THE LATE MR BABBAGE.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2746, 5 December 1871, Page 3

THE LATE MR BABBAGE.

(From Men of the Time.) . Babbage, Charles, mathematician and ghiloisophical mechanist, born December 26, 1792, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated. In the course of his studies he found the logarithmic tables then in use—the ready-reckoner, so to speak, by which the larger operations of astronomical calculation are worked out—extremely defective, and even unfaithful. The national value of tables of this description had long been recognised by every government, and large sums had been expended in preparing such as could have, after all, but a proximate accuracy ; because from the calculations of the astronomer are derived the data by which every seaman navigates the ocean, and every headland and island is marked in hia chart, MV Babbage iet himself to consider whether it were not possible to substitute for the perturbable processes of the intellect the unerring movements of mechanism in the preparation of logarithmic tables. For this purpose he visited the various centres of machine labor, on the Continent as well as in England ; inspected and ompared wheels, levers, valves, &c., and studied their various functions ; and on his return, in 1821, undertook to direct the construction of a “ Difference Engine 1 ' for the Government. Experience gained during this tour of inspection Induced Mr Babbage to prepare IpS work bh the “ Efopomy of‘Manufactures,” a subject sen ne w to literary treatment, and in which be opened up a field of illustration which has since been explored by numerous writers. By 1833 a portion of the machine was put together, and it was found to perform its work with all the precision that had been predicted of it. Mr Babbage immediately prepared his “ Tables of Logarithms of the natural numbers,” from 1 to 108,000, a work which was well received in all parts of Europe, into most of the languages qf which it was speedily translated. In 1828 Mf Babbage was elected to fill the chair pf the Mathematical professorship at Cambridge, pflee occupied by Sir Isaac Newton, and he continued to discharge the duties of that office for eleven years. During this period he devoted all his leisure to the perfection of his machine, although he received no remuneration whatever for his services. In 1833, for some reason at present unexplained, the construction of the calculating machine was suspended, and has not been resumed. Mr Babbage, who is a member of the chief learned societies of Loudon and Edinburgh, and has contributed largely to their Transactions, is the author, inter alia, of “Translation of the Differential and Integral Calculus of LaCroix,” and “The Laws of Mechanical Notation” (privately printed). He also published, in 1837, “The Ninth Bridgewater Treatisea fragment designed at once to refute an oi inion supposed to be implied in the first volume of that series, that ardent devotion to mathematical studies is uufavoroble to faith, and also to give specimens of the defensive aid which the evidences of Christianity may receive from the science of numbers. Mr Babbage seems disposed to take a desponding view of the state of science in England. This, openly expressed in “ The Decline of Science,’’ is still further disclosed in “ The Great Exhibition,” published ip 1851‘, at the end of which will bo found a list of his published works, nearly eighty in number. The reader will find further information respecting Mr Babbage in the eleventh chapter of Weld’s “History of the Koyal Society.” In November, 1832, Mr Babbage contested, though without success, the representation of Finsbury, in the advanced Liberal interest. In 1864 he published “Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.”