The trouble with being a genius is
that nobody pays you any attention
until you`re dead. Even then they can
take a long time getting round to it.
If you`re really unlucky you`ll be
called all sorts of unpleasant names
during your lifetime and your real
name will be lost to posterity. All
this happened to Charles Babbage,
cruelly known as "Barmy Cabbage" to
his contemporaries at the Royal
Society, and it is only now, over two
hundred years after his birth in 1791,
that he is beginning to receive the
homage he deserves.
Charles Babbage, English mathematician
and founder of learned scientific
societies, was the first man to
conceive and attempt to construct a
computer as we understand it today.
When we consider our increasing
obsession and dependency on this
invention it is staggering to think
that there is no Babbage column in
London or no Babbage hall to honour
him. However, the Science Museum in
Kensington, London, is currently
preparing an exhibition that should
drag his name from obscurity and place
him firmly up there with the great
nineteenth century innovators. The
sheer tedium of addition drove Babbage
to consider mechanising calculation.
The focus of this exhibition is to be
babbage`s difference engine number 2,
the last of the three calculating
machines he designed for the speedy
solution of mathematical problems. He once said to his mate John
Herschel, "I wish to God these
calculations had been executed by
steam," to which his friend
replied,"it is entirely possible,"
sowing the seeds for Babbage`s life`s
work and eternal frustration. He began to make detailed drawings for
his engines declaring his aim to
eliminate mistakes in the calculating
and printing of mathematical tables by
mechanising the whole process. enough
of his scientific peers were convinced
to warrant a recommendation from the
royal society and a 1,500 government
grant. In 1823 work on his machine began.
after 10 years and £17,000 of public
funds (about £450,000 today) the
project was abandoned with only a
small part of the machine constructed.
unassembled components were sold for
scrap and it was about this time that
the expression "A right Charlie " came
into popular usage.
Closest resemblance to today`s
computers. It consisted of a store
for the numbers, a mill to do the
calculations, punch card input based
on those used in Jacquard Looms and a
printing unit for the results. It was
of the Analytical engine that
Babbage`s disciple Lady Lovelace,
daughter of Lord Byron and great great
grandmother of Linda and on whom we
reckon Babbage spent most of his
grant) said, "it can arrange and
combine numerical quantities exactly
as if they were letters or other
general symbols; and, in fact, it
might bring out its results in
algerbraical notation, were provision
made accordingly." This is basically
what modern-day computers do; employ
the basic functions of computation to
abstract forms. Today we use the binary number system,
Babbage used the decimal system in his
machines.
None of Babbage`s machines were
constructed in his lifetime-his son
H.P. Babbage tried to build part of
the Analytical engine after his
father`s death, but even this didn't
work properly. It has been the general opinion that
babbage`s ideas were too advanced for
the technology of his day, that
machining was too crude to produce the
precision of his drawings and that the
spirit of his inventions didn't
sufficiently arouse the imagination of
his peers. It has been an essential
part of the current project at the
science museum to show that the
engines could indeed have been made in
babbage`s day. From a study of the many hundreds of
drawings left to the museum by his
son, experts became increasingly
convinced that construction of a
babbage engine might be possible.
this study was first suggested by
Dr.Anthony Hyman in his biography
(Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the
Computer, Oxford University Press
1982). Dr.Allan Bromley of Sydney University
also realised while cataloguing the
Babbage archive that construction of
difference engine number 2 might be
possible. This engine benefited from experience
gained from the design of the
analytical engine. In 1985 Bromley
approached the museum with the
proposal. The project was extremely well timed,
since 1991 was to be the bicentenary
of Babbage`s birth. It has been
suggested that had this not been the
case it is quite possible that the
project would not have gone ahead for
lack of impetus. so, but for the
British obsession with anniversaries
Babbage`s name might still be resting
in the hall of failure and the post
office would not consider his face fit
for a postage stamp. A team of experts and technicians was
assembled under the direction of Doron
Swade, the curator of computing. It
was their task to interpret the
hundreds of drawings into a workable
format. Babbage`s drawings, while
extremely detailed, lacked much of the
specification demanded of engineering
designs today. There were no
dimensions, specification of
materials, tolerances or even numbers
of parts needed. The plans also contained a glaringly
obvious fault; Babbage had drawn part
of the machine backwards, giving it a
contrary rotational direction to the
rest of the engine. This is a bit
like sitting on the handle-bars of a
bicycle and trying to steer with the
saddle, an error so elementary that it
has been suggested that Babbage was
trying to safeguard his deliberate
mistakes. It was decided that a trial piece
should be made to see if the basic
design of the machine was sound. this
was completed in December 1988.
Before construction of the full-scale
engine could begin it was essential to
know the manufacturing costs.
Consulting engineers Rhoden partners,
the same firm that had updated
Babbage`s drawings, was brought in for
this task. The money was to come from
sponsorship. In order to reduce costs
and time it was decided to omit the
printing mechanism. Once funding was
assured Rhoden partners began work on
the first steps toward construction. The painstaking attention that every
step of this project has been given is
born out in the words of Peter Turvey,
project coordinator: "Paramount was
the need to maintain historical
authenticity. If the project was to
succeed in its aim of demonstrating
that difference engine number 2 could
have been built in Babbage`s day, then
it was vital to ensure that the
materials used, manufacturing methods
and accuracy achieved were not
incompatible with 1840`s technology.
Furthermore, any departures from
babbage`s original design would have
to be very carefully vetted to ensure
that they remained true to the spirit
of babbage`s design." Much time was spent deciding on the
grades of metal to be used. Electron
microscopes were used to analyse parts
made by babbage`s engineer in order to
find an equivalent for nineteenth
century gun-metal. Everything seemed to be cruising along
quite nicely when unexpected disaster
struck. Rhoden partners went bust.
Was this the ghost of Charlie`s bad
luck? The only solution was for the
science museum to take over the
construction mid-stream and on their
own premises. It was also plain that
to maintain consistency the services
of Reg Crick and Barry Holloway,
rhoden`s project and procurement
engineers, were essential. One
fortunate spin-off from this unhappy
event was that the engine was now to
be constructed in full public view at
the museum. The various stages of construction
have been video recorded and it is
hoped that this will prove an
interesting record for posterity,
showing current methods and manners. The engine has now just been completed
and was awaiting various tests. But
in preliminary phonecalls to the
director Doron Swade we were given the
impression that there was a high level
of anxiety as to whether the machine
was actually going to work. "Leave it
a couple of weeks before coming
along," he said. "Things are pretty
tense". The project was looking to cost about
half a million at this stage and the
idea of a six month babbage exhibition
with out a working engine was not a
handsome prospect. Great sympathy for
babbage, his trials and tribulations,
must have developed over the various
stages of construction.
According to the Science museum, "It
featured an unrivalled collection of
surviving Babbage pieces and selected
items of unique archival material.
Contemporary calculation machines on
special loan from Sweden will be
exhibited for the first time in the
United Kingdom." A special room was
prepared for the show and the royal
mail did indeed announce a special
commemorating Michael Faraday, the
British physicist, Frank Whittle, the
inventor of the jet engine and Watson
Watt for his work on radar.
Doron Swade, project manager, told us
"It doesn't do multiplications" he
explained that the machine works by
the process of "Finite differences", a
technique which allows complex
multiplications and divisions to be
performed by simple additions - the
mechanisms for doing additions being
very much simpler than for that of
multiplication and division. Numbers are fed into the machine by
turning and setting the numbered cog-
wheels to a cursor. An operating
handle is then turned and the result
arrives to be read off the final
column. Babbage designed the answer
to arrive in a complete machine cycle,
this being one turn of the handle and
taking a matter of seconds. He also
designed a print out mechanism which
due to reasons of time and economy
were left out and replaced with its
current device. However, the engine could not be
described as fully automated. Before
it can function, all of its 248 cogs
on eight columns must be set by hand!
Initial calculations of a given
equation must first be done in long
hand and the results fed into the
machine. It is at this point that the
engine computes, giving its answer to
30 decimal places. It is easy to see why Babbage`s engine
was criticised in its day for not
doing the "whole job". Babbage could
not altogether banish the tedium of
higher maths, but if you wanted to
find all the values for x in the
function x^7+x2+41 with x equalling
any number from 75 to 350 then you
could do this at the turn of a handle. Modern historians describe a prime
function of a computer as number
crunching; not only does Babbage`s
engine do the work but it makes the
noises as well.
The engine itself is a terrific
structure and a great achievement. It
is also bizarre to think that we are
looking for the first time at a piece
of nineteenth century technology in
the late twentieth century. In this
sense it is also like some
archeological discovery, a hitherto
unknown piece of history. Here are
some dimensions.
The Babbage project is of great
importance to all who are interested
in the impact of technology, in
particular computers, on culture. if
we consider that electronic computers
now perform precisely those functions
of higher mathematics that babbage
envisioned which allow us to construct
space craft, it is fascinating to
think how this process might have
accelerated had Babbage himself been
successful. The fact that one of his machines has
now been built suggests that it was
not technological crudity that
hampered their development but lack of
support and limited funding. David
Bolter in his book turings man is
sympathetic to Babbage: "Babbage and
his proteges were genuine visionaries.
in their writings we often find
expressions of a world view fully a
century ahead of it's time. If the
analytical engine had been built, it
would indeed have been the first
computer, but Babbage was trying to
fashion out of clockwork a device that
really belongs to the age of
electronics "Babbage`s blue-prints and
disassembled parts could not change
the world. His writings give proof of
this sad fact: they speak eloquently
of instruction steps, programming
logic, symbol manipulation, the limits
of machine time. Yet the scientists
of the age apparently did not feel the
significance of the message. Babbage
remained a brilliant aberration, a
prophet of the electronic age in the
heyday of the steam engine". And Doron Swade, a man who must take a
great deal of credit for the babbage
project currently underway, speaks on
a more sober note about British
attitudes towards innovation.
"Babbage`s attempts to achieve a
complete engine find strong echoes
today; the relationship between
entrepreneurial ventures and
government, advanced technology and
innovation, market needs, peer
groupage, valuations, personal
enmities and the relationship of the
investigative scientist and the
establishment. "He was
uncomplementary about the cultural
climate for entrepreneurs, an
allegation that Britain can innovate
but unlike America can`t exploit it's
inventiveness".