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
- 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.
- 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, & Green. pp. 190–191. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-248-99729-4.
- 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
- ISBN 978-0-691-02377-9.
- ISBN 978-1-139-48625-5. Retrieved 27 April 2013.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-375-42222-5.
- ^ The Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette. M. Salmon. 1831. pp. 373–374.
- ISBN 978-0-226-67526-8.
- ISBN 978-0-08-055701-4.
- ISBN 978-0-7100-0266-2.
- ISBN 978-0-8476-8201-0.
- 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.
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- ^ Thierry Pillon; François Vatin (2003). Traité de sociologie du travail. Octarès. p. 164.
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- ^ 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.
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- 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.
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- ^ 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
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- ISBN 978-0-521-66310-6. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
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- ^ ISBN 978-0-521-38884-9. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ^ Report of the Board of Regents. The Institution. 1857. pp. 289–302.
- ISBN 978-0-19-502618-4.
- ISBN 978-0-19-514287-7.
- ISBN 978-0-14-021195-5.
- ^ a b Babbage 1864, pp. 317–318
- JSTOR 2727614.
- ^ Lee, John A. N. (1995). International biographical dictionary of computer pioneers. Taylor & Francis US. p. 60.
- ^ "Babbage, Benjamin Herschel". Bright Sparcs Biographical entry. Retrieved 15 May 2008.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37617. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "Medical Discoveries, Ophthalmoscope". Discoveriesinmedicine.com. Retrieved 29 January 2009.
- ^ JSTOR 41374062.
- ISBN 978-1-4398-1763-6.
- 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.
- JSTOR 41334443.
- ^ See also: Ole Immanuel Franksen, Mr. Babbage's Secret. The Tale of a Cypher – and APL (Birkerød, 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.
- ISBN 978-1-85196-005-7.
- ^ Walford, Cornelius (1878). The Insurance cyclopaedia. C. and E. Layton. p. 417. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
- ISBN 978-1-85196-040-8.
- 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° & 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]
- 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.
- ISBN 978-0-19-850841-0.
- ISBN 978-1-4008-2461-8.
- ^ "Difference Engine | calculating machine". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 13 May 2019.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37291. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
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- ^ "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.
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- ^ "The Baggage Engine". Computer History Museum. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
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- ^ a b Gross, Benjamin (Fall 2015). "The French connection". Distillations Magazine. 1 (3): 10–13. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-970001-51-8
- 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.
- . See pages 19, 25
- ^ "Charles Babbage | Biography & Facts". Encyclopædia 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.
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- ^ "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.
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- 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.
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- ^ "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 & Engineering. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
- ^ "Babbage River Falls, Yukon, Canada". World Waterfall Database. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
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- ^ "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.
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- ^ "Film Detail – Babbage". British Films Directory. British Council. 2010. Retrieved 9 August 2021.
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- ^ Beaton, Kate. "Charles and Georgiana Babbage", Hark! A Vagrant. Retrieved 3 December 2014.
- ^ C. J. D. Roberts, Compiler. Charles Babbage's Lectures On Astronomy
References
- Craik, Alex D. D. (February 2005). "Prehistory of Faà di Bruno's Formula". The American Mathematical Monthly. 112 (2): 119–130. JSTOR 30037410..
External links
- 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)
- "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.
- 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 & Edvard Scheutz in 1843
- Portraits of Charles Babbage at the National Portrait Gallery, London