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4 posts tagged “charles-babbage”

2025

On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 1864

# 2nd July 2025, 3:04 pm / charles-babbage

2010

It might seem a folly to want to build a gigantic, relatively puny computer at great expense 170 years after its invention. But the message of a completed Analytical Engine is very clear: it’s possible to be 100 years ahead of your own time. With support, this type of “blue skies” thinking can result in fantastic changes to the lives of everyone. Just think of the impact of the computer and ask yourself how different the Victorian world would have been with Babbage Engines at its disposal.

John Graham-Cumming

# 6th October 2010, 9:26 am / charles-babbage, john-graham-cumming, recovered

The 100-year leap. John Graham-Cumming recounts the history of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, and proposes a project to build a working Analytical Engine 170 years after its invention (the machine built by the Science Museum in London is the Difference Engine).

# 6th October 2010, 9:26 am / charles-babbage, john-graham-cumming, recovered, ambition, science-museum

2009