Charles Babbage

Lore & Background

Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography he was most likely born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London. A blue plaque on the junction of Larcom Street and Walworth Road commemorates the event. His date of birth was given in his obituary in The Times as 26 December 1792, but a nephew wrote to say he was born one year earlier, in 1791. The parish register of St. Mary's, Newington, London, shows he was baptised on 6 January 1792, supporting a birth year of 1791. He 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. Around age eight, Babbage was sent to a country school in Alphington near Exeter to recover from a life-threatening fever. He later attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes, then Holmwood Academy in Enfield, Middlesex, under the Reverend Stephen Freeman. The academy's library prompted his love of mathematics. He studied with two more private tutors before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1810.

At Cambridge, Babbage was already self-taught in parts of contemporary mathematics and was disappointed in the standard instruction. He formed the Analytical Society in 1812 with John Herschel, George Peacock, and others. He also joined The Ghost Club and the Extractors Club. In 1812 he transferred to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he was the top mathematician but did not graduate with honours, receiving a degree without examination in 1814. He had defended a thesis considered blasphemous in preliminary public disputation, though it is not known whether this is related to his not sitting the examination. After Cambridge, he lectured at the Royal Institution on astronomy in 1815 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816. He applied for teaching positions unsuccessfully, losing out at Haileybury College and the University of Edinburgh. In 1819 he visited Paris with Herschel, meeting leading French mathematicians and physicists. He worked with Herschel on the electrodynamics of Arago's rotations, publishing in 1825. He purchased the actuarial tables of George Barrett and surveyed the field in 1826 in Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives. He depended on his father's support until his father's death in 1827, when he inherited a large estate, making him independently wealthy. After his wife's death the same year, he travelled in Italy, meeting Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In April 1828 he heard he had become a professor at Cambridge, a position he had three times failed to obtain.

Babbage was instrumental in founding the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820. He won its Gold Medal in 1824 for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables. His motivation to overcome errors in tables by mechanisation was a commonplace after Dionysius Lardner wrote about it in 1834 in the Edinburgh Review. Babbage's own account of the origin of the difference engine begins with the Astronomical Society's wish to improve The Nautical Almanac. With Herschel, he oversaw a trial project to recalculate some part of those tables, and discrepancies were found—this was in 1821 or 1822, the occasion on which he formulated his idea for mechanical computation. He also studied requirements for a modern postal system with Thomas Frederick Colby, concluding there should be a uniform rate, which was put into effect with the Uniform Fourpenny Post and Uniform Penny Post in 1839 and 1840.

Reader's Guide

Charles Babbage is significant as the originator of the concept of a digital programmable computer. Though he died before the complete successful engineering of many of his designs, including his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, he remained a prominent figure in the ideating of computing. Parts of his incomplete mechanisms are on display in the Science Museum in London. In 1991, a functioning difference engine was constructed from the original plans, built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century; the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked. He also designed the first computer printers. His broad range of interests is covered in his 1832 book Economy of Manufactures and Machinery. He was an important figure in the London social scene, credited with importing the 'scientific soirée' from France with his well-attended Saturday evening soirées. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as 'pre-eminent' among the many polymaths of his century. Babbage is considered by some to merit the title of 'father of the computer'.

Did You Know?

• Babbage's date of birth is disputed: his obituary in The Times gave 26 December 1792, but a nephew wrote to say he was born one year earlier, in 1791; the parish register supports 1791.
• He designed the first computer printers as part of his computer work.
• In 1991, a functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans, built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, and it worked.
• Babbage was instrumental in founding the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820 and won its Gold Medal in 1824.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Charles Babbage (26 December, 1791 – 18 October, 1871) was an English mathematician and analytical philosopher who originated the idea of a programmable computer. Ada Lovelace worked for him." — Charles Babbage "New Scientist, 4 December 1958, pg.1428." — Charles Babbage "Comment in response to Alfred Tennyson’s poem Vision of Sin, which included the line Every moment dies a man, // every moment one is born." — Charles Babbage "The errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data." — Charles Babbage