Charles Babbage - Revision history

Jnc: /* External links */ +Charles Babbage's Difference Engine

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‎External links: +Charles Babbage's Difference Engine

Jnc: Add Bromley; move Diff Engine stuff to DE page

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Add Bromley; move Diff Engine stuff to DE page

Jnc: Aiken's location

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Aiken's location

Jnc: /* Further reading */ +Trilogy On Errors in the History of Computing

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‎Further reading: +Trilogy On Errors in the History of Computing

Jnc: /* External links */ +sort

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‎External links: +sort

Jnc: /* External links */ +brief biography at the IEEE Computer Society

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‎External links: +brief biography at the IEEE Computer Society

Jnc: /* Further reading */ fix note

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‎Further reading: fix note

Jnc: /* Further reading */ Annotate Babbage's Calculating Engines entry

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‎Further reading: Annotate Babbage's Calculating Engines entry

Jnc: Mention the Mechanical Notation; +The Work of Charles Babbage

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Mention the Mechanical Notation; +The Work of Charles Babbage

Jnc: /* Further reading */ Tweak description of Doron Swade's Difference Engine book

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‎Further reading: Tweak description of Doron Swade's Difference Engine book

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 * Bruce Collier, [http://robroy.dyndns.info/collier/ ''The Little Engines that Could've: The Calculating Machines of Charles Babbage''], Harvard University, Cambridge, 1970 - in addition to a good description of his machines, perhaps the best summary of his importance
 * Allan G. Bromley, [https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CBC-Ch-02.pdf ''Difference and Analytical Engines'']; Chapter Two in William Aspray (editor), [https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CBC.html ''Computing Before Computers''], Iowa State University Press, Ames, 1990 - covers Babbage as well as the Engines
 * [https://history.computer.org/pioneers/pdfs/B/Babbage.pdf Charles Babbage] - brief biography at the IEEE Computer Society
 * [https://blog.plan28.org/ Plan 28 Blog] - a group of people, led by Doron Swade, planning to build an Analytical Engine
 {{DEFAULTSORT: Babbage, Charles}}
 [[Category: People]]

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 * Philip and Emily Morrison, ''Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines'', Dover Publications, New York, 1961 - selected material from a large number of Babbage's publications, along with an extended introduction
 * Richard H. Babbage, ''The Work of Charles Babbage''; included in ''Proceedings of a Symposium on Large-scale Digital Calculating Machinery'', Harvard University Computation Laboratory, Cambridge, 1947; the latter re-printed MIT Press/Tomash, Cambridge/Los Angeles, 1985 - in addition to other material from Babbage's writing, contains some detail on the Mechanical Notation
 * Anthony Hyman, ''Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer'', Princeton University, Princeton, 1982 - detailed, lengthy biography with passing coverage of his machines
 * Bruce Collier, James MacLachlan, ''Charles Babbage: And the Engines of Perfection'', Oxford University, Oxford, 1998 - medium-length biography with good coverage of his machines
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 ==External links==
-* [https://ed-thelen.org/bab/bab-intro.html Babbage Difference Engine #2 - How to Initialize the Machine] - actually, covers the theory as well
+* Bruce Collier, [http://robroy.dyndns.info/collier/ ''The Little Engines that Could've: The Calculating Machines of Charles Babbage''], Harvard University, Cambridge, 1970 - in addition to a good description of his machines, perhaps the best summary of his importance
-** [https://ed-thelen.org/bab/bab_tech.html Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 Technical Description]
+* Allan G. Bromley, [https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CBC-Ch-02.pdf ''Difference and Analytical Engines'']; Chapter Two in William Aspray (editor), [https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CBC.html ''Computing Before Computers''], Iowa State University Press, Ames, 1990 - covers Babbage as well as the Engines
 * [https://history.computer.org/pioneers/pdfs/B/Babbage.pdf Charles Babbage] - brief biography at the IEEE Computer Society
 * [https://blog.plan28.org/ Plan 28 Blog] - a group of people, led by Doron Swade, planning to build an Analytical Engine

