Babbage: Charles

Babbage, Charles (1792-1871) British mathematician who is best known for his early work on mechanical calculating machines. He began work on his first difference engine in 1823, but abandoned it ten years later due to lack of funds. His second machine of 1834 was a programmable punched-card analytical engine , but this too was never completed. 

In 1834 Dalton was presented at the court of William IV. Etiquette prescribed that one wear a sword on such occasions, but as a Quaker, Dalton could not do this. The English mathematician Charles Babbage solved the problem by suggesting that Dalton appear in the scarlet robes of an Oxford doctor of law, and Dalton felt quite comfortable about the idea. Normally a Quaker would never wear scarlet but to Dalton s color-blind eyes, scarlet looked just like the Quaker drab he ordinarily wore. And, yes, there is a rather suspect anecdote about this occasion too. When the king asked him, Well, Dr. Dalton. 

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) sponsored the development of Ada and named the language in honor of Augusta Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron and assistant to Charles Babbage, the inventor of the analytical engine. Use of Ada is mandated by DOD thus, any vendor aspiring to sell to DOD is usually required to have an Ada compiler. This makes Ada applications very portable. However, we are not aware of Ada s use for any widely available chemistry applications. 

Almost 175 years ago in 1837, Charles Babbage, the father of the computer [39, 60], wrote, with prophetic insight [1]... 

Halacy DS (1970) Charles Babbage, father of the computer. MacmUlan, New York... 

Hyman RA (1982) Charles Babbage pioneer of the computer. Oxford University Press, Oxford... 

Difference engine (Charles Babbage) Babbage s engine was a programmable mechanical device used to calculate the value of a polynomial—a precursor to today s modern computers. 

Charles Babbage 1791-1871 UK Difference Engine and Analytical Engine ... 

Moschovitis, C. J. R, ed. 1999. History of the Internet A Chronology, 1843 to the Present. Santa Barbara, CA ABC-CLIO. Capsule chronologies of telecommunications from Charles Babbage to the Internet s impact in 1998. Dated, but the early history is interesting. 

Dubbey, J. M. 1978. The Mathematical Work of Charles Babbage. Cambridge, U.K. Cambridge University Press. 

John Kay s invention of the flying shuttle in 1733 sparked off the first Industrial Revolution, which led to the transformation of industry and subsequently of civilization itself. Yet another in vention in the field of textiles -the Jacquard head by Joseph Marie Jacquard (ca. 1801) - was the first binary information processor. Ada Lovelace, the benefactor for Charles Babbage who worked on the analytical engine (the predecessor to the modern day... 

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