Charles Babbage

When was the automatic computer invented? In the 1930s or the 1940s? If you think that, you are off by a hundred years. A computer that was completely modern in conception was designed in the 1830s. But, as with the calculators of Pascal and Leibniz, the mechanical technology of the time was not prepared to realize the conception.

The inventor of that nineteenth century computer – Charles Babbage – was an eccentric mathematician. Most mathematicians live personal lives not too much different from anyone else’s. They just happen to do mathematics instead of driving trucks or running stores or filling teeth. But Charles Babbage was the exception.

For example, all his life Babbage waged a campaign against London organ grinders and street musicians. He blamed the noise they made for the loss of a quarter of his working power.

Once Babbage counted all the broken panes of glass of a factory, publishing in 1857 a «Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows»: Of 464 broken panes, 14 were caused by «drunken men, women or boys».

Despite his eccentricities Babbage was a genius. He was a prolific inventor. In 1838, Babbage invented the pilot (also called a cow-catcher), the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles. He also invented an ophthalmoscope, but although he gave it to a physician for testing it was forgotten, and the device only came into use after being independently invented by Hermann von Helmholtz. He also invented the skeleton key and the speedometer. Babbage also pioneered operations research – the science of how to carry out business and industrial operations efficiently.

Babbage was a fellow of the Royal society. He held the chair of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. The same chair once was held by Isaac Newton.

Find the English equivalents in the text.

Эксцентричный математик, заниматься математикой, водить грузовик, держать магазин, пломбировать зубы, развязать кампанию против, винить за, плодотворный изобретатель, отмычка, член королевского общества, заведовать кафедрой.

The Difference Engine

Babbage's engines were among the first mechanical computers, although they were not actually completed, largely because of funding problems and personality issues. He directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanized. Although Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was very similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction based, the control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I/O unit.

The mathematical tables of the 19^th century were full of mistakes. Even when the tables had been calculated correctly, printers’ errors introduced many mistakes. Often people who published new tables copied tables from existing ones, the same errors cropped up in table after table.

Babbage set out to build a machine that would calculate the entries in the tables and print them automatically. He called this machine the Difference Engine, because it worked by solving ‘difference equations’. But the name is misleading since it constricted tables by means of repeated additions, not subtractions. The first difference engine was composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen tons (13,600 kg), and stood 8 ft (2.4 m) high.

In 1823 Babbage obtained a government grant to build the Difference Engine. But he ran into difficulties and abandoned the project. In 1854 a Swedish printer built a working Difference Engine based on Babbage’s ideas.

Find English equivalents in the text.

Разностное уравнение, машина, быть похожим (на), сложение, получить правительственный грант, вычитание, столкнуться с трудностями, забросить проект, таблица, ошибка (2).