Transcript Charles Babbage: 00 Computer

Kelsey Giffin - Emily Vo
10C
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Childhood
Personal Life
Analytical Society
Achievements
• Difference Machine
• Analytical Engine
• Others
• Fun Facts
• Babbage was born the day after Christmas in 1791 in the city
of London
• He was 1 of 4 children
• His father was Benjamin Babbage, a rich banker
• He was passionately fond of algebra
• He received a private education due to poor health, but later
went to a normal school
• Married Georgiana Whitmore against his father’s wishes
• Charles and his wife had 8 children
• Only 3 made it to adulthood
• In 1827, his father, his wife, Georgiana, and his sons, Charles
and Alexander, all died
• When his father died, he inherited an estate valued at £100,000 somewhere between $6 and $30 million dollars in today's terms
• Seven years later, his daughter, Georgiana, died as well
• Charles never remarried
• In the 1830s, Babbage was a “lion” of the London social scene
• He sought-after dinner guests with a reputation for being a captivating
raconteur, or story-teller
Georgiana
Whitmore - Wife
Benjamin
Herschel
Babbage – 1st
Child
Dugald
Bromheald
Babbage – 6th
Child
Henry Provast
Babbage – 7th Child
*Carried on his fathers
work after Charles died*
The other 5 children of Charles Babbage died before reaching adulthood, resulting in the
lack of public pictures of the children.
• Babbage formed the Analytical Society with good friends, John
Herschel and George Peacock
• Babbage formed this society because he was seriously disappointed
about the math programs that were available at University of Cambridge
in England
• Purpose: to introduce developments from the European continent
into English mathematics
• This society popularized dy/dx (from the previous x’) notation
now commonly used in differential calculus
• The society wanted to reform the mathematics of Newton
• Babbage invented the Difference Machine at age 29
• The machine could compute simple calculations such as multiplication and
addition
• It compiled mathematical tables
• It was able to calculate polynomials by using a numerical method called the
Differences Method
• It was far more advanced than Pascal's calculator (1642)
• The project was close to being finished in 1832, but never was
due to:
• Funding of project was dropped
• Joseph Clement, whom Babbage hired to
• oversee construction of this machine, was a difficult
partner
• Difference Engine 2 was built in 1991 by the London
Science Museum
• Babbage came up with the idea while touring Europe after the
deaths in his family
• From 1833 -1842, he tried to build a machine that would be
programmable to do any kind of calculation, not just ones
relating to polynomial equations
• He used punched cards like the ones from the Jacquard loom to
specify input and the calculations
• The engine consisted of two parts:
• Mill - like the modern-day CPU
• Store - memory
• Babbage occupied the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at
Cambridge University for 9 years
• 1824 – He received Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical
Society for the invention of an engine that calculated
mathematical and astronomical tables
• Babbage invented the pilot, the metal frame attached to the
front of locomotives that cleared the track of obstacles
• He also published Ninth Bridgewater Treatise
• His pet peeve: organ grinders
• Crusades against this street music made him famous in London
• He believed that the chances of a dead man rising from the
grave was 1 in 1012 (1/1,000,000,000,000 or 1 in 1 trillion)
• The saying of someone being “ahead of their time” originated
from Babbage
• Babbage corrected Tennyson in the poem, “The Vision of Sin”,
stating that every minute, not one person was born, but one and
a sixth was
• Tennyson changed the word “minute” to “moment” in later revisions
• Some internet sources say that Charles Babbage had another
child, Timothy Grant Babbage, in 1729, two years after his
wife Georgiana died. He never remarried. Genealogical and
baptismal records were searched, but no record of any Timothy
Grant was ever found.
• Babbage was fascinated with the supernatural world
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He believed God to be the ultimate programmer
He formed a ghost hunting organization in college
He harbored a fascination with the devil
Later in life, all of his religious ideas went from traditional to entirely
scientific
• Babbage once went into his attic, drew enough blood from his
own fingers to draw a circle large enough to stand in. He then
proceeded to chant The Lords Prayer backwards, hoping to
receive a sign that the devil was there with him
“The whole of arithmetic now appeared
within the grasp of mechanism”
-Charles Babbage
Passages from the
Life of a Philosopher