A history in the life of… Charles Babbage As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of the science. —Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

Life Born Married Georgiana Whitmore on July 25th, 1814 December 26th, 1791 Wealthy family in London Married Georgiana Whitmore on July 25th, 1814 Had eight children but only three survived to adulthood Died October 18th, 1871 London, England

Education Engineering curiosity at a young age He learned algebra on his own Babbage would go to school in secret from three until five in the morning to study calculus by himself Babbage went to Trinity College in Cambridge in 1810 Formed Analytical Society at Cambridge with George Peacock and John Herschel to discuss and translate calculus

Accolades At the age of twenty-five he became a member of the Royal Society Awarded the title of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge Lucasian Professor of Mathematics title given to Sir Isaac Newton and is currently held by Stephen Hawking

Interesting Facts Babbage is an ancient lunar crater named for Charles Babbage Held Saturday evening soirées with Europe’s finest liberal intelligence Held a unique fascination with the supernatural world

Difference Engine Mechanical calculator used to tabulate polynomial functions The Difference Engine can only add, so Newton’s Method of Divided Differences was used

Analytical Engine Extended on difference engine Programmable via punch cards Operated on code similar to assembly Turing complete machine

Ada Lovelace Wrote a description of Babbage’s analytical engine Wrote programs for the analytical engine Extended Babbage’s work beyond simple mathematical computations

Modern Difference Engine Babbage’s second revision of the Difference engine was finally created in 1991 Created at the Science Museum in London after 17 years of work

Impact on Computer Science Difference engine showed mechanical processes could be used to solve mathematical equations Analytical engine was the first programmable computer Analytical engine had memory, a processing unit, and a “printer”

Questions?

Works Cited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbage http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/babbage.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine http://www.david-tyler.com/barbados2006_moon.asp http://cse.stanford.edu/class/sophomore-college/projects-98/babbage/bio.htm http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/