Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage was born in London, the son of a banker, and studied mathematics at Cambridge, where he later held the Lucasian chair once held by Isaac Newton. Frustrated by errors in printed tables of numbers used by navigators and engineers, he designed a machine to calculate and print such tables automatically. With government funding he began building this Difference Engine in the 1820s, but disputes with his engineer and rising costs stopped the work. He then designed a far more ambitious machine, the Analytical Engine, which could be programmed with punched cards like those used in Jacquard looms. It had a store for numbers and a mill for calculating, much like the memory and processor of a modern computer. Ada Lovelace wrote notes explaining how it could be programmed. Neither engine was completed in his lifetime. Babbage also wrote on economics and factories, helped found the Royal Astronomical Society, and campaigned against street noise. He died in 1871. In 1991 the Science Museum in London built a working Difference Engine from his plans.

Charles Babbage is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Raised a Protestant; later in life he wrote on natural theology and valued Christianity chiefly for its moral teaching rather than speculative doctrine. Source: Wikipedia