The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer

by Doron Swade

Book Overview

In 1821 an inventor and mathematician named Charles Babbage was reviewing a set of mathematical tables. After finding an excess of errors in the results, he exclaimed, I wish to God these calculations... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670910201
• ISBN13: 9780670910205
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Charles Babbage: Victorian Era Technologist

Author, engineer, visionary, genius. Charles Babbage. The man born to lead humankind into a utopian era propelled by automatic computation machines. But by some cosmic prank he was born not at the first glow of the electrified age, but much earlier in a coal-fired industrial age in which neither precision production machine tools nor even the standard screw thread existed. And electricity? The triode, the fundamental active device at the root of the electronics big bang, was just being nudged to life a full generation after Babbage's death. Today, countless bits of silicon at our fingertips and spread across the globe and above our heads pulse with programs which manage everything from communications to transportation to entertainment. Inspiration for our globally connected engineers and scientists springs from the incredible developments in communications, analytical tools, and nano and bio-technologies. Babbage's muse was a Victorian lady adorned in steam power. Author Doron Swade's description of the analysis of Babbage's drawings and of the trials engaged in the actual modern day build of Difference Engine #2 leaves me with a bit of a sense of sorrow for old Charles. It just doesn't seem plausible that he could have pulled this off had he a dozen 19th century lifetimes. Production of the thousands and thousands of precision mechanical parts needed for the construction of his machine would have challenged the industrial capacity of Babbage's day. And even if all the parts had been delivered, did he foresee the time required for the assembly and testing of the machine? The author experienced that the modern day building and debugging of the engine proceeded slowly and with numerous fits and starts. Additionally, Charles may have been flawed with an inability to maintain a consistent focus on the development of his difference engine; he puttered with incessant design changes and was often distracted by any number of scientific developments occurring in his lifetime in the middle half of the 19th century. But his genius and sense of mortality drove him to the only workable solution, that being the preparation of detailed mechanical drawings for a subsequent generation of enthusiasts to discover and execute. So whatever sorrow I felt is now displaced by respect for someone who retreated from his dogged passion for assembling and publicly operating his computational engine into the more solitary labor of transferring his concept to a full set of mechanical drawings. These were the drawings which author Swade and his team used to build the machine nearly a century and a half later. This is an interesting and educational read for anyone curious about the state of technology and the associated politics in Victorian times. The reader will meet personalities who will be remembered because we have honorably linked their names to important developments including screw threads (Whitworth), a software language (Ada), and a space telescope

Same book as "The Cogwheel Brain"

This is a terrific book. Beyond that, I have nothing to add to the previous excellent reviews, except to note that it seems to be precisely the same book as Doron Swade's The Cogwheel Brain. I nearly bought both until I checked the tables of contents...

One of the great accomplishments of the 19th century

Charles Babbage and John Herschel, the astronomer, were preparing tables for the astronomical society. They needed to check the work of computations by humans, by different computers. The need for tables was particulary important for navigators. The source of error in the tables was clear, human fallibility. The manual production of tables, calculation, transcription, typesetting, and proofreading created opportunities for error. The engine of change in 1821 was the steam engine. Charles Babbage wanted to produce a machine to produce error-free tables. Babbage entered Trinity in 1810. He studied on his own the work of the French mathematicians. His father was a well-to-do London banker. Charles married and received from his father an allowance of three hundred pounds. In London he established himself in scientific circles. By the spring of 1822 he had a small working model of his first design. Computing devices of the time required manipulation and were limited as to the size of the numbers the devices could handle. Babbit first used the method of differences, addition, in his design. He sent a brief announcement to the Astronomical Society about his invention. He received a mandate from the government and was prepared to build a new machine. He hired Joseph Clement for precision engineering work. Clement and Babbage devised new tools and modified machines. There was a need to produce large numbers of similar parts. Babbage conceived of his machine when manufacturing was in transition. By 1826 Babbage was wholly absorbed in the design of his Difference Engine. The machine was eight feet by seven feet by three feet. In 1826 Babbage published a book on life assurance. While traveling in Europe following the death of his wife, he learned of his election as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. He never resided in Cambridge and gave no lectures. Babbage expressed a view on the decline of science In England. Undoubtedly science was more professional in Prussia and France. Babbage's position alienated some of his supporters. In 1832 part of the engine was put on display in his drawing room. Clement was to leave the project. Work was not resumed. The Treasury Department spent more than seventeen thousand pounds on it. There is a curious affinity between mathematics, mind, and computing. After the break with Clement, Babbage moved from the Difference Engine to the Analytical Engine. He devised the first automatic mechanisms for multiplication and division. He had in fact designed a general purpose four function calculator. In 1836 he opted for punch cards to control the engine. The Analytical Engine was never built. Babbage worked in isolation. With the Analytical Engine Babbage was seduced by the intellectual quest. After twenty years the Treasury axed the Difference Engine and wrote off the expense. Between 1846 and 1849 Babbage designed Difference Engine No. 2. Maurice Wilkins believed the Analytical Eng

