Charles Babbage

English mathematician, philosopher, and engineer (1791–1871)

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Charles Babbage was born in 1791 and died in 1871. He was recognized in the Royal Society collection and the American Academy Arts Sciences collection. His works include the Table of logarithms of the natural numbers, from 1 to 108,000, the Table of the logarithms of the natural numbers, Notice respecting some errors common to many tables of logarithms, On the influence of signs in mathematical reasoning, and Scriptores optici.

Babbage had eight children. He is referenced by 537 other encyclopedia articles.

Synthesized by Vinony from 18 facts across 6 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, Open Library, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Charles
Gender: male
Citizenship: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Place of birth: Walworth
Place of death: Marylebone
Occupation: engineer
Position held: Lucasian Professor of Mathematics
Employer: University of Cambridge
Languages spoken: English language
Religion: Christianity
Academic degree: Master of Arts
Field of work: computer science
Image: Charles Babbage - 1860.jpg
Number of children: 8

Show 18 more facts

Commons category: Charles Babbage
member of: Academy of Sciences of Turin
date of birth: 1791-12-26
date of death: 1871-10-18
topic's main category: Category:Charles Babbage
influenced by: Ada Lovelace
Commons gallery: Charles Babbage
name in native language: Charles Babbage
contributed to creative work: Encyclopædia Metropolitana
writing language: English language
professorship: Lucasian Professor of Mathematics
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
has works in the collection: Science Museum
cause of death: kidney failure
manner of death: natural causes
maintained by WikiProject: WikiProject Mathematics
P12749: Gitta Lind
Commons Creator page: Charles Babbage

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Encyclopedic overview

Charles Babbage (/ˈbæbɪdʒ/; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.

Babbage is considered by some to merit the title of "father of the computer". He is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer, the difference engine, that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in his analytical engine, programmed using a principle openly borrowed from the Jacquard loom. As part of his computer work, he also designed the first computer printers. He had a broad range of interests in addition to his work on computers, covered in his 1832 book Economy of Manufactures and Machinery. He was an important figure in the social scene in London, and is credited with importing the "scientific soirée" from France with his well-attended Saturday evening soirées. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Charles Babbage” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.