(1) Charles babbage

(1791 – 1871)

Charles Babbage is a British mathematician and inventor, who designed and built mechanical computing machines on principles that anticipated the modern electronic computer. We honor him as "the father of the computer".

Charles was born in Teignmouth, Devonshire, and was educated at the University of Cambridge.

Babbage was working on developing the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine in the 1820s and 1830s respectively. These mechanical devices are considered the forerunners of the modern digital computer. Unfortunately, there was no way to build the machines with 19th-century technology. Neither the Difference Engine nor the Analytical Engine was completed. Babbage's design was forgotten until his unpublished notebooks were discovered in 1937. In 1991, British scientists, following Babbage's detailed drawings and specifications, constructed the Difference Engine No.2. The machine works flawlessly, proving that Babbage's design was sound.

T he inventor of that 19th-century computer was a very eccentric figure. Most mathematicians live personal lives not too much different from anyone else's. They just happen to do mathematics instead of driving trucks or running stores or filling teeth. But Charles Babbage was the exception.

For example, all his life, Babbage waged a campaign against London organ-grinders¹. He blamed them for the noise they made. Babbage was not satisfied with writing anti-organ-grinder letters to newspapers and members of Parliament. He personally hauled several organ-grinders before magistrates and became furious when the magistrates refused to throw them in jail.

Or consider this. Babbage took Tennyson's poem "Vision of Sin", which contained this couplet:

Every minute dies a man,

Every minute one is born.

Babbage pointed out (correctly) that if this were true, the population of the earth would remain constant. In a letter to the poet, Babbage suggested another variant:

Every moment dies a man,

And one and a sixteenth is born.

Babbage emphasized that one and a sixteenth was not exact, but he thought that it would be "good enough for poetry".

Yet, despite his eccentricities, Babbage was a genius. He was a prolific inventor. Babbage made notable contributions in different areas of science and technology. He reformed the postal system in England and compiled the first reliable actuarial tables². His inventions include the ophthalmoscope for examining the retina of the eye, the locomotive cowcatcher³ and the speedometer. Babbage's book Economy of Machines and Manufactures (1832) initiated the field of study known today as operational research⁴ – the science of how to carry out business and industrial operations as efficiently as possible. Babbage first suggested that the weather of past years could be read from tree rings. He also took a lifelong interest in skeleton keys, ciphers and mechanical dolls.

Notes: ¹organ-grinder – шарманщик;

²actuarial tables – актуарные таблицы (относящиеся к делопроизводству);

³cowcatcher – предохранительная решётка (локомотива);

⁴operational research – операционное исследование.