Charles Babbage, (born December 26, 1791,London, England—died October 18, 1871,
London), English mathematician and inventor who is credited with having conceived
the first automaticdigitalcomputer.In 1812 Babbage helped found
theAnalyticalSociety, whose object was to introduce developments from the
European continent into Englishmathematics. In 1816 he was elected a fellow of
theRoyal Societyof London. He was instrumental in founding the Royal Astronomical
(1820) and Statistical (1834) societiesThe idea of mechanically calculating
mathematical tables first came to Babbage in 1812 or 1813. Later he made a small
calculator that could perform certain mathematical computations to eight decimals.
Then in 1823 he obtained government support for the design of a projected machine,
theDifference Engine, with a 20-decimal capacity. The Difference Engine was a
digital device: it operated ondiscretedigits rather than smooth quantities, and
the digits were decimal (0–9), represented by positions on toothed wheels rather
than binary digits (“bits”). When one of the toothed wheels turned from nine to
zero, it caused the next wheel to advance one position, carrying the digit. Like
modern computers, the Difference Engine had storage—that is, a place where data
could be held temporarily for later processing. Its construction required the
development ofmechanical engineeringtechniques, to which Babbage of necessity
devoted himself. In the meantime (1828–39), he served as Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics at theUniversity of Cambridge. However, the full engine, designed to
be room-sized, was never built, at least not by Babbage. All design and
construction ceased in 1833, whenJoseph Clement, the machinist responsible for
actually building the machine, refused to continue unless he was prepaid.
