Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the ComputerThis book discusses the career of Charles Babbage (1791-1871), British advocate of the systematic use of science in industry and creator of machines that were precursors of the modern computer. Babbage used his immense personal charm and vitality in an attempt to change the thinking of contemporary industrialists who had little use for the higher reaches of science. Shifting his own energies from pure mathematics, he planned engines that would "calculate by steam": the Difference Engines, designed to compute tables according to the method of finite differences, and the more complex Analytical Engines, forerunners of the modern computer.
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... John's College for their hospitality while working on archives in Cambridge . During years of research on Babbage and his Engines I have incurred far more obligations than can be individually acknowledged , but to all who have drawn my ...
... John Babbage's house , with shopfront remodelled in the nineteenth century , c . 1860. Deckemant's Antiquities . Devon County Record Office . 4. Guildhall , Totnes , c . 1860. Deckemant's Antiquities . Devon County Record Office . 5 ...
... , Reformer , Inventor ' , Oregon , 1975 . John David Yule , ' Impact of Religious Thought in the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century ' , Cantab . 1976 . PRELUDE Child of Two Revolutions The England into which Babbage Principal Sources.
... John Rennie to prevent the pilfering of valuable colonial produce . Rennie's sons , also engineers , were to figure in Babbage's life . In the shops could be seen products of Staffordshire's potteries and Manchester's looms . A few of ...
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Contents
Childhood | 5 |
Cambridge | 20 |
Marriage Early Years of a Philosopher in London | 31 |
Science in Action Start on the First Engine | 47 |
The Death of Georgiana Continental Travel | 62 |
Reform | 75 |
Science and Reform The Royal Society | 88 |
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures | 103 |
The Analytical Engines Social Life | 164 |
Analytical Engines and the Circumlocution Office | 190 |
The Great Exhibition | 211 |
The Death of Ada A Family Reunion | 225 |
Final Passages in the Life of a Philosopher | 241 |
From the Analytical Engines to the Modern Computer | 254 |
Published Works of Charles Babbage | 255 |
From Passages from the Life of a Philosopher | 261 |