C.Babbage - General Info

C.Babbage - General Info

Charles Babbage!

Born: December 26, 1791, Devonshire

Death: Died 1871, London

Significant Events in his Life:

1810: Entered Trinity College, Cambridge;
1814: graduated Peterhouse;
1817 received MA from Cambridge;
1827: published a table of logarithms from 1 to 108000; 1828: apointed to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge ( never presented a lecture );
1831: founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science;
1832: published "Economy of Manufactures and Machinery";

1833: began work on the Analytical Engine;
1834: foundede the Statistical Society of London;
1864: published Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.
1871: Death.

Other Inventions:

Cowcatcher

dynamometer

standard railroad gauge

Uniform postal rates

Occulting lights for lighthouses

Greenwich time signals

Heliograph

Opthalmoscope

Difference Engine

What was known today as an aged calculator, but might as well have been a computer in the time. Employing Wheels and Rods, Which others had experimented on earlier, the project was started in 1821 but failed test in 1833. Babbage then turned his attention to the Analytical Engine and completely abandoned the Difference Engine by 1842. Although never completed, it did improve the precision of Britain's machine-tool industry. In 1991, the National Museum of Science and Technology built a working model of The Difference Engine.

In 1879, Babbage's son reassembled a section of the Difference Engine from parts, and in 1995, Christie's auction in London auctioned off that section to the Power House Museum in Sydney for $282,000. The other known sections are owned by Harvard and Cambridge Universities.