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About Charles Babbage
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The Grandfather of
Modern Digital Computing
The Charles Babbage Memorial Fund honors Charles Babbage, the
English inventor and mathematician who, in the 1800's, believed he could build a computing
machine. He convinced the British government to finance his project, then billed the
government for more and more. Many years later -- and many British pounds later -- he
still hadn't finished his machine. So he dropped the idea and -- can you believe this? --
tried to build an even fancier machine. He didn't finish that one either. You might say
his life was a failure that was expensive for the British government! |
| Charles Babbage is admired by
computerists (in spite of his face, which was even sterner than Beethoven's), because he
was the first person to realize that a computing machine must be composed of an input
device (he used a card reader inspired by Jacquard's punched cards for looms), a memory
(which he called The Store), a central processing unit (which he called The Mill), and an
output device (he used a printer). He also made provision for early results to modify
later calculations. |
Reference: The Secret Guide to Computers by Russ Walter (phone:
617-666-2666). |
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| Although the analytical engine astonishingly anticipated the computer, a
significant difference is that it was decimal, not binary. Since Babbage's machine was not
electronic, he did not think in binary terms. The use of wheels and gears meant that his
system was not "purely" digital, in the modern sense.
Source: Norman T. Gridgeman |
| Babbage's efforts to
realize "operations research" led to "first class mail." Babbage went
against the "common sense" of his times: he demonstrated the cost of collecting
and stamping a letter for different sums according to the distance it traveled cost more
in time, labor, and money than a fixed price stamp.
 Babbage
calculated the first reliable mortality tables, now a mainstay of the insurance industry.
Babbage worked
out the first speedometer.
Babbage invented
the locomotive "cow-catcher."
Babbage built a
device to study the retina of the eye, but Helmholtz's invention four years later was
credited as the original opthalmoscope.
Babbage's efforts to construct a computing machine piqued the
interest of Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Lord Byron. He depleted his
own funds, government grants, and the resources of Lady Lovelace. Together they risked her
remaining inheritance on a bet based on their system for winning horse races. They failed.
Apparently, "winning at the track is far more difficult than designing a
computer."
Source: Isaac Asimov |
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| Babbage undertook to develop a mechanically precise means to make
mathematical calculations. The British government supported his efforts to eliminate
costly computational errors in navigational charts -- which put lives and cargo in danger
-- and prevent accounting mistakes that caused overpayment to pensioners. |
Babbage's
"difference and analytical engines" were based on the rule of finite differences
for solving complex equations without multiplying or dividing, but by repeated addition.
In 1991 the National Museum of Science and Technology in London built a working machine
using Babbage's plans and parts available to him at that time. Weighing hundreds of pounds
and operated with a hand crank, it has never generated an incorrect answer. |
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| One part of an engine built by Babbage's
son in 1879 from his father's plans and unassembled parts was auctioned recently for
almost $300,000. The successful bidder was the Power House Museum in Australia. Bill Gates
was rumored to be an anonymous telephone bidder. |
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| Richard
Stevenson wrote for the NY Times: "While there is no direct line of descent from
Babbage's device to the modern computer, the Difference Engine was a tremendous step
forward for its time and a harbinger of how technology could be applied to tasks that had
previously been the exclusive province of the mind." But it was computerlike and came
to be regarded as a "thinking machine" because turning a crank converted
physical energy into a solution without knowledge of the mechanism.
Reference: NY Times (October 9, 1995). |
The module was accompanied
by instructions judged only slightly less incomprehensible than modern computer
documentation, to whit: "Put all the axes so that the little crossbars are all
parallel to each other and to the front of the machine." |
| Back
to Top |
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| Charles Babbage 1791-1871 |
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Charles Babbage was born in 1791 in Teignmouth,
Devonshire, UK as the son of a banker called Benjamin Babbage. Some people know him as the
"Father of Computing" as a result of his contributions to the basic design of
the computer. A major contribution was his Analytic Machine. Before he built this he
produced the Difference Engine which operated on 6-digit numbers, and was designed to
solve 2nd order difference equations. |
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Difference engine built by Babbage in 1832 |
| Unfortunately this engine never
worked, because the technology of manufacturing exact technical parts was not developed
far enough. This inaccuracies kept the machine from working. |
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Authors:
F. Haußmann
D. Eitelbuß |
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