Charles Babbage (pronounced /ˈbæbɪdʒ/; December 26, 1791 – October 18, 1871) was an English person with many talents. He was a mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer. Babbage created the idea of a computer that could be programmed with numbers.

Some people call Babbage the "father of the computer." He designed the first mechanical computer, called the difference engine, which helped lead to later electronic computers. His analytical engine, which could be programmed using ideas from the Jacquard loom, included many important parts of modern computers. Babbage also designed the first computer printers. In addition to computers, he wrote a book in 1832 titled Economy of Manufactures and Machinery. He was a well-known person in London and brought the idea of "scientific soirées" (evening gatherings to discuss science) from France to England. His work in many fields made him one of the most respected polymaths of his time.

Babbage died before his designs, such as the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, were fully built. However, parts of his machines are displayed at the Science Museum in London. In 1991, engineers built a working difference engine using Babbage’s original plans. The machine worked well, showing that Babbage’s designs were possible with 19th-century technology.

Early life

Charles Babbage's birthplace is not certain, but the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography suggests he was likely born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England. A blue plaque at the corner of Larcom Street and Walworth Road marks this location.

An obituary in The Times listed his birth as December 26, 1792. However, a relative later said he was born in 1791 instead. Church records from St. Mary's in Newington, London, show he was baptized on January 6, 1792, which supports the 1791 birth year.

Babbage had three siblings. His father, Benjamin Babbage, worked with William Praed to start Praed's & Co., a bank in London in 1801. In 1808, the Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth. At about eight years old, Babbage went to a school in Alphington, near Exeter, to recover from a serious illness. He briefly attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes, South Devon, but his health required him to return to private tutors for a time.

Babbage then joined Holmwood Academy, a school in Baker Street, Enfield, Middlesex, where Reverend Stephen Freeman taught. The school's library helped Babbage develop an interest in mathematics. After leaving the academy, he studied with two private tutors. The first was a clergyman near Cambridge, through whom Babbage met Charles Simeon and his religious followers. However, the lessons did not meet his needs, so he returned home to study at Totnes school at age 16 or 17. His second tutor was from Oxford, and under this teacher, Babbage learned enough about Classics to be accepted by the University of Cambridge.

At the University of Cambridge

Charles Babbage arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1810. He had already learned many math topics on his own and had studied the works of Robert Woodhouse, Joseph Louis Lagrange, and Maria Gaetana Agnesi. He found the math classes at the university to be less advanced than what he had already learned.

In 1812, Babbage joined with John Herschel, George Peacock, and other friends to create the Analytical Society. He was also close to Edward Ryan. During his time at college, Babbage was part of other groups, such as The Ghost Club, which looked into supernatural events, and the Extractors Club