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 In retrospect, he seems to have pioneered many later developments which were eventually independently re-invented, such as the separation between the [[Central Processing Unit|CPU]] (which he called the 'mill'), and [[main memory]] (the 'store'). In later versions of the Analytical Engine, he made use of the mechanical equivalent of [[microprogram]]ming.
-The depth of the connection between Babbage and modern [[computer]]s is unclear, and still debated. It seems fairly certain that his detailed work was not known to later workers (and was thus a dead end) - in part because much of it was not publicized in his time. (Much of the detail we now know of his Engines is because of fairly recent extensive study of his working notebooks, and engineering drawings, which were fortunately preserved.) On the other hand, not only were the basic ideas of the Analytical Engine publicized at the time (and later known to pioneers are far afield as [[Howard Aiken]], creator of the [[Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator]]), it seems that knowledge of his basic ideas was transmitted orally within the intellectual community at Cambridge; so [[Alan Turing]], who definitely ''was'' so connected, likely knew of his basic concepts.
+The depth of the connection between Babbage and modern [[computer]]s is unclear, and still debated. It seems fairly certain that his detailed work was not known to later workers (and was thus a dead end) - in part because much of it was not publicized in his time. (Much of the detail we now know of his Engines is because of fairly recent extensive study of his working notebooks, and engineering drawings, which were fortunately preserved.) On the other hand, not only were the basic ideas of the Analytical Engine publicized at the time (and later known to pioneers are far afield as [[Howard Aiken]] in the USA, creator of the [[Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator]]), it seems that knowledge of his basic ideas was transmitted orally within the intellectual community at Cambridge; so [[Alan Turing]], who definitely ''was'' so connected, likely knew of his basic concepts.
 Collier and MacLachlan's book (below) sums him up well:

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 ==Further reading==
 * Charles Babbage, ''Passages from the Life of a Philosopher'', Longman, Roberts & Green, London, 1864; re-printed Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1969
 * Charles Babbage, Henry Prevost Babbage (editor), ''Babbage's Calculating Engines: Being a Collection of Papers Relating to Them; Their History and Construction'', E. and F. N. Spon, London, 1889; re-printed Tomash, Los Angeles, 1984; Cambridge University, Cambridge, 2010 - a large number of Babbage's original works, including several detailed ones on the Mechanical Notation; the Tomash re-print includes an informative new introduction by Allan Bromley
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 * Doron Swade, ''Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines'', Science Museum, London, 1991 - exhibition catalogue
 * Doron Swade, ''The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer'', Viking, New York, 1991 - excellent history of the Science Museum's project to build an actual Difference Engine, includes biographical content and historical context of the original, and touches on the Analytic Engine
 ==External links==

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:19, 22 March 2024
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	* [https://blog.plan28.org/ Plan 28 Blog] - a group of people, led by Doron Swade, planning to build an Analytical Engine		* [https://blog.plan28.org/ Plan 28 Blog] - a group of people, led by Doron Swade, planning to build an Analytical Engine

		+	{{DEFAULTSORT: Babbage, Charles}}
	[[Category: People]]		[[Category: People]]

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 * Charles Babbage, ''Passages from the Life of a Philosopher'', Longman, Roberts & Green, London, 1864; re-printed Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1969
-* Charles Babbage, Henry P. Babbage (editor), ''Babbage's Calculating Engines: Being a Collection of Papers Relating to Them; Their History and Construction''; re-printed MIT Press/Tomash, Cambridge/Los Angeles, 1984; Cambridge University, Cambridge, 2010
+* Charles Babbage, Henry Prevost Babbage (editor), ''Babbage's Calculating Engines: Being a Collection of Papers Relating to Them; Their History and Construction'', E. and F. N. Spon, London, 1889; re-printed Tomash, Los Angeles, 1984; Cambridge University, Cambridge, 2010 - a large number of Babbage's original works, including several detailed ones on the Mechanical Notation; includes an informative new introduction by Allan Bromley
 * H. W. Buxton, ''Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage Esq. F.R.S.'', MIT Press/Tomash, Cambridge/Los Angeles, 1988 - extensive contemporary biography, unfinished and un-printed at the time
 * Philip and Emily Morrison, ''Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines'', Dover Publications, New York, 1961 - selected material from a large number of Babbage's publications, along with an extended introduction