Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage was a British polymath who invented very advanced computing devices, which included the first programmable computing device. (His engines were all digital, but entirely mechanical.) His interests were very broad; they included economics issues, and he effectively founded the field of operational research.
In 1821, while looking at some mathematical tables with his friend, the astronomer John Herschel, which contained numerous errors, an exasperated Babbage exclaimed "I wish to God these calculations could be done by steam!" It was to become his life's work.
A prototype of the first, the Difference Engine (an idea originated by Johann Helfrich von Müller in 1786) was started in the 1820's, but never finished. (The Science Museum recently built an actual Difference Engine, using a better design he created in 1847-49, but never attempted to build; it worked reasonably well.) His later proposed Analytical Engine (prototyping began in the 1860's) was the first programmable computing device, and a general-purpose one, but its program was fixed.
Collier and MacLachlan's book (below) sums him up well:
- those who built the first complete working computers recognized immediately that Babbage had, in principle, invented the same machine, and that while he cannot be credited with the engineering detail of electronic computers, he was very much their intellectual and spiritual ancestor and a heroic pioneer of the new computer era.
Babbage's own prediction:
- Half a century may probably elapse before anyone without those aids which I leave behind me will attempt so unpromising a task. If, unwarned by my example, any man shall undertake and shall succeed in really constructing an engine embodying in itself the whole of the executive department of mathematical analysis upon different principles or by simpler mechanical means, I have no fear of leaving my reputation in his charge, for he alone will be fully able to appreciate the nature of my efforts and the value of their results.
makes much the same point. Time has indeed shown the correctness of his vision; and the diligent work of numerous scholars, on the material he left behind, has restored to him the importance that is rightfully his.
Further reading
- Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, Longman, Roberts & Green, London, 1864; re-printed Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1969
- H. W. Buxton, Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage Esq. F.R.S., MIT Press, Cambridge, Tomash, Los Angeles, 1988
- Philip and Emily Morrison, Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines, Dover Publications, New York, 1961
- Maboth Moseley, Irascible Genius: A Life of Charles Babbage, Inventor, Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1970
- Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer, Princeton University, Princeton, 1982
- Bruce Collier, James MacLachlan, Charles Babbage: And the Engines of Perfection, Oxford University, Oxford, 1998
- Doron Swade, Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines, Science Museum, London, 1991
- 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
- Bruce 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
External links
- Babbage Difference Engine #2 - How to Initialize the Machine - actually, covers the theory as well
- Plan 28 Blog - a group of people, led by Doron Swade, planning to build an Analytical Engine