Wonderful combination of history and modern day triumph!

Ahhh, the fascinating story of Charles Babbage. For 100 years he was a footnote to mathematical history, for the next 40 years his story was a required paragraph in the preface of every Computer Science text book. In the last few decades there has finally been serious study of his work. Now with this book we have a highly readable compendium of his life and work, with the added excitement of a modern day adventure.The first 210 pages provide the best description of Babbage's life yet. All the bits and pieces I've read in numbers of other books on Babbage are here, as told by a modern expert who puts it all in perspective. That perspective is essential, as Babbage's life was filled with controversy and conflict.The last 100 pages of the book tell the story of building one of Babbage's planned-but-never-built calculating engines in the museum where the author works. It is this personal experience with building a working machine from the 150 year old plans that adds the magic "hands on" touch to the author's analysis of Babbage's tale.This is a highly readable and fascinating book and undoubtedly the best single volume on the legacy of Charles Babbage.

A Cogwheel Computer

What if we had had computers a hundred and fifty years ago? It could have happened. The plans were drawn up for a computer that would have been very much like those of today, except it would have run on cogs, gears, levers, springs, and maybe steam power. We only got around to computers a hundred years later, but things could have worked out much differently, if the work of Charles Babbage had taken off. Doron Swade knows just how well such an engine could have worked. He built one. Or rather, his team within the London Science Museum built a calculating engine that Babbage had designed. It worked, just as Babbage knew it would. Swade tells the story of Babbage and his amazing machines in _The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer_ (Viking). Babbage's accomplishments turned out to be futile in the end, but Swade shows us how there is much to admire in his quest, successful or not.Babbage wrote papers on chess, taxation, lock-picking, philosophy, submarines, archeology, cryptanalysis, and many other diverse efforts. He was an unstoppable inventor and tinkerer; he invented (but didn't get credit for) the ophthalmoscope every doctor has used, and the cowcatcher installed on the front of locomotives. But what he loved most of all were his computing machines. The Industrial Revolution was making everything else by steam; why not calculations, and perfect tables of them? He designed just such a calculating engine, and although because of various problems it didn't get built, he never stopped tinkering with it, and he designed an even bigger calculation machine that would have done, in its cogwheel way, all the basics that computers now do.Babbage is sometimes called the grandfather of the computer, but he is more like an uncle. There is no evidence that any of his intricate and visionary machines influenced the design of electronic computers. Swade's engrossing book gives a good capsule biography of a fascinating man, but more importantly, it shows a hands-on appreciation for the machines he had dreamed up. Babbage knew that his dreams were doomed for his own time, but he had an inkling of what was to come; he wrote of the inventor's lot, "The certainty that a future age will repair the injustice of the present, and the knowledge that the more distant the day of reparation, the more he has outstripped the efforts of his contemporaries, may well sustain him against the sneers of the ignorant, or the jealousy of rivals." He was right again.