Babbage: The “Father of Computing"

1. Babbage: The “Father of Computing" Babbage Makes Life a Little Easier Difference Engine In 1823, Babbage started work on the Difference Engine (through funding from the British Government) which could automatically calculate mathematical tables. The Difference Engine was only partially completed when Babbage conceived the idea of another, more sophisticated machine called an Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine was intended to use loops of Jacquard’s punched cards to control an automatic calculator, which could make decisions based on the results of previous computations. Jacquard’s punched cards were created to automatically control the warp and weft threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards.In later yearsthe cards were able to be used to represent the music to be played by automated pianos and the storing of programs for computers. This machine was also intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers, including sequential control, branching, and looping. Babbage’s Pre-Death Years Charles Babbage was born in London on December 26, 1791. As a youth Babbage was his own instructor in algebra, of which he was passionately fond, and was well-read in the continental mathematics of his day. He attended the Trinity College in Cambridge in 1810 and he found himself far more advanced than his tutors in mathematics. While at Cambridge he and some of his friends affected the crucial introduction of the Leibnitz notation for calculus. In 1814 Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore, from a landowning family. Babbage became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1816 and was active in the founding of the Analytical, the Royal Astronomical, and the Statistical societies. In 1817, Babbage received his MA from Cambridge. In 1820 he founded the Analytical Society with Herschel and Peacock, two of his friends from Cambridge. In 1827 Babbage published a table of logarithms from 1 to 108000. In 1831: he founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Babbage worked on his Analytical Engine from around 1830 until he died, but sadly it was never completed. It is often said that Babbage was a hundred years ahead of his time and that the technology of the day was inadequate for the task. Not only did he invent the Difference and Analytical Engines, but he is also credited with inventing the cowcatcher, dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, and heliograph ophthalmoscope. He also had an interest in cyphers and lock-picking. Punched card  Prepared by Becky Leaman and Soven Palit Fall, 2000