Charles Babbage was an English mathematician and inventor who designed the first automatic digital computer. In addition, he helped create the modern English postal system and compiled the first reliable actuarial tables, invented a type of speedometer and invented the railway clearer.
Biography of Charles Babbage
Born in London on December 26, 1791 in the family of Benjamin Babbage, a partner at Praeds Bank, owner of Bitton Estate in Teignmouth, and Betsy Plumley Tip. In 1808 the family decided to move to the old Rowden House in East Teignmouth, and the father became warden of nearby St Michael's.
Charles' father was a rich man, so he could study in several elite schools. At the age of 8, he had to go to a rural school to recover from a dangerous illness. His parents decided that the child's brain "shouldn't have been too hard." According to Babbage, "This great idleness may have led to some of his childish reasoning."
Then he entered King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes, South Devon,a thriving public school that still operates today, but he alth conditions forced Charles to turn to private teachers for a while. Finally he got into a closed academy for 30 students, led by the Reverend Stephen Freeman. The institution had an extensive library, which Babbage used to study mathematics on his own and learned to love it. After leaving the academy, he had two more personal mentors. One of them was a Cambridge clergyman, of whose teaching Charles commented: "I'm afraid I haven't taken all the advantage I could have." The other was an Oxford professor. He taught the classics to Charles Babbage so that he could be admitted to Cambridge.
University studies
In October 1810, Babbage arrived in Cambridge and entered Trinity College. He had a brilliant education - he knew Lagrange, Leibniz, Lacroix, Simpson and was seriously disappointed with the mathematical programs available. So he decided to form the Analytical Society with John Herschel, George Peacock and other friends.
When Babbage 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 taking exams, in 1814.
In 1814, Charles Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore. His father, for some reason, never blessed him. The family lived in peace at 5 Devonshire Street in London. Only three of their eight children survived.until adulthood.
Charles' father, his wife and one of his sons died tragically in 1827.
Computer Project
During the time of Charles Babbage, there were many errors in the calculation of mathematical tables, so he decided to find a new method that would do it mechanically, eliminating the factor of human error. This idea came to him very early, back in 1812.
Three different factors influenced his decision:
- he disliked sloppiness and inaccuracy;
- logarithmic tables were easy for him;
- he was inspired by existing work on calculating machines by W. Schickard, B. Pascal and G. Leibniz.
He discussed the basic principles of calculating the device in a letter to Sir H. Davy at the beginning of 1822.
Difference Engine
Babbage presented what he called "the Difference Engine" to the Royal Astronomical Society on June 14, 1822, in a paper en titled "Remarks on the Application of the Machine Calculation of Astronomical and Mathematical Tables". He could calculate polynomials using a numerical method called difference.
The Society approved the idea, and in 1823 the government gave him £1,500 to build it. Babbage made a workshop in one of the rooms of his house and hired Joseph Clement to oversee the construction of the device. Each piece had to be made by hand using special tools, many of which he designed himself. Charles made many trips to industrial enterprises in order to betterunderstand manufacturing processes. On the basis of these travels and his personal experience of building a machine, in 1832 Babbage published On the Economics of Machinery and Production. It was the first publication of what today is called "scientific organization of production".
Personal tragedy and travel through Europe
The death of wife Georgiana, father of Charles Babbage and his infant son interrupted construction in 1827. The work burdened him greatly, and he was on the verge of a breakdown. John Herschel and several other friends persuaded Babbage to make a trip to Europe to recuperate. He traveled through the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, visiting universities and factories.
In Italy, he learned that he had been appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Initially, he wanted to refuse, but friends convinced him otherwise. On his return to England in 1828 he moved to 1 Dorset Street.
Resuming work
During Babbage's absence, the Difference Engine project came under fire. Rumors spread that he had wasted government money, that the machine did not work, and that it would be of 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 on April 29, 1829, £3,000 on December 3, and the same amount on February 24, 1830. The work went on, but Babbage constantlyhad difficulty getting money from the treasury.
