Charles Babbage Facts
Charles Babbage Facts
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| Interesting Charles Babbage Facts: |
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| Babbage was born to a London family who had ties to the banking industry, and was schooled in various locations and by private tutors due to his poor health as a child. |
| At one of the schools he attended, Babbage was allowed access to a library that spurred on his love of math. |
| After finishing his early education, Babbage was accepted to Cambridge's Trinity College where he was disappointed in their math department. |
| This caused him to form the Analytical Society in 1812, along with several other friends and fellow students, with the purpose of working deeper in mathematics. |
| He was also a part of two other clubs, the Ghost Club which studied paranormal phenomena, and the Extractors Club, whose sole purpose was to make sure its members were freed from mental institutions of they were committed due to their work. |
| After being denied a diploma with top honors for a thesis that was considered blasphemous, Babbage set about correcting his reputation through his work. |
| He lectured the Royal Institution and was made a member of the Royal Society the following year. |
| Despite this, he still had trouble finding positions, even though he applied many places. |
| Unable to find positions, Babbage went to work with a fellow researcher, John Herschel, on the concept behind the electrodynamics of Arago's rotations, work which they published together in 1825. |
| This work is the underlying principle behind eddy currents. |
| He briefly worked in setting up actuarial tables for insurance companies, but didn't pursue a career there. |
| Babbage struggled financially until his father's death, when he inherited a large sum of the estate; his wife died in the same year, and Babbage began to travel extensively. |
| While he was traveling abroad, he learned that he had been accepted to a position to teach at Cambridge. |
| While at Cambridge, he helped found the Astronomical Society in 1820 and brought more purpose to the original Analytical Society that he'd helped form as a student. |
| One of the chief purposes of the new effort was to create a French-to-English translation of a groundbreaking new calculus text. |
| Throughout the years, Babbage and Herschel dabbled with a project known as the "difference engine," which laid the groundwork for a programmable computer. |
| The work he conducted on this device and its resulting follow-up prototypes led to the establishment of the revolutionary Babbage principle, which demonstrated the advantage to having division of labor in industry. |
| A fully working prototype of another Babbage difference engine was built in 1991, based off of the detailed plans that Babbage left behind. |
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