Charles Babbage is an English mathematician and inventor who designed the first automatic digital computer. In addition, he helped create a modern English postal system and compiled the first reliable actuarial tables, invented a speedometer variant and a railway track cleaner.
Charles Babbage Biography
Born in London on December 26, 1791, in the family of Praeds Bank partner Benjamin Babbage, owner of Bitton Estate in Tinmouth, and Betsy Plumley Type. In 1808, the family decided to move to the old Rowden House, located in East Tinmouth, and his father became the headman of the neighboring St. Michael's Church.
Charles's father was a wealthy man, so he could study at several elite schools. At 8, he had to go to a village school to recover from a dangerous illness. His parents decided that the brain of the child "should not be too stressful." According to Babbage, "this great idleness may have led to some of his childhood reasoning."
He then entered King Edward VI Gymnasium in Totnes, South Devon, a thriving secondary school that continues to this day, but his health condition has forced Charles to turn to private teachers for a while. Finally, he ended up in a closed academy of 30 students, led by Rev. Stephen Freeman. The institution had an extensive library, which Babbage used to independently study mathematics and learned to love it. After leaving the academy, he had two more personal mentors. One of them was a clergyman of Cambridge, whose teaching Charles responded as follows: "I'm afraid that I did not get all the benefits that I could get." Another was an Oxford teacher. He taught Charles Babbage classics so that he could be admitted to Cambridge.
Studying at the University
In October 1810, Babbage arrived at Cambridge and entered Trinity College. He had a brilliant education - he knew Lagrange, Leibniz, Lacroix, Simpson and was seriously disappointed with the available mathematical programs. Therefore, he, together with John Herschel, George Peacock and other friends, decided to form an Analytical Society.
When Babbage was transferred to the Cambridge Peterhouse in 1812, he was the best mathematician; but he did not graduate with honors. He received an honorary degree later, without even passing exams, in 1814.
In 1814, Charles Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore. For some reason, his father never blessed him. The family lived in peace in London, on Devonshire Street 5. Only three of their eight children survived into adulthood.
Charles's father, his wife, and one of his sons died tragically in 1827.
Computer project
In the time of Charles Babbage, mistakes were often made when calculating mathematical tables, so he decided to find a new method that would do it mechanically, eliminating the human error factor. This idea arose from him very early, back in 1812.
Three different factors influenced his decision:
- he did not like sloppiness and inaccuracy;
- he was easily given logarithmic tables;
- he was inspired by existing work on the counting machines of W. Schickard, B. Pascal and G. Leibniz.
He discussed the basic principles of calculating the device in a letter to Sir H. Davy in early 1822.
Difference machine
Babbage presented what he called the “difference machine” to the Royal Astronomical Society on June 14, 1822, in a paper entitled “Observations on the Application of Computerized Computation of Astronomical and Mathematical Tables”. He could compute polynomials using a numerical method called the difference method.
Society approved the idea, and in 1823 the government provided him 1,500 pounds for its construction. Babbage made a workshop in one of the rooms of his house and hired Joseph Clement to oversee the construction of the device. Each part had to be done manually using special tools, many of which he developed himself. Charles has traveled extensively around industrial plants to better understand production processes. On the basis of these travels and his personal experience in creating a machine in 1832, Babbage published his work On the Economics of Machines and Production. This was the first publication of what is today called the "scientific organization of production."
Personal tragedy and travel in Europe
The death of his wife Georgiana, father of Charles Babbage and his young son, was interrupted by construction in 1827. Work heavily burdened him, and he was on the verge of collapse. John Herschel and several other friends convinced Babbage to travel to Europe to regain his strength. He traveled through the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, visiting universities and industries.
In Italy, he learned that he had been appointed Lukasov’s professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. Initially, he wanted to refuse, but his friends convinced him otherwise. Upon his return to England in 1828, he moved to Dorset Street, 1.
Resume work
During Babbage’s absence, the difference machine design came under fire. Rumors circulated that he wasted the government’s money, that the machine wasn’t working and that it would have no practical value if it were made. John Herschel and the Royal Society publicly defended the project. The government continued its support by providing 1,500 pounds on April 29, 1829, 3,000 pounds on December 3, and the same amount on February 24, 1830. Work was continued, but Babbage was constantly having difficulty getting money from the treasury.
Project abandonment
Charles Babbage's financial problems coincided with an escalation of disagreements with Clement. Babbage built a two-story, 15-meter-long workshop behind his house. She had a glass roof for lighting, as well as a fireproof clean room for storing the car. Clement refused to move to a new workshop and demanded money for moving around the city to observe the work. In response, Babbage invited him to receive payment directly from the treasury. Clement refused and stopped working on the project.
