Yesterday, we took a look at some of the many portraits of Isaac Newton the second Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, today, we are turning our attention to a nineteenth century occupant of that honourable chair, Charles Babbage (1791–1871).
Although Babbage came from a very wealthy family with a high social status there are no know childhood portraits. The earliest portraits seem to be from 1833, when he was already forty-two years old and Lucasian Professor. There is a stippled engraving made by the English engraver John Linnell (1792–1863). The son of a carver and guilder he had contact with several painters as a pupil before being admitted to the Royal Academy in 1805. He was only sixteen when left the Academy and went on to long and successful career as painter and engraver.
Self-portrait of John Linnell c. 1860Linnell’s portrait of Babbage
There is a second stippled engraving of Babbage from 1833 as Lucasian Professor by Richard Roffe (fl. 1805–1827) about who very little is known.
Roffe’s portrait of Babbage
There is an early painted portrait of unknown date and by an unknow artist, now in the National Trust’s collection.
British (English) School; Charles Babbage (1792-1871) ; National Trust
There is a painted portrait in the National Portrait gallery from 1876 by Samuel Lawrence (1812–1884) a British portrait painter, who painted the cream of the mid Victorian society, ncluding the polymath William Whewell, a student friend of Babbage’s.
Samuel Lawrence attributed to Sir Anthony Coningham Sterling, salt print, late 1840sSamuel Lawrence portrait of Babbage
There is lithographic portrait from 1841 now in the Wellcome Collection by D. Castellini after the pencil drawing Carlo Ernesto Liverati (1805–1844). I can find nothing on either Liverati or Castellini.
L0020480 Charles Babbage Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images Portrait bust of Charles Babbage with facsimile Lithograph By: D. Castellini after: Liverati, C.E.Published: –
Babbage was a man of his times and a major technology fan so we naturally have quite a lot of photographic portraits. There is a daguerreotype from around 1850 made by the French photographer and artist Antoine François Jean Claudet (1797–1867).
Antoine Claudet in 1850Claudet’s daguerreotype of Babbage
Claudet was active in the Victorian scientific community and was working with Charles Babbage on photographic experiments around the time this compelling portrait of him was made. In it, the pattern of embellished fabric on the side table is picked up in Babbage’s waistcoat. (National Portrait Gallery).
Claudet also took one of the only two surviving photographs of Ada Lovelace in c. 1843 or 1850
Claudet’s daguerreotype of Ada Lovelace
There is a seated photographic portrait of Babbage:
Half-length portrait of Babbage, seated, body turned to the left as viewed, Babbage looking to camera. The image is embossed “J M MACKIE PHOTO”. The reverse has two inscriptions. Top, in ink: “For my dear Aunt Fanny from her affectionate nephew B Herschel Babbage”. [Benjamin Herschel Babbage (1815-1878)]. Below “Copied from a negative taken for the Statistical Society about 1864. Charles Babbage was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816. (Royal Society)
There is another undated seated photographic portrait of an elder Babbage with the caption,” Charles Babbage (1792-1871). English mathematician and mechanical genius.”
The Illustrated London News published an obituary portrait of Babbage
Obituary portrait of Charles Babbage (1791-1871). The caption is The late Mr Babbage. Illustration for The Illustrated London News, 4 November 1871. This portrait was derived from a photograph of Babbage taken at the Fourth International Statistical Congress which took place in London in July 1860. (Science Museum)
Most of the images shown here were used multiple times in writings about Babbage-.
When people hear the name Charles Babbage (1791–1871) these days they tend to automatically think of nineteenth century mechanical computers but as I have tried to show over the years in these posts Babbage was far more than a man who envisaged computers ahead of his time. He was an inventor, engineer, economist, science reformer, founder of scientific societies, socialite, and more. However, in the beginning he was first and foremost a mathematician and much of what he undertook in his long and complex life, in particular those computers, was founded in those mathematical beginnings, which I will now sketch here.
British (English) School; Charles Babbage (1792-1871) ; National Trust, Dudmaston; via Wikimedia Commons
Before we turn to the young Charles Babbage and his mathematical endeavours it pays to look at the world of mathematics in England that he entered in the early nineteenth century.
As should be well known to regular readers of this blog, at the end of the seventeenth century both Isaac Newton (1642–1726 O.S.) and Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716 O.S.) collated the numerous fragment of the infinitesimal calculus that had been created over the previous two thousand years to create a coherent, but by no means complete, mathematical discipline. This co-discovery/invention[1] led in the early eighteenth century to one of the most spectacular and embittered priority and plagiarism disputes in the history of science. This dispute had serious consequences for the development of the mathematical sciences in England for the next century. Whereas on the continent the system of Leibniz was taken up by other mathematicians, particularly but not only, in Switzerland and France and both mathematics and the mathematical sciences, principally physics and astronomy, were developed further, in England an exaggerated reverence for the demi-god Newton and all that he had created, combined with a rejection of all that was continental, led to a stagnation in the mathematical science, which became moribund, with no new mathematicians or mathematics emerging in the hundred years following Newton’s demise.
This was particularly true of the only mathematical university, Newton’s alma mater, Cambridge, where Babbage would go to study as a young man, where the mathematical education consisted of studying and digesting the holy scripture of the demi-god and parroting them out again during the tripos exams. The only significant exception to this cult was the mathematician and astronomer Robert Woodhouse (1773– 1827) who published his Principles of Analytical Calculation, written in Leibnizian notation, in 1803 and following other textbooks, An Elementary Treatise on Astronomy in two volumes in 1818, which contained an account of the treatment of physical astronomy by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) and other continental writers. Despite his obvious desire to modernise the mathematical science in Cambridge he didn’t press the issue and his efforts, initially, had little impact.
Babbage’s education was an intermittent mix of schooling and private tuition due to health problems. At the Holmwood Academy in Middlesex under the Reverend Stephen Freeman, Babbage discovered his affinity for mathematics. He largely taught himself mathematics using the books of Robert Woodhouse, Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), and Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799), as he wrote in his autobiography:
Amongst these were Humphry Ditton’s Fluxions of which I could make nothing; Madame Agnesi’s Analytical Instruction’ from which I acquired some knowledge; Woodhouse’s Principles of Analytic Calculation, from which I learned the notation of Leibniz; and Lagrange’s Théorie des Fonctions. I possessed also the Fluxionsof Maclaurin and of Simson.
Having acquire the necessary knowledge of classics, which he disliked, he qualified to enter Trinity College, Cambridge, which he did in October 1810. He was not impressed:
Thus, it happened that when I went to Cambridge I could work out such questions as the very moderate amount of mathematics which I then possessed admitted, with equal facility, in the dots of Newton, the d’s of Leibniz, or the dashes Of Lagrange. I thus acquired a distaste for the routine of the studies of the place, and devoured the papers of Euler and other mathematicians scattered through innumerable volumes of the academies of St Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris, which the libraries I had recourse to contained.
Under these circumstances it was not surprising that I should perceive and be penetrated with the superior power of the notation of Leibniz.
Fortunately following the century long mathematical drought that Cambridge had suffered, Babbage belonged to what might be termed a golden generation that included amongst other John Herschel (1792–1871), just a year younger than Babbage, and George Peacock (1791–1858), the same age, both of whom became close friends.
Portrait of a young Herschel by Alfred Edward Chalon Source: Wikimedia CommonsPortrait of George Peacock, oil on canvas, by Douglas Blakiston, 1860, Royal Society of London Source: Linda Hall Library
The three of them together with eight other students formed The Analytical Society with the aim of replacing the Fluxions of Newton with the Calculus of Leibniz, or as Babbage expressed it in a wonderful series of mathematical puns, the aim of the Society was to promote, “the principles of d-ism as opposed to the dot-age of the university”.
The Analytical Society produced three publications. In 1813, they published Memoirs ofthe Analytical Society, written by Babbage and Herschel. It basically contains a history of mathematics from the Leibniz/Newton controversy onwards and contains excepts from the work of no less than thirty-five leading mathematicians with commentaries. Interestingly they attribute the discovery of the calculus to Fermat:
Discovered by Fermat, concinnated and rendered analytical by Newton and enriched by Leibniz with a powerful and comprehensive notation … as if the soil of this country were unfavourable to its cultivation, it soon drooped and almost faded into neglect, and we have now to re-import the exotic, with nearly a century of foreign improvements, and to render it once more indigenous among us.
Like Woodhouse’s Principles of Analytic Calculation, the Memoir failed to take root and it was decided what was need was a new textbook in English of Leibnizian calculus. Begun by Babbage and completed by Peacock and Herschel they published an English translation of Lacroix’s Sur le calcul différentiel et intégral in 1816. In 1820, the three of them published a large collection of worked examples of the calculus in Leibnizian notation.
In the end it took Peacock working as an exam moderator in 1817, 1819 and William Whewell (1794–1866), another of the Cambridge golden generation, publishing his Elementary Treatise on Mechanic, written entirely in Leibnizian notation, in 1819 and then serving as exam moderator in 1820 followed by Peacock, once again in 1821 to finally establish the Leibnizian calculus in Cambridge.
As a young mathematician, Babbage published three papers on the calculus of functions, promoting, of course, the continental calculus and notation. Other than that they show a high level of competence as well as originality in the topic, which is not honoured in the history of mathematics, I’m not going to discuss them here. Much more interesting in his unpublished work from this period, to explain the significance of which we must take a small diversion.
Since its introduction into Europe with the translation of the al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–c. 850) into Latin by Robert of Chester in 1145, algebra had always been arithmetic carried out with words, symbols or letters in the place of numerals. This changed significantly in the nineteenth century with the introduction of abstract algebra and the earliest non-standard algebras much of which took place in Britain. The first non-standard algebra was the quaternion algebra of William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) introduced in 1843, closely followed by the algebraic logic of George Boole (1815–1864) first presented in his Mathematical Analysis of Logic in 1847 and now known as Boolean algebra. The algebraic logic of Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) in his paper On the structure of the syllogism (1846) and his book Formal Logic, or the Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable (1847).The matrix algebra as developed by James Joseph Sylvester (1814–1897) and Arthur Cayley (1821–1895) around 1850. Finally, William Kingdom Clifford (1845–1879) in his paper Applications of Grassmann’s Extensive Algebra (1878). In all of these algebras the symbols stood for other mathematical objects not numerals.
The overriding concept of abstract algebra in which the symbols used could be defined to represent a wide variety of mathematical objects was first presented by George Peacock in his Treatise on Algebra in 1830.
His ideas, which I will sketch, were deepened by another Cambridge mathematician Duncan Gregory (1813–1844) in his paper The Foundations of Algebra presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1838, which I won’t cover here. The preface to Peacock’s ground breaking work starts thus:
The work which I have now the honour of presenting to the public, was written with a view of conferring upon Algebra the character of a demonstrative science, by making its first principles co-extensive with the conclusions which were founded upon them: and it was in consequence of the very particular examination of those principles to which I was led in the course of the enquiry, that I have felt myself compelled to depart so very widely from the form under which they are commonly exhibited. The object which I propose to effect is undoubtedly one of great importance, and of no small difficulty, inasmuch as it brought me into immediate contact with the discussion of many subjects of dispute and controversy, which have not hitherto been settled upon satisfactory grounds: and though I am very sensible of the great responsibility which I incur by an attempt of this nature, accompanied as it is by the proposal of so many innovations, yet I shall be perfectly satisfied if I may be considered as having succeeded in removing any difficulties or imperfections from the elements of this beautiful and most comprehensive science.
He wrote:
‘Algebra’ may be defined to be, the science of general reasoning by symbolical language. . . . it has been termed Universal Arithmetic: but this definition is defective, in as much as it assigns for the general object of the science, what can only be considered as one of its applications.
He has two types of algebra, arithmetical algebra and symbolic algebra. In the book he describes symbolic algebra as:
… the science which treats the combinations of arbitrary signs and symbols by means defined through arbitrary laws.
[…]
We may assume any laws for the combination and incorporation of such symbols, so long as our assumptions are independent, and therefore not inconsistent with each other.[2]
The historian of mathematics J.M. Dubbey summarises the main thesis pf Peacock’s ideas thus:[3]
(1) Algebra had previously been considered only as a modification of Arithmetic. (2) Algebra consists of the manipulation of symbols in a way independent of any particular interpretation. (3) Arithmetic is only a special case of Algebra – a “Science of Suggestion” as Peacock put it. (4) The sign “=” is to be taken as meaning “is algebraically equivalent to”. (5) The principle of the permanence of equivalent forms.
We now return to Babbage. In the British Museum is an unpublished collection of essays by Babbage with the title The Philosophy of Analysis, which were written around 1820. These have the following titles:
(1) On Notation; (2) Of the influence of general signs in analytical reasonings, (3) General notions respecting Analysis (my theory of identity); (4) Induction; (5) Generalisation; (6) Analogy; (7) Of the law of Continuity; (8) Of the value of a first book; (9) Of Artifices; (10) Of problems requiring new methods where the difficulty generally consists in putting it into Analytical language.
Dubby argues that statements equivalent to all five of Peacock’s main ideas can be found in Babbage’s third essay, General notions respecting Analysis (my theory of identity). It is known from their correspondence that Peacock had read the essays, which raises the question was he inspired by Babbage’s work or did he knowingly borrow from it? We will almost certainly never know the answer.
I have brought this excurse on the history of abstract algebra for a specific reason connected with Babbage’s computers. His original concept, the Difference Engine, is of course fundamentally mathematical. It was conceived with the idea of being able to carry out the extensive and wearying calculations necessary to produce mathematical tables without the ever present risk of human error. The later Analytical Engine was, however, a completely different beast. In theory it would have been capable of making calculations over a very wide range of non-mathematical topics, as is the computer on which I am typing this. This is explicitly stated in the very flowery notes to the translation of the Luigi Menabrea’s memoire on the Analytical Engine, that are attributed Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), they were in fact co-authored by Babbage. It is often claimed by the various writers that Babbage, the mathematician, could only conceive of his computer working with numbers, whereas “what Lovelace saw… was that number could represent entities other than quantity. So once you had a machine for manipulating numbers, if those numbers represented other things, letters, musical notes, then the machine could manipulate symbols of which number was one instance, according to rules.” [4] Given that Babbage was well acquainted with the concepts of abstract algebra in 1820, it seems highly unlikely that he was blind to the wider potential of his own creation. In fact:
The idea of a machine that could transcend numbers, as the Analytical Engine had transcended addition and been generalised to other operations, had been in Babbage’s thoughts for some years. In a letter to Mary Somerville written 12 July 1836 [that is 8 years before the original French version of the Menabrea essay was published] he spoke of having “ a kind of vision of a developing machine.” This was only twelve days after he had taken the decision to adopt punched cards as input to the Analytical Engine, and two days after he has mused in his notebook,
This day I had for the first time a general but very indistinct conception of the possibility of making the engine work out algebraic developments – I mean without any reference to the value of the letters. My notion is that as the cards (Jacquards) of the calc. engine direct a series of operations and the recommence with the first…[5]
I rest my case.
[1] Choose your own term according to your preferred philosophy of mathematics
I don’t remember ever coming across half a paragraph of just nineteen lines that manages to cram in so many history of science and technology myths, errors, and falsehoods as the one that I recently read whilst soaking in a hot bath. A truly monumental cluster fuck!
The offending object is on page 131 of David B. Teplow’s The Philosophy and Practice ofScience[1], which I will be reviewing in the not to distant future and which is much better than the handful of lines dumped on here and which I will almost certainly be recommending but for now the cluster fuck.
Revolutionary advance in science have been achieved through a number of mechanisms. Optics is a good example. Simple, but keen and thoughtful, observation of the worlds at a magnification of 1x, combined with logic, enabled Aristotle to lay the foundation for all of science and for Copernicus to propose a heliocentric solar system.
The statement about Aristotle laying the foundation for all science is definitely questionable given his rejection of mathematics but I’ll let it pass. Copernicus proposal of a heliocentric solar system was not in anyway based on observation but on rethinking elements of the existing geocentric system.
Copernicus’ heliocentric model from Andreas Cellarius’ Atlas Coelestis 1660
Galileo’s construction of the first telescope’s allowed him to observe the world at ≈30x and to confirm Copernicus’s theory of a heliocentric heavens.
Galileo by no means constructed the first telescopes. Apart from being preceded by the various inventors of the telescope such as Hans Lipperhey and Jacob Adriaenszoon, by the time he learnt about telescopes they were on sale all over Europe. The Venetian Senate was truly pissed off when they discovered this after giving Galileo a massive pay rise for presenting them with a telescope, having thought it was something very special. Galileo was also definitely preceded as a telescopic astronomical observer by Thomas Harriot and probably by Simon Marius. If I could get my hands on the idiot, who first perpetrated the myth that Galileo’s observations confirmed Copernicus’s theory of a heliocentric heavens, I would shove a Galilean telescope up his fundamental orifice. Galileo knew that nothing that he had observed confirmed Copernicus’s theory and he never claimed that he had. It would be 1725 before James Bradley produced the first telescopic observation that confirmed part of the heliocentric theory, when he observed stellar aberration.
Galileo’s “cannocchiali” telescopes at the Museo Galileo, Florence via Wikimedia Commons
It [optics] also enabled van Leeuwenhoek to study the microscopic world, at ≈250x, and in the process discover “animalcules” (from the Latin for “tiny animal”; animalculum) – including bacteria, protozoa, and spermatozoa – thus becoming the first microscopist and microbiologist.
Van Leeuwenhoek is a very long way from being the first microscopist. It’s actually difficult to establish who first began using microscopes as scientific instruments. Galileo knew of the microscope and almost certainly discovered the principle, as probably did many others, when looking through a Galilean or Dutch telescope ( one convex, one concave lens) the wrong way it, when it functions as a microscope, but he did make any systematic microscopic studies. The Dutch engineer, inventor, (al)chemist, optician, and showman Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel (1571–1631) was constructing and giving public demonstrations with Keplerian microscopes (two convex lenses) by about 1620. Galileo built a compound microscope in 1624, which he presented to Prince Federico Cesi founder of the Acccademia dei Lincei.
Anthonie van Leeuwenhek Portrait by Jan Verkolje, after 1680 Source: Wikimedia Commons
The first illustrations made with a microscope are attributed to Francesco Stelluti on a pamphlet published by the Acccademia dei Lincei to celebrate the election of Maffeo Barberini as Pope in 1623. The bees were the Barberini family emblem. Stelluti published further microscopic studies of bees in a Tuscan translation of an obscure Latin poem in 1630.
Stelluti Bees1630
In 1644 Giovanni Battista Odierna published a pamphlet of his microscopic studies of the fly’s eye, his L’Occhio della mosca and in 1656 Pierre Borel published a collection a collection of a hundred miscellaneous microscope observations, his Observationum microscopicarum canturia.
The Italian biologist Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) observed capillary structures in frog’s lungs with a microscope in 1661 putting him ahead of van Leeuwenhoek as microbiologist.
With the help of the newly invented microscope, Marcello Malpighi (A) (1628–1694) solidified Harvey’s concepts and was the first man ever to describe the pulmonary capillaries and alveoli (B). Source:
Given his propensity to vehemently claim priority on every aspect of his research in his polymathic career, Robert Hooke would almost certainly be enraged by our authors claim, as his magnificent and ground-breaking microscopic study the Micrographia was published in 1665, eight years before van Leeuwenhoek’ first letter was published by the Royal Society. Hooke would probably also claim priority as the first microbiologist for his study of and naming of biological cells.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The claims that van Leeuwenhoek was the first microscopist and microbiologist are total bullshit and display a level of ignorance and/or laziness, on Teplow’s part, who either didn’t bother to check his facts or to do the bloody research.
Electron and atomic force microscopes now allow scientists to see objects at magnifications up to ≈107x, opening up an immense sub-cellular world in which even individual atoms can be visualized. These instrumental advances expanded the observable universe, and the amount of information to which one has access, many orders of magnitude.
Nothing to complain about here.
The best example of a recent revolution in scientific method comes from computer science, a field that for all intents and purposes, did not even exist until the twentieth century.
Nor here, but the pain starts again in the very next sentence.
The development of mechanical computers (the “difference and analytical engines”) and arbitrary, user-defined programs (“weav[ing] algebraic patterns”) by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, respectively, followed by the conception and development of electronic computers by John van [sic] Neumann and Alan Turing ushered us into the current “information age.”
Oh boy! Babbage’s Differential Engine, a special purpose computer designed to calculate and print error free mathematical tables using the method of differences was never realised, beyond a small working model, which he had his engineer Joseph Clement (1779–1844) construct in 1832, before the project was abandoned. The Analytical Engine, conceived as a grandiose multipurpose computer never got off the drawing board.
Portion of Charles Babbage’s calculating machine (Difference Engine No.1), built by Joseph Clement, London, 1832. Science Museum London
Although she described the concept of arbitrary, user-defined programs in her notes to her translation of Luigi Menabrea’s Notions sur la machine analytique de M. Charles Babbage (1842), the concept is from Babbage and not Lovelace. The full quote from Lovelace’s notes is “we may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
The idea of a machine that could transcend number, as the Analytical Engine had transcended addition and had been generalized to other operations, had been in Babbage’s thoughts for some years. In a letter to Mary Somerville written 12 July 1836, he spoke of having “a kind of vision of a developing machine.” This was only twelve days after he had taken the decision to adopt punched card as input to the Analytical Engine, and two days after he mused in his notebook.
This day I had for the first time a general but very indistinct conception of the possibility of making an engine work out algebraic developments – I mean without any reference to the value of the letters. My notion is that as the cards (Jacquards) of the calc. engine direct a series of operations and then recommence with the first, so it might be possible to cause the same cards to punch others equivalent to any given number of repetitions. But these hole[s] might perhaps be small pieces of formulae previously made by the first cards and possibly some mode might be found for arranging such detached parts according to powers of nine numbers and of collecting similar ones [the entry breaks off here].
What he was groping for here was some means of bypassing or replacing the columns of numbers that are ordinarily the objects to be operated on, so that he could operate on symbols instead.[2]
Note that this is eight years before Ada translated the Menabrea article. Note also, whereas Ada drops the suggestion in a simple, highly quotable, poetic bon mot, Babbage was acutely aware of the problems involved in actually achieving this aim. As I’ve sodding well said a hundred bleeding times, before accrediting anything to Countess Lovelace see what Babbage has said on the subject in his correspondence and unpublished papers.
One should also note that there was no continuity or influence between Babbage’s schemes and the invention of the computer in the twentieth century. It was only with hindsight that historians began to praise Babbage as a pioneer of the computer age.
Neither Alan Turing nor John von Neumann conceived or developed the effing computer! Vannevar Bush (differential analyser, 1927), Konrad Zuse (Z2 1940, Z3 1941), Vincent Atanasoff & Clifford Berry (ABC, 1942), Howard Aiken (Harvard Mark I, 1944), Tommy Flowers (Colossus, 1943–45), and John Mauchly & J. Presper Eckert (ENIAC, 1945) did conceive and develop computers.
In 1936 Alan Turing published a meta-mathematical paper, On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, which after other people had developed computers provided a succinct way of categorising the computing capabilities of a computing machine.
During WWII Turing, together with Gordon Welchman, developed the Bombe from the Polish Bomba, an electro-mechanical device used to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages. The Bombe was designed and constructed by Harold Keen. After WWII, Turing worked on the design of the Automatic Computer Engine (ACE), which he presented in 1945. The ACE was never built.
Beginning in 1944, ENIAC inventors, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, designed the Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) the machine being finally delivered in 1949. Brought in as a consultant, John von Neumann wrote a description of the EDVAC, First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, which was published in 1945 and led to Mauchley and Eckert being denied a patent for EDVAC.
First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC Source: Wikimedia Commons
This totally lazy and factually incorrect Turing and von Neuman invented the computer that has become established in popular history of technology gets on my fucking wick. Teplow’s paragraph that I have dissected above is a glowing example of lazy, cliché filled, badly researched history of science and technology that should not be being published by a major academic publisher in 2023.
[1] David B. Teplow, The Philosophy and Practice ofScience, CUP, 2023
[2] Dorothy Stein, Ada: A Life and a Legacy, The MIT Press, 1985. pp. 102–103
People writing about the history of science tend not to think of their subjects as party animals. Science is a serious topic, scientists are serious scholars, party time is not really considered as part of the picture. However, some scientists have been notorious party animals and one of those was Charles Babbage. This wasn’t always the case but was something that first developed when he was already forty years old.
British (English) School; Charles Babbage (1792-1871) circa 1820; National Trust, Dudmaston; via Wikimedia Commons
In 1814, much to the displeasure of his father, Babbage got married on graduating from Cambridge to Georgina Whitmore at the age of twenty-three. His father didn’t approve because he didn’t have any form of employment and was still dependent on his rich father to provide him with an allowance. The couple lived initially in Devon moving to London in 1815. The couple had eight children of which only four survived childhood. 1827 was a black year for Babbage as both his father and his wife died. He packed up and left London, going on an extended journey around the continent.
Returning to London in 1828, he was now a very rich man having inherited a fortune from his father. He bought a new house, 1 Dorset Street, Marylebone, and it is here in the 1830s that he became a notorious lion of the London social scene known for his extravagant soirées.
Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was a writer, social theorist, abolitionist, who had moved to London in 1832. Darwin’s sister, in a letter, wrote, she is “now a great Lion in London, much patronized by Ld. Brougham who has set her to write stories on the poor Laws” and recommending Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated inpamphlet-sized parts. They added that their brother Erasmus “knows her & is a very great admirer & everybody reads her little books & if you have a dull hour you can, and then throw them overboard, that they may not take up your precious room.” Martineau, herself, wrote in a letter, “All are eager to go to his [Babbage’s] glorious soirées.”
Harriet Martineau Source: Wikimedia Commons
Some readers might ask, what is a soirée?
In the 18th century, in France and England, it became fashionable for wealthy, well married ladies who had a residence “in town” to invite accomplished guests to visit their home in the evening, to partake of refreshments and cultural conversation. Soirées often included refined musical entertainment, and the term is still sometimes used to define a certain sophisticated type of evening party. (Wikipedia)
In this case we have a very wealthy host, although his daughter Georgiana (1818–1834) initially functioned as hostess, and the dimensions of Babbage’s soirées certainly reflected his wealth. These affairs which regularly took place on Saturday evening had between two and three hundred guests from all sections of the London high society. Celebrities, civil dignitaries, authors, actors, scientists, bishops, bankers, politicians, industrialists, and socialites converged for gossip, intrigue, and the latest in science, literature, philosophy, and art.
The author Charles Dickens (1812–1870), who was friends with Babbage, had been known to attend and it is thought that the character Daniel Doyce in his novel Little Dorrit (1855–57) was based partially on Babbage and partly on his engineer, Joseph Clement (1779–1844).
Young Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise, 1839 Source: Wikimedia Commons
The geologist Charles Lyell (1797–1875) was a frequent attendee.
Charles Lyell at the British Association meeting in Glasgow 1840. Painting by Alexander Craig. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Lyell is noted for his influence on the young Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Darwin returned to England from his voyage on the Beagle in 1836. In the following year he informed his sister that Charles Lyell was insisting he hurry on up to London. He “wants me to be up on Saturday for a party at Mr Babbage.” Darwin halfheartedly complained. Lyell say Babbage’s parties are the best in the way of literary people in London–and that there is a good mixture of pretty women.”[1] Lyell was obviously matchmaking for Darwin as he was already happily married.
Babbage’s parties brought together levels of society usually socially segregated. Female members of the titled played whist with the wives of experimenters and fossil hunters, while on the dance floor the attractive young daughters of noblemen aristocracy whirled with the unmarried scientists. Lyell told Herschel that “[Babbage] has done good, and acquired influence for science by his parties and the manner in which he has firmly and successfully asserted the rank in society due to science.”[2]
Mary Somerville portrait by Thomas Phillips Source: Wikimedia Commons
To provide sustenance for the long night ahead, a table would be laid with punch, cordials, wine, sand Madeira; tarts; fruits both fresh and dried; nuts, cakes cookies, and finger sandwiches. The grandest repasts would include oysters, salads, croquettes, cold salmon, and various fowls.[3]
As well as dancing there were entertainments such as novelists reading their latest work, tableau vivants, scientific demonstrations, astronomical telescope observations out on the lawn, or Babbage displaying the early photographs of his friend William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877).
Fox Talbot Daguerreotype by Antoine Claudet, c. 1844 Source: Wikimedia Commons
A hight point of the entertainments was Babbage presenting his guests with his passion for automation and the computer. He would first present his silver danseuse, the story of which he relates in his autobiography:
“During my boyhood my mother took me to several exhibitions of machinery. I well remember one of them in Hanover Square, by a man who called himself Merlin. I was so greatly interested in it, that the Exhibiter remarked the circumstance, and after explaining some of the objects to which the public had access, proposed to my mother to take me up to his workshop. Where I would see still more wonderful automata. We accordingly ascended to the attic. There were two uncovered female figures of silver, about twelve inches high.
[…]
The other silver figure was an admirable danseuse, with a bird on the fore finger of her right hand, which wagged its tail, flapped its wings, and opened its beak. This lady attitudinized in a most fascinating manner. Her eyes were full of imagination, and irresistible.
Charles Babbage, Passages from The Life of a Philosopher, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, London, 1864 p. 17
In 1834, Merlin having died in 1803, Babbage acquired the silver danseuse restored it and had new clothes made for it. Having charmed he guests with his mechanical danseuse, Babbage would move on to the small working model of his Difference Engine which he had his engineer Joseph Clement (1779–1844) construct in 1832.
Portion of Charles Babbage’s calculating machine (Difference Engine No.1), built by Joseph Clement, London, 1832. Science Museum London
I have described what happened next in an early blog post, which I will now quote:
Babbage argued by analogy, he describes the possibility of a computer programme (not the terminology that Babbage uses by the way) that generates the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, … up to and including 100,000,001 but then instead of producing the number 100,000,002 as expected jumps to 100,010,002, continuing the series 100,030,003; 100,060,004; 100,100,005; 100,150,006; 100,210,007 … and so forth. Babbage states that the law generating the series has changed at the jump. The expected numbers being exceeded by the series 10,000, 30,000, 60,000, 100,000, 150,000 … and so on this being the series of triangular numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, … multiplied by 10,000.
Babbage goes on to explain that the operator does not need to interfere with the calculating engine (he is of course thinking of his own Difference Engine) at this point but can pre-programme it from the beginning to make the change at the given juncture.
Unlike Whewell’s God who has to intervene in his own laws of nature with miracles to explain the presence of new species in the geological record Babbage’s mathematical God can pre-programme his laws of nature to change at the required point in time thus pre-programming his miracles at the point of creation.
Babbage actually programmed one of the calculating units of his Difference Engine to perform a miracle of the type described here, which he then demonstrated to guests at the soirees he held at his home in London.
Towards the end of the 1830’s he added another act to his automata/calculator party turn. He had acquired, for the then extraordinary sum of £800, one of the woven-in-silk portraits of Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752–1834), whose system of punch card programming Babbage intended to borrow for his planned Analytical Engine.
Portrait of Jacquard woven in silk Source: Science Museum via Wikimedia Commons
Following the demonstration of the miracle working Difference Engine, Babbage would unveil the portrait and challenge his assembled guests to guess how it had been produced.
As Lyell had explained to Herschel, Babbage knew how to sell science and technology with showmanship.
[1] Laura Snyder, The Philosophical Breakfast Club, Broadway Paperbacks, 2011 p. 189 A brilliant book about the friendship between Babbage, William Whewell, John Herschel and Richard Jones that I heartily recommend
Over the years I have written a series of blog posts about Charles Babbage, but I have never written about who he was and where he came from. What follows is a brief biographical sketch of the boy, the student and the young man finding his way in life.
The Babbage family had its roots in the idyllic market town of Totnes, situated at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon. Charles’ great grandfather, a John Babbage, is first recorded in 1719 taking out a lease on a house in Totnes, the neighbouring house to the one he already owned. He was, it seems, a shopkeeper and a goldsmith. In 1747, a Mrs Babbage, John’s widow, is listed in the tax assessment as owning four houses, and her son Benjamin, Charles’ grandfather, another. The family was obviously wealthy.
River Dart at Totnes Source: Wikimedia Commons
Benjamin, also a goldsmith, married Mistress Margaret Laver in 1740. They had four children who lived to maturity, John (b. 1741), Anne (b. 1747), Margaret (b. 1749), and Charles’ father, another Benjamin (b. 1753). Grandfather Benjamin died intestate in 1761, which meant that John, as the eldest son, inherited everything, and the younger Benjamin had, so to speak, to start from scratch, but it can be assumed that he received assistance from his wealthy relatives. Father Benjamin possibly followed the family profession of goldsmith but became a banker. The transition from goldsmith to banker was fairly common. Benjamin probably didn’t open a bank in Totnes but functioned purely as a private banker.
About 1790, Benjamin, now a wealthy man, married Elizabeth Plumleigh Teape. The Teapes were a high-ranking Totnes family. In 1791, Benjamin moved to London, buying a house in what is now Southwark, Charles was born in this house on 26 December 1791. In 1794, a second son, christened Henry, was born but he died in infancy. In 1796, a third son, also christened Henry, was born but he too died whilst still very young. Charles’ sister Mary Anne, who would outlive him, was born in 1798.
At the end of the century Benjamin became a partner in the newly established Praed Bank of London, The Praeds, like Benjamin also from Devon, already owned banks in Turo and Exeter. At the same time Benjamin moved his family to a new house in Adelphi, a district of the City of Westminster. Circa 1803, Benjamin retired from his partnership and returned with his family to Totnes and about five years later bought a house in Teignmouth, a Devonshire fishing port on the estuary of the River Teign, about twenty-five kilometres north-east of Totnes. This was to be Charles’ home until he got married and set up his own home.
A view of Teignmouth in the 19th century Source: Wikimedia Commons
Charles’ education was a very mixed affair. As a child he suffered a severe fever, and having already lost two sons to illness, his parent sent him away to Devon to convalesce, to a school in Alphington by Exeter. When he was healthy again, he attended a small school in Enfield, then a small village near London. The school mater, Stephen Freeman, was an amateur astronomer and it appears that here that Charles first developed his own interest in mathematics and astronomy. He even talked a fellow pupil to getting up at tree o’clock in the morning to study algebra until five! Other pupils became involved and eventually being caught and Charles received a dressing down. Following Enfield, Charles was sent to a private tutor near Cambridge for a few years, where he appears to have learnt very little. Next, he was brough home to Devon and Totnes Grammas School, where an Oxford tutor brought his classics up to speed for university entrance, going up to Trinity College Cambridge in 1810.
Having caught the mathematics bug early, Charles had taught himself mathematics from the best books available and he found the antiquated Cambridge mathematical tripos primitive and trivial. He soon discovered that he was mathematical superior to his college tutors. Here we see the Charles Babbage that was to come in action. Whenever Babbage saw a problem in science, technology, or economics he immediately began to work on a solution. Here the problem was the, in his opinion, miserable quality of the Cambridge mathematical curriculum, so together with his fellow students, the future astronomer, John Herschel (1792–1871), the future co-founder of modern abstract algebra, George Peacock (1791–1885), and others, he founded the Analytical Society dedicated to reforming, modernising, and bringing up to continental standards, English nineteenth century mathematics. The Society was famous for its aim to promote the principles of d-ism as opposed to the dot-age of the university.I’ve written a blog post about it here.
Charles was very open, sociable and that wonderful English word, clubable. Armed with an allowance of £300 per annum, from his father, which made him by student standards relatively wealthy, he threw himself into the extra-curricular life of the university founding societies and joining others. He even maintained a sailing boat on the Cam taking other students on weeklong excursion into the Cambridgeshire fens. Of particular interest was his association with Herschel, William Whewell (1794–1866), and Richard Jones (1790–1855), which you can read about in Laura J Snyder’s excellent The Philosophical Breakfast Club, Broadway Books, NY, 2011.
Babbage went down from Cambridge in 1814, with a simple degree without examination and did not applyfor a scholarship, a rather strange move given his undeniable abilities. What did he intend to do with his life?
Whilst still a student Charles had met, fallen in love with and become engaged to Georgiana Whitmore (1792–1827), sister of the landowner and politician William Wolryche-Whitmore (1787–1885). They got married 2 July 1814, much to the chagrin of Charles’ father Benjamin. He had nothing personal against Georgiana but considered his son foolhardy for marrying before he had established himself in life, in fact, before he even had employment.
Georgiana Babbage, wife of Charles Babbage, early 19th century. Source
The young couple had Charles’ £300 pa, which was bestowed for life, and the interest from Georgiana’s marriage settlement, which amounted to £150 pa. This enabled them to live comfortably if not extravagantly and would prove to be their main source of income for the next thirteen years. It increased somewhat when Georgiana received a small inheritance. They had eight children of which only four survived childhood.
Charles was basically now a philosopher for hire, and he found it difficult to find anyone to hire him. Around 1820 he started on his plans for the Difference Engine, which formed the core of his interests. He travelled quite a lot, oft together with John Herschel, became friends with many of the leading continental scientist and mathematicians. He applied for a couple of chairs of mathematics but failed to get appointed. He dabbled with life assurance, a popular method of earning a living for mathematicians, but in the end decided it was not his metier.
Everything would change dramatically in Charles’ life in 1827. On 27 February 1827 Benjamin Babbage, who had been an invalid for many years, died. Charles’ inherited the majority of his estate, a total in property and money of about £100,000 making him a very wealthy man and ending the need to find gainful employment and setting Charles and Georgiana up for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, Georgiana did not enjoy her new financial status very long, as she died in August of the same year.
Charles was totally devastated and having parcelled off his children to various relatives he left England with the intention of travelling overland to the Far East. He meandered through Europe renewing friendships and making new ones. Unfortunately, the rout to the east was blocked by war and so he extended his wanderings through Europe visiting universities, research institutes and factories, giving demonstrations of his own knowledge and absorbing vast amounts of new knowledge.
He finally returned to England late in 1828, a wealthy philosopher full of ideas about how to shape the future, which he now set out to attempt to do.
If your philosophy of [scientific] history claims that the sequence should have been A→B→C, and it is C→A→B, then your philosophy of history is wrong. You have to take the data of history seriously.
John S. Wilkins 30th August 2009
Culture is part of the unholy trinity—culture, chaos, and cock-up—which roam through our versions of history, substituting for traditional theories of causation. – Filipe Fernández–Armesto “Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration”
The Renaissance Mathematicus 