Charles Babbage: And the Engines of PerfectionCharles Babbage, "the grandfather of the modern computer," did not live to see even one of his calculating machines at work. A dazzling genius with vision extending far beyond the limitations of the Victorian age, Babbage successfully calculated a table of logarithms during his years at Cambridge University, allowing mathematical calculations to be executed with extreme precision. Only the possibility of human error prevented complete accuracy, and Babbage understood that the only way to attain perfection is to leave the human mind entirely out of the equation. He devoted most of his life and spent most of his private fortune and government stipend trying to improve his difference engines and analytical engines.Bruce Collier and James MacLachlan chronicle Babbage's education and scientific career, his remarkably active social life and long string of personal tragedies, his forays into philosophy and economics, his successes and failures, and the biggest disappointment of his life-- his ingenious inventions were centuries ahead of the primitive capabilities of Victorian technology. |
Contents
The Making of a Mathematician | 9 |
In Scientific Circles | 20 |
Inventing the Difference Engine | 35 |
Reform Is in the Air | 49 |
Inventing the Analytic Engine | 73 |
Passages in a Philosophers Life | 92 |
After Babbage | 104 |
Museums and Web Sites Related to Charles Babbage | 112 |
Chronology | 115 |
119 | |
121 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
40 digits 40-digit numbers Ada Lovelace adding addition Aiken Airy Analytical Engine anticipating carriage Astronomical Society axes Babbage became Babbage’s barrel basic Benjamin Brunel built calculating a table Calculating Engine called Cambridge carry central drum central wheels Charles Babbage Charles’s Clement column complete connected construction cycles cylinder Devon Difference Engine Duke electronic Exhibition father feet friends gears Georgiana Whitmore hardware Henry Herman Hollerith Hollerith Howard Aiken Humphrey Davy idea Image Not Available ingress axis input invented Isaac Newton Jacquard loom John Herschel Joseph later Leibniz levers logarithms London Lucasian Luigi Menabrea machine machinery mathematical mathematicians mechanical calculator mechanical notation medal Menabrea ment mill multiplying Museum operation cards Pascal philosopher principles published punched cards racks Royal Society Scheutz Schickard science in England scientific scientists sequence step studs subtraction text continued threads tion tunnel variable axis variable cards Verrier workshop wrote