Moreover, he refused to transfer the drawings and tools used to create the difference machine. After investing 23,000 pounds, including 6,000 pounds of Babbage’s own funds, work on the incomplete device ceased in 1834. In 1842, the government officially abandoned this project.
Charles Babbage and his analytic machine
In the distance from the difference machine, the inventor began to think about its improved version. Between 1833 and 1842, Charles tried to build a device that could be programmed to perform any calculations, and not just those related to polynomial equations. The first breakthrough occurred when he redirected the output of the device to its input to solve further equations. He described it as a machine that "eats its own tail." He did not need much time to identify the main elements of the analytical engine.
Charles Babbage's computer used punch cards borrowed from a jacquard loom to enter data and indicate the order of necessary calculations . The device consisted of two parts: mills and storage. The mill, corresponding to the processor of a modern computer, performed operations on data received from storage, which can be considered memory. It was the first general-purpose computer in the world.
Charles Babbage's computer was designed in 1835. The scale of the work was truly incredible. Babbage and several assistants created 500 large design drawings, 1000 sheets of mechanical signs and 7000 sheets of descriptions. The completed mill was 4.6 m high and 1.8 m in diameter. The 100-digit vault extended over 7.6 m. For his new machine, Babbage built only small test units. The whole device was never completed. In 1842, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain government funding, he turned to Sir Robert Peel. He refused and instead offered him a knighthood. Babbage refused. He continued to change and improve the design for many years to come.
Countess Lovelace
In October 1842, Federico Luigi, an Italian general and mathematician, published an article on the analytic machine. Augusta Ada King, Countess Lovelace, Babbage's longtime friend, translated the work into English. Charles invited her to comment out the translation. Between 1842 and 1843, the couple jointly wrote 7 notes, the total length of which was three times the actual size of the articles. In one of them, Ada prepared a program execution table that Babbage created to calculate Bernoulli numbers. In another, she wrote about a generalized algebraic machine that can perform operations with symbols in the same way as with numbers. Lovelace was perhaps the first to understand the more general goals of Babbage’s device, and some consider her the world's first computer programmer. She began to work on a book describing the analytical machine in more detail, but did not have time to finish it.
The miracle of mechanical engineering
Between October 1846 to March 1849, Babbage began designing a second difference machine, using the knowledge he gained while creating the analytical one. Only 8,000 parts were used in it, three times less than in the first. It was a miracle of mechanical engineering.
Unlike the analytical one, which he constantly debugged and modified, the second difference machine of Charles Babbage did not undergo changes after the completion of the initial stage of development. In the future, the inventor made no attempt to build a device.
24 drawings remained in the archives of the Museum of Science, until the ideas of Charles Babbage were realized in 1985-1991 by creating a full-sized replica on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth. The dimensions of the device were 3.4 m in length, 2.1 m in height and 46 cm in depth, and its weight was 2.6 tons. The limits of accuracy were limited by the values ​​that could be achieved at that time.
Achievements
In 1824, Babbage received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society "for his invention of a machine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables."
From 1828 to 1839, Babbage was a Lucas professor of mathematics at Cambridge. He wrote a lot for a number of scientific periodicals, and also played an important role in the creation of the Astronomical Society in 1820 and the Statistical Society in 1834.
In 1837, in response to the 8 official Bridgewater treatises, “On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God Manifesting in Creation,” he published the ninth Bridgewater treatise, putting forward the thesis that God, possessing omnipotence and foresight, created a divine legislator making laws ( or programs), which then created species at the corresponding time points, thereby eliminating the need to perform miracles every time a new species was required to be created. The book contains excerpts from the correspondence of the author with John Herschel on this topic.
Charles Babbage also achieved notable results in cryptography. He broke the cipher with an auto key, as well as a much weaker cipher, which today is called the Vigenere cipher. The discovery of Babbage was used by the British military and was published only a few years later. As a result, the championship right passed to Friedrich Kasiski, who came to the same result several years later.
In 1838, Babbage invented a road cleaner, a metal frame attached to the front of the locomotive, clearing the way of obstacles. He also conducted a series of studies on the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Great Western Railway.
He only once tried to engage in politics, when in 1832 he participated in the elections in the town of Finsbury. According to the results, Babbage took the last place.
The mathematician and inventor died on October 18, 1871 at the age of 79.
Parts of the incomplete mechanisms of computing devices that he created are available for visiting at the Museum of Science in London. In 1991, Charles Babbage's difference machine was built based on his original plans, and it functioned perfectly.