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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From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 52
... Royal Society of London , The Institute for Historical Research , The Crawford Library , the libraries of St John's and Trinity College , Cambridge , The Oxford Museum of the History of Science , the manuscript rooms of the British ...
... Royal Society 88 8. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures 103 9. The Great Engine 123 10. The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise 136 II . Rail , Steam , and the British Association 143 12. The Analytical Engines : Social Life 164 13 ...
... Royal Society of London Reflections on the Decline of Science in England and on Some of Its Causes Economy of Manufactures On the Economy of ... Society PRINCIPAL SOURCES Royal Society - Babbage / Herschel Correspondence . Abbreviations.
Pioneer of the Computer Anthony Hyman. PRINCIPAL SOURCES Royal Society - Babbage / Herschel Correspondence . British Library - Babbage Letters and Papers . Science Museum -- Babbage Drawings , Notations , and Notebooks . Museum for the ...
... Royal Society . But the very dullness can be misleading . The habit of a more scientific approach was spreading into ... society . But they were premature : neither science nor society was ready . Nevertheless , their ideas were among ...
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 |