Charles Babbage
He designed the Difference Engine and then the Analytical Engine, the mechanical ancestor of the computer, with punched cards, a store and a mill.
Life
British mathematician and inventor, a professor at Cambridge. He designed the Difference Engine and then the Analytical Engine, a conceptual ancestor of the programmable computer, on which Ada Lovelace worked. He matters for the big questions because he raised early the possibility of a machine that calculates.
Main works
Analyses the effect of machines on work and production.
Criticises the state of science and its institutions in England.
Memoirs in which he tells how he conceived his engines.
In his own words
« The whole of arithmetic now appeared within the grasp of mechanism. »
« On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe believes in a lawgiving Creator who foresaw everything from the start, even miracles, as one sets up a calculating engine in advance.
Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837)
He sees no real conflict between Scripture and the facts of nature: science and religion agree.
Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837)