Charles Babbage was a British mathematician. He designed an analytical engine which was the forerunner of the modern computer. He was born in 1801 and died in 1871. Educated at Cambridge, he occupied the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge for eleven years, but delivered no lectures. As early as 1812 he conceived the idea of calculating numerical tables by machinery, and in 1823 he received a grant from government for the construction of such a machine. After a series of experiments lasting eight years, and an expenditure of 17,000 pounds (6000 pounds of which was sunk by himself, the balance voted by government), Babbage abandoned the undertaking in favour of a much more enlarged work, an analytical engine, worked with cards like the jacquard-loom; but the project was never completed. The incompleted machine is now in the South KensingtonMuseum (Science Museum). Among the many treatises he published on subjects connected with mathematics and mechanics few can be regarded as finished performances. Research Charles Babbage
Abbreviations
People
Research Charles Babbage