Charles Babbage

Who was Charles Babbage?

Nothing's more exciting than watching an idea evolve, even when the technology to make it really happen has not yet been developed. Nothing shows the striving and creative quality of a human inventive imagination more than that.

Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871) was the son of a successful goldsmith and banker who had left Totnes in Devon to pursue a career in banking in London, the year before Charles was born. Charles Babbage received the typical education of a gentleman's son. He spent his life trying to build a computer using the only technology available in his day that he thought adequate for the job: cogwheels. His brave efforts to achieve his dream are one of the great stories of science.  Read about it in Jacquard's Web.