Abandoning the project
Charles Babbage's financial troubles coincided with growing 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 to store her car. Clement refused to move to a new workshop and demanded money to travel around the city to oversee the work. In response, Babbage suggested that he be paid directly from the treasury. Clement refused and stopped working on the project.
Furthermore, refused to hand over the blueprints and tools used to build the Difference Engine. After an investment of £23,000, including £6,000 of Babbage's own funds, work on the unfinished device ceased in 1834. In 1842 the government officially abandoned the project.
Charles Babbage and his Analytical Engine
Away from the difference engine, 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 calculation, not just those related to polynomial equations. The first breakthrough came when he redirected the machine's output to its input to solve further equations. He described it as a machine that "eats its own tail". It didn't take long for him to figure out the basic elements of the Analytical Engine.
Charles Babbage's computer used punched cards borrowed from a jacquard loom to enter data and indicate the order of necessary calculations. The device consisted of two parts: a mill 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 world's first general purpose computer.
Charles Babbage's computer was designed in 1835. The scale of the work was truly incredible. Babbage and several assistants produced 500 large design drawings, 1,000 mechanical designation sheets, and 7,000 description sheets. The completed mill was 4.6 m high and 1.8 m in diameter. The storage for 100 digits stretched 7.6 m. For his new machine, Babbage built only small test parts. The device was never completed completely. In 1842, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain government funding, he approached Sir Robert Peel. He refused and instead offered him a knighthood. Babbage refused. He continued to modify and improve the design over the years.
Countess Lovelace
In October 1842, Federico Luigi, an Italian general and mathematician, published an article on the Analytical Engine. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, an old friend of Babbage's, translated the work into English. Charles suggested that she annotate the translation. Between 1842 and 1843 the couple wrote 7 notes together,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 could perform operations on symbols as well as on numbers. Lovelace was perhaps the first to understand the more general goals of Babbage's device, and is considered by some to be the world's first computer programmer. She started working on a book describing the Analytical Engine in more detail, but didn't have time to finish it.
Miracle of Engineering
Between October 1846 and March 1849, Babbage began designing a second difference engine, using the knowledge he had gained from building the analytical one. It used only 8,000 parts, three times less than the first. It was a marvel of engineering.
Unlike the analytical one, which he constantly debugged and modified, Charles Babbage's second difference engine was not changed after the completion of the initial stage of development. In the future, the inventor did not make any attempts to build the device.
24 drawings remained in the archives of the Science Museum until Charles Babbage's ideas were realized in 1985-1991 by the creation of a full-size 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 to what could be achieved at the 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 the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge. He wrote extensively for a number of scientific periodicals and was instrumental in founding the Astronomical Society in 1820 and the Statistical Society in 1834.
In 1837, in response to 8 official Bridgewater treatises "On the power, wisdom and goodness of God manifest in creation", he published the ninth Bridgewater treatise, putting forward the thesis that God, possessing omnipotence and foresight, created the divine a legislator producing laws (or programs) that then created species at appropriate times, thereby eliminating the need to perform miracles each time a new species was required. The book contains excerpts from the author's correspondence with John Herschel on this subject.
Charles Babbage also achieved notable results in cryptography. He broke the autokey cipher as well as the much weaker cipher that is today called the Vigenère cipher. Babbage's discovery was used by the British military and was published only a few years later. As a result, the right of primacy passed to Friedrich Kasiski, who came to the same result a few years later.
In 1838, Babbage invented the track clearer, a metal frame attached to the front of locomotives to clear the tracks ofbarriers. He also carried out a number of studies of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway.
He only once tried to enter politics, when in 1832 he participated in the elections in the town of Finsbury. According to the voting results, Babbage took the last place.
The mathematician and inventor died on October 18, 1871 at the age of 79.
Parts of the unfinished mechanisms of computing devices he created are available for visiting at the Science Museum in London. In 1991, Charles Babbage's Difference Engine was built based on his original plans, and it worked perfectly.
