Who was Charles Babbage? Well he was possibly the most important person of the nineteenth century but of course, like everything else, this is debatable. But if it weren't for his ideas and inventions we may not have had the computer revolution, you see Mr. Babbage designed the Difference Engine and its successor the Analytical Engine, which is considered the forerunner of modern computers by many.

Charles Babbage was born on December 26, 1792 and died October 18, 1871. His father was a well to do banker but Charles was a sickly child. His parents were always worried about his health. He lived in London as a child, but some disagree with this since there is not much evidence concerning his birth and early childhood. It seems his parents, Benjamin Babbage and Betsy Plumleigh Babbage were so worried about him, that they placed him with a member of the clergy with instructions not to burden him too much with academic studies and to concentrate on his health. Babbage himself stated that the clergyman followed his orders and kept academics to a minimum, but not in these exact words.

Babbage was not always the serious student when he finally was enrolled in school, but he did have a desire to learn. His father got him a tutor from Oxford to round out his education. Charles was always very interested in mathematics and became qualified to enroll in Cambridge. He became an avid reader of all mathematical books. He entered Trinity College at Cambridge at the age of 19 years, some say 18 years. He received an MA from Cambridge and in 1820 and founded the Analytical Society with John Herschel and George Peacock. The purpose of this society was to bring reform to Cambridge by bringing advanced methods of calculus to the university.

Babage was always thinking and even when he was compelled to attend social events such as concerts and the opera, he was more interested in the machinery that was used than in the performance itself.

It is believed that in June of 1823 Charles Babbage met with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was known politically, having lost two times in bids to get into Parliament as a Whig candidate. There are no minutes of this meeting but it seems the Chancellor granted funds to him to build his Difference Engine. He began to work on it in July but tragedy struck the next month. His wife, Georgiana died at the age of 35 years. His grant money all gone, he was using his personal funds to continue work. He approached the Chancellor, but didn't receive any more money, but friends of Babage got the Duke of Wellington to view the machine and he gave Babbage a grant of three thousand pounds to continue his work.

The problem with Babbage was he was never satisfied. He would redo the plans for his machine over and over, making improvements here and there. This entailed ripping the machine apart and adding or moving pieces, a very expensive process that never left a working machine to use. He also had labor problems and had to dismiss his machinist, who also took the crew with him. The problem was that Babbage wanted to move the workshop to his home and his machinist, a Mr. Clement, refused.

The Difference Engine was never finished. Now Babbage began his second project the Analytical Engine. This was a type of calculator that is considered the forerunner of modern computers. The Analytical Engine used punch cards for programming, He got this idea from watching how looms work. A Jacquard loom used cards that contained patterns for weaving and he realized that his machine could also use cards to tell the machine what to do. This concept was used for many years in the early days of main frame computing. Babbage got the idea that after his machine produced an answer, he could then have it entered through another gear train and this would be the memory.

Babbage met Lady Lovelace, she was the daughter of Lord Byron the famous poet and a mathematical genius. She was married to the Earl of Lovelace and the mother of three. She was very interested in Babbage's machine and stated that his machine might be used to compose music and produce graphics. She felt that it could have both practical and scientific use. As we now know she was correct on all counts, just look at your PC. She is credited with writing the first computer program. It was a plan to have the machine calculate Bernoulli numbers.

Babbage's downfall was the fact that he never completed his Difference Engine. This was one of the main reasons that his peers paid little or no attention to his Analytical Engine. Here was one of the greatest inventions of the nineteenth century and nobody was paying any attention to it. He died an unhappy man, not seeing the application of his ideas, which would happen many years later in the electronic age.

There is a crater on the moon named for Charles Babbage, its near the lunar north pole region.

Besides the Difference machine Babbage was responsible for these inventions:

Greenwich time signals, opthalmoscope, the cowcatcher for train engines, uniform postal rates, standard railroad gage, heliograph opthalmoscope, dynamometer, the lighthouse occulting light system. He may have invented lock picking tools.