UNIVERSITY OF KRAGUJEVAC FACULTY OF SCIENCE DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

CHARLES BABBAGE

Professor: Radmila Paunovi-tajn

Name: Milena Pani File Number: 32/2012

Kragujevac, 2013.

Charles Babbage
The calculating engines of English mathematician Charles Babbage are among the most celebrated icons in the prehistory of computing. Babbages Difference Engine was the first successful automatic calculator and remains one of the finest examples of precision engineering of the time. Babbage is sometimes referred to as "father of computing."It was a gigantic calculator special applications, specifically designed for the calculation of polynomial functions. It is impossible to overestimate the importance that the British Empire, the dominant naval power era had such a machine. Before the introduction of calculators trigonometric tables were essential tool for working in areas that are crucial for the survival and expansion of an imperial power. Captains of ships were used to determine the position during the ride, and construction engineers in steam engines. Action artillery trajectories are determined by them. Bank officials were relying on that table to calculate the value of the interest, and contractors to determine dividends. Trigonometric tables were made "on foot", with the involvement of entire teams of mathematicians and human "computers" that drew algebra workers who were required calculations. Charles Babbage realized the shortcomings of the process, particularly the number of errors that is stealing, then the amount of time and effort that it took to load. It is therefore entirely devoted to the creation of a machine that processes and automated. His goal was to create a machine that would simultaneously provide precise calculations and published the results, so as to reduce the possibility of errors. The computer that is designed for general purpose and called it analytical machine. To the construction of the first machines that were performed similar functions, it has been more than a hundred years.

Charles Babbage (26 December 1791 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered a "father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine.

Birth
Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but he was most likely born at London. His date of birth was given in his obituary in The Times as 26 December 1792. However after the obituary appeared, a nephew wrote to say that Charles Babbage was born one year earlier. The parish register of St. Mary's Newington, London, shows that Babbage was baptized on 6 January 1792, supporting a birth year of 1791. Babbage's father, Benjamin Babbage, was a banking partner of the Praeds who owned the Bitton Estate in Teignmouth. His mother was Betsy Plumleigh Teape. In 1808, the Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth, and Benjamin Babbage became a warden of the nearby St. Michael's Church.

Education
His father's money allowed Charles to receive instruction from several schools and tutors during the course of his elementary education. Around the age of eight he was sent to a country school in Alphington near Exeter to recover from a life-threatening fever. His parents ordered that his "brain was not to be taxed too much" and Babbage felt that "this great idleness may have led to some of my childish reasonings." For a short time he attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes, but his health forced him back to private tutors for a time. He then joined a 30-student Holmwood academy. The academy had a well-stocked library that prompted Babbage's love of mathematics. He studied with two more private tutors after leaving the academy. Of the first, a clergyman near Cambridge, Babbage said, "I fear I did not derive from it all the advantages that I might have done." The second was an Oxford tutor from whom Babbage learned enough of the Classics to be accepted to Cambridge. Babbage arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1810. He had read extensively in Leibniz, Joseph Louis Lagrange, Thomas Simpson, and Lacroix and was seriously disappointed in the mathematical instruction available at Cambridge. In response, he and several friends formed the Analytical Society in 1812. In 1812 Babbage transferred to Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was the top mathematician at Peterhouse, but did not graduate with honours. He instead received an honorary degree without examination in 1814.

Marriage, family, death

Design of computers
In 1812 he was looking at a table of logarithms, which he knew to be full of mistakes, when the idea occurred to him of computing all tabular functions by machinery. Three or four of their mathematicians decided how to compute the tables, half a dozen more broke down the operations into simple stages, and the work itself, which was restricted to addition and subtraction, was done by eighty computers who knew only these two arithmetical processes. Here, for the first time, mass production was applied to arithmetic, and Babbage was seized by the idea that the labours of the unskilled computers could be taken over completely by machinery which would be quicker and more reliable. Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers, although they were not actually completed, largely because of funding problems and personality issues. He directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanized. Although Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was very similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction-based, the control unit could make conditional jumps, and the machine had a separate I/O unit.

Difference engine
In Babbage's time, numerical tables were calculated by humans who were called 'computers', meaning "one who computes". At Cambridge, he saw the high error-rate of this human-driven process and started his life's work of trying to calculate the tables mechanically. He began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions. Unlike similar efforts of the time, Babbage's difference engine was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of finite differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division. At the beginning of the 1820s, Babbage worked on a prototype of his first difference engine. This prototype evolved into the "first difference engine." It remained unfinished and the finished portion is located at the Science Museum in London. This first difference engine would have been composed of around 25,000
3

Picture 1,2. Difference engine

parts, weigh fifteen tons, and would have been 2.4 m tall. Although Babbage received ample funding for the project, it was never completed. He later designed an improved version, "Difference Engine No. 2". It performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum returning results to 31 digits, far more than the average modern pocket calculator.

Other accomplishments
In 1824, Babbage won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society "for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables". From 1828 to 1839 Babbage was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. He contributed largely to several scientific periodicals, and was instrumental in founding the Astronomical Society in 1820 and the Statistical Society in 1834. Babbage was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1832. Babbage also achieved notable results in cryptography. He broke Vigenre's autokey cipher as well as the much weaker cipher that is called Vigenre cipher today. Babbage's discovery was used to aid English military campaigns. In 1838, Babbage invented the pilot (also called a cow-catcher), the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles. Babbage's eldest son, Benjamin Herschel Babbage, worked as an engineer for Brunel on the railways before emigrating to Australia. Babbage also invented an ophthalmoscope, but although he gave it to a physician for testing it was forgotten, and the device only came into use after being independently invented by Hermann von Helmholtz. Babbage twice stood for Parliament as a candidate for the borough of Finsbury. On the Economy of Machine and Manufacture, Babbage described what is now called the Babbage principle, which describes certain advantages with division of labour. Babbage noted that highly skilledand thus generally highly paidworkers spend parts of their job performing tasks that are "below" their skill level. If the labour process can be divided among several workers, it is possible to assign only high-skill tasks to high-skill and high-cost workers and leave other working tasks to less-skilled and lower-paid workers, thereby cutting labour costs. Babbage made notable contributions in other areas as well. He assisted in establishing the modern postal system in England and compiled the first reliable actuarial tables.

Interesting
Half of Babbage's brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The other half of Babbage's brain is on display in the Science Museum, London. He especially hated street music, and in particular the music of organ grinders, against whom he railed in various venues. The following quotation is typical:

It is difficult to estimate the misery inflicted upon thousands of persons, and the absolute pecuniary penalty imposed upon multitudes of intellectual workers by the loss of their time, destroyed by organ-grinders and other similar nuisances. Babbage had a habit of declining honors, and declined both a knighthood and baronetcy. The discoveries of Babbage have been seen by some as being influenced by Indian thought, in particular Indian logic.

Conclusion
Lives of ordinary people can not be imagined without computers. This idea had Charles Babbage has more than 150 years. Anecdotes about him says he could not tolerate street musicians, which was at that time in London so much. They harassed him at work, and he calculated that his players take away a quarter of his true ability. He wrote about them in the newspaper, spoke to members of parliament, shouting at them from his window, etc. But it's just more raging drunkards, idlers and caused them to him spite organize the "Concert". On the occasion of his death, The Times newspaper wrote: Babbage lived 80 years in spite of harassment and remove street musicians.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage, http://www.am.unze.ba/pzi/2007/TasoNazif/zanimljivosti.html, http://www.zastitapodataka.com/dzentlmen-ciste-invencije-carls-babidz/#more-1410,