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Designing the Difference
Engine
Charles Babbage, “On a Method
of Expressing by Signs the Actions of Machinery,”
Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society,
116 (1826):
250-265.
–Babbage had, not only to
envision, but to design and supervise the manufacture of his
invention. Each piece had to be made and tested by hand, by
skilled craftsmen working from drawings made under his
supervision. In this essay Babbage described his new system
of notation for indicating on the drawings how each part
would move when the engine was activated.
Dionysus
Lardner on the Difference Engine
Dionysus Lardner, 1793-1839,
“Babbage’s Calculating Engine,”
 Edinburgh Review,
59 (April 1834): 263-327.
–Manufacture of the Difference Engine took years longer than
Babbage (or the government) expected, with horrendous
cost-overruns. The initial grant was for L2250, yet by
1834, government expenditure had been L17,478, besides
Babbage’s substantial personal investment, and only 12,000
of the required 25,000 parts had been made. What was
finished, in 1832, was a small demonstration section of the
engine, which Babbage kept in his London house and displayed
to society visitors. This article from the leading Whig
periodical by a popular science journalist, Dionysus Lardner
(editor of the Cabinet Encyclopedia), is the first
detailed published description of the project.
Babbage
and Industrial Manufacture
Charles Babbage, “On the General Principles which Regulate
the Application of Machinery to Manufacture and the
Mechanical Arts,”
Encyclopaedia Metropolitana,
8 (1829): 1-84.
And: Charles Babbage,
On the economy of machinery and manufactures.
3d ed. enl. London, C. Knight, 1832 [i.e. 1833]. Modern red
binder's cloth
–Babbage’s interest in manufacturing processes led to his
commission to write this substantial and very original
essay. In preparation, he traveled widely visiting
factories both in Britain and on the continent, analyzing
the economic issues as well as technical factors involved in
industrial development. The essay was republished in book
form in 1832, reprinted several times in Britain and
America, and translated into four languages. As the pages
displayed show, the problem of designing a machine for
calculation provided one of the model cases in his analysis.
Babbage
on Scientific Patronage and the Royal Society
Charles Babbage,
Reflections on the decline
of science in England, and on some of its causes.
London: B. Fellowes, 1830. Nineteenth century calf. South
Carolina College Library Collection.
–In the 1820's and 1830's, British science was dominated by
wealthy and aristocratic amateurs. This book, a scathing
indictment of the Royal Society and its Council, played a
significant role in the process by which patronage was
gradually transferred from amateurs to professional
scientists, but the ad hominem nature of Babbage’s
attack–his appendix, for instance, tabulates an inverse
ration for Fellows between the number of scientific
publications and their length of Council service–alienated
many of the senior figures whose support Babbage needed for
his Engine.
Calculating the (Im)Probabilities of Random Creation
Charles Babbage ,
The ninth Bridgewater treatise. A fragment.
London, J. Murray, 1837. Later calf. South Carolina College
Library.
And: Charles Babbage,
The ninth Bridgewater treatise: a fragment.
Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1841. 1st
American from the 2nd London ed. Original cloth.
–Babbage’s alienation from the scientific
establishment,
aided by his lingering reputation as religiously unorthodox,
precluded his participation in one of the major scientific
boondoggles of the nineteenth century, the Bridgewater
Bequest. On his death in 1829, the eccentric Right Honourable and Reverend the Earl of Bridgwater left the
huge sum of L8000 to the Royal Society. The money was to
fund eight eminent scientists in writing the Bridgewater
Treatises, demonstrating the “power, wisdom and goodness of
God” from the complexity of the natural world. In his
unofficial and unfunded Ninth Treatise, Babbage used his
calculating engine to calculate the probabilities of random
creation.
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