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• Charles Babbage


The Illustrated London News (4 November 1871).[1]

Born 25 December 1792
London, England
Died 18 October 1871 (aged 79)
Marylebone, London, England

Nationality United Kingdom
Fields Mathematics, analytical philosophy, computer science
Institutions Trinity College, Cambridge

Alma mater
Peterhouse, Cambridge

Known for Mathematics, computing.
Signature

Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871)[2] was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer,[3] Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine, an astonishingly complex device for the 19th century. Considered a "father of the computer",[4] Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.
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Birth
Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but he was most likely born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England. 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 25 December 1792. However after the obituary appeared, a nephew wrote to say that Charles Babbage was born one year earlier, in 1791. The parish register of St. Mary's Newington, London, shows that Babbage was baptized on 6 January 1792, supporting a birth year of 1791.[5][6][7]
Babbage's father, Benjamin Babbage, was a banking partner of the Praeds who owned the Bitton Estate in Teignmouth. His mother was Betsy Plumleigh Teape. In 1808, the Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth, and Benjamin Babbage became a warden of the nearby St. Michael’s Church.



Marriage, family, death
Grave of Charles Babbage at Kensal Green Cemetery
On 25 July 1814, Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore at St. Michael's Church in Teignmouth, Devon. The couple lived at Dudmaston Hall,[11] Shropshire (where Babbage engineered the central heating system), before moving to 5 Devonshire Street, Portland Place, London.
Charles and Georgiana had eight children,[12] but only three — Benjamin Herschel, Georgiana Whitmore, and Henry Prevost — survived to adulthood. Georgiana died in Worcester on 1 September 1827. Charles' father, wife, and at least one son all died in 1827. These deaths caused Babbage to go into a mental breakdown which delayed the construction of his machines.
His youngest son, Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918), went on to create six working difference engines based on his father's designs,[13] one of which was sent to Harvard University where it was later discovered by Howard H. Aiken, pioneer of the Harvard Mark I. Henry Prevost's 1910 Analytical Engine Mill, previously on display at Dudmaston Hall, is now on display at the Science Museum.[14]
Charles Babbage died at age 79 on 18 October 1871, and was buried in London's Kensal Green Cemetery. According to Horsley, Babbage died "of renal inadequacy, secondary to cystitis."[15] In 1983 the autopsy report for Charles Babbage was discovered and later published by one of his descendants.[16][17] A copy of the original is also available.[18] Half of Babbage's brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London.[19][20]
Design of computers
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Babbage sought a method by which mathematical tables could be calculated mechanically, removing the high rate of human error. Three different factors seem to have influenced him: a dislike of untidiness; his experience working on logarithmic tables; and existing work on calculating machines carried out by Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz. He first discussed the principles of a calculating engine in a letter to Sir Humphry Davy in 1822.


Part of Babbage's difference engine, assembled after his death by Babbage's son, using parts found in his laboratory.
Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers, although they were not actually completed, largely because of funding problems and personality issues. He directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanized. Although Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was very similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction based, the control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I/O unit.



Difference engine
Main article: Difference engine
In Babbage’s time, numerical tables were calculated by humans who were called ‘computers’, meaning "one who computes", much as a conductor is "one who conducts". At Cambridge, he saw the high error-rate of this human-driven process and started his life’s work of trying to calculate the tables mechanically. He began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions. Unlike similar efforts of the time, Babbage's difference engine was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of finite differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division.


The London Science Museum's Difference Engine #2, built from Babbage's design.
The first difference engine was composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen tons (13,600 kg), and stood 8 ft (2.4 m) high. Although he received ample funding for the project, it was never completed. He later designed an improved version, "Difference Engine No. 2", which was not constructed until 1989–1991, using Babbage's plans and 19th century manufacturing tolerances. It performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum returning results to 31 digits, far more than the average modern pocket calculator.
Commemoration
Babbage has been commemorated by a number of references, as shown on this list. In particular, the crater Babbage on the Moon, and the Charles Babbage Institute, an information technology archive and research center at the University of Minnesota, were named after him. The large Babbage lecture theatre at Cambridge University, used for undergraduate science lectures, commemorates his time at the university.
• British Rail named a locomotive after him in the 1990s as part of a program of naming locomotives after famous and significant scientists.
• The University of Plymouth commemorates Charles Babbage with the Babbage building, the University's school of computing is based here.
• The IT Service of Cambridgeshire County Council is based in Babbage House on the Castle Park office complex, Cambridge.
• Also, in Monk's Walk School, there is a block called "Babbage" to commemorate his work in the world of science.
• In Chessington, in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, a road in a new housing development has been named Charles Babbage Close.
• The Babbage programming language for GEC 4000 series minicomputers is named after him.
• Charles Babbage appears as a Great Thinker in the 2008 strategy video game Civilization Revolution.[43]
• Babbage frequently appears in steampunk works (the enumeration of which would be an exhausting effort), where he does build the Difference Engine, spurring on Victorian Era computer science.