Charles Babbage
More info
- Born
- Died
- Known for
- Difference Engine, Analytical Engine
- Nationality
- British
The mathematician who designed the first computer, secured government funding for it, and left behind drawings rather than machines.
Babbage held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1828 to 1839 — Newton's chair, later Hawking's — but spent his life on calculating machines. The motivation was that the mathematical tables navigation and astronomy depended on were riddled with misprints: machines make fewer mistakes than tired humans. The Difference Engine, proposed in 1822, drew over £17,000 in British government funding and was abandoned unfinished in 1842.
He also found time to write On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832), an early study of industrial division of labour that Marx cited, and to co-found the Royal Astronomical Society. Half his brain is preserved at the Science Museum in London, the other half at the Hunterian Museum.