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THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Series Three: The Papers of Charles Babbage, 1791-1971

Part 1: Correspondence and Scientific Papers from the British Library, London

Publisher's Note

“The idea of a digital computer is an old one. ... Babbage had all the essential ideas....”
Alan Turing

Alan Turing’s comment confirms the importance of Babbage to the History of Computing. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (aged 24) in 1816 - the same year in which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was written - Babbage showed that a machine could be created which could replicate certain areas of human thought. Babbage designed first the Difference Engine (an automatic mechanical calculating machine) and then the Analytical Engine (a pioneer digital computer). His designs included a central processing unit (“the Mill”), memory (“the Store”), variables, operators and a printer to output conclusions. The design was one thing, actually constructing the machines with the available technology proved to be extremely difficult. Notwithstanding substantial grants from the Royal Society and the British Government Babbage failed to create either. That glory was left to the Swedish printer, Georg Scheutz, who won a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition for constructing the Difference Engine.

A close friend and collaborator in much of his work was Augusta Ada Byron, later the Countess of Lovelace, who was the only child of Lord Byron. She was confident of the importance of the machine, stating that “We may most aptly say that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.” The metaphor was appropriate, for Babbage used a card reader inspired by the punched cards used on Jacquard loom. Augusta Ada Byron wrote the first computer programme for the engine (to calculate Bernoulli numbers) and the programming language ADA is named after her.

Babbage knew that his ideas were ahead of his time, commenting in Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864): “The discovery of the Analytical Engine is so much in advance of my own country, and I fear even of the age, that it is very important for its success that the fact should not rest on my unsupported testimony.” It is for his ideas that Babbage is revered today, laying down the foundations for the computer more than 100 years before the creation of the electronic version that we now take for granted.

Babbage’s interests and achievements were not limited to the field of computing. Other areas in which he made a distinct contribution are:

Mathematics - his work on the calculus of functions helped to found a new branch of analysis. He was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839, and founded the Royal Statistical Society of London in 1834.


Magnetism - his work with Herschel in 1825 deepened our knowledge of this area and resulted in the invention of the asatic needle.


Operational Research - Babbage has been called the founder of operational research. He made acute analyses of the pin-making industry and the printing trade and his examination of the Post Office resulted in Sir Rowland Hill introducing the Penny Post in Britain.


Astronomy - he played a prominent role in founding the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820 and served in many of the key posts of the Society. The heliograph was one of his inventions.


Insurance - Babbage wrote the first thorough treatise on actuarial theory and published the first reliable life tables.


Ideas - other inventions included the first speedometer, the cow-catcher for locomotives, and a pioneer ophthalmoscope. He also suggested the use of a standard railroad gauge, designed occulting lights for lighthouses and explored the use of tree rings as a record of climate change. His work on the Difference Engine did much to advance the machine tool industry, and Joseph Whitworth, his foreman, introduced the first standard screw threads.


Scientific Organisations - Babbage helped to found the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831 and was a corresponding member of scientific bodies throughout the world including the Paris Academy of Moral Sciences and the American Academy. At Humboldt’s behest he attended the Congress of Savants in Berlin in 1828.

Friends and correspondents included Sir George Airy, Antonio Alessandri (President of the Academy of Sciences, Bologna), André Marie Ampère, Vincenzio Antinori (Director of the Natural History Museum, Florence), Joseph Banks, Jean Baptiste Biot, George Boole, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Christian Bunsen, Augusta Ada Byron (later King), Julia Margaret Cameron, Count Cavour, Richard Cobden, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Angela Burdett Coutts, Charles Darwin, Augustus De Morgan, Charles Dickens, Maria Edgeworth, Michael Faraday, Laurent Feuillet (Librarian, Institut de France), Jean Fourier (Secretary l’Académie des Sciences), Sir John Franklin, W E Gladstone, Caroline Herschel, Sir John Herschel, Friedrich Humboldt, Joseph Ingersoll (US Minster in London), William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, Sir Charles Lyell, Frederick Marryat, RN, Harriet Martineau, Luigi Menabrea, John Stuart Mill, James Nasmyth, Caroline Norton, Giovanni Plana, Lambert Quetelet (Secretary, Brussels Academy), George Rennie, P M Roget (Secretary, The Royal Society), John Ruskin, Lord John Russell, Nassau Senior, Sir James South, Jared Sparks (President of Harvard College), Harriet Beecher Stowe, Otto von Struver, Charles Sumner, W M Thackeray, Friedrich Trendelenburg, Georg Ursin, Henry Warburton (Secretary, Geological Society) and Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.

A complete index of correspondents is featured in this Guide (page 19 and following).

This project makes available all of the Babbage Papers from the British Library. There are twenty volumes of correspondence (11,003ff in total) with leading scientists and mathematicians throughout the world, interspersed with drafts of his own letters. The correspondence with Augusta Ada Byron (later King) is particularly substantial and worthy of note. There are four further volumes of scientific papers covering: “Essays on the philosophy of Analysis”; papers on astronomy, including correspondence with the Herschels, miscellaneous notes on mechanical drawing, lighthouses and occulting lights and geology; and papers on cyphers and deciphering, mathematical recreations and investigations of the laws of the game of tic-tac-to.

Babbage’s correspondence makes it clear that he was not just a brilliant mind, endlessly producing new schemes and inventions, but he was also a catalyst - inspiring colleagues with suggestions and helping them to make connections.

The collection is an important resource for studying the History of Computing, the History of Mathematics, 19th Century Scientific Institutions, Charles Babbage, the Herschels, Augusta Ada Byron and Women in Science.

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