Biography of scientist charles babbage difference

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Charles Babbage’s Difference Engines and the Science Museum

Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine number 2 has attracted considerable interest since it was first displayed in the Science Museum in 1991. The museum completed the Engine in 2002 and later digitised the Babbage Archive, which has enabled further research by scholars worldwide.

Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher and polymath. A prolific inventor and political economist, he pioneered lighthouse signalling, designed a cow-catcher for the front end of railway locomotives, multi-coloured theatre lighting and ciphers. But Babbage is best known for his calculating machines, the Difference Engines and Analytical Engine, which are among the most celebrated icons in the prehistory of computing. Although never built in his lifetime, experimental pieces, engine plans and notebooks are some of the treasures of the Science Museum’s collection.

The Mathematical Table Crisis

In the early nineteenth century mathematicians, navigators, engineers, surveyors and bankers relied on printed mathematical tables to perform calculations requiring more than a few figures of accuracy. The production of tables was not only tedious but prone to error by

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biography of scientist charles babbage difference

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Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871)

Charles Babbage was born on 26 December 1791, probably in London, the son of a banker. He was often unwell as a child and was educated mainly at home. By the time he went to Cambridge University in 1810 he was very interested in mathematics.

After graduation Babbage was hired by the Royal Institution to lecture on calculus. Within two years he had been elected a member of the Royal Society and, with his Cambridge friends, was instrumental in setting up the Astronomical Society in 1820, the first to challenge the dominance of the Royal Society. From 1828 to 1839, Babbage was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge.

The 1820s saw Babbage work on his 'Difference Engine', a machine which could perform mathematical calculations. A six-wheeled model was initially constructed and demonstrated to a number of audiences. He then developed plans for a bigger, better, machine - Difference Engine 2. He also worked on another invention, the more complex Analytical Engine, a revolutionary device on which his fame as a computer pioneer now largely rests. It was intended to be able to perform any arithmetical calculation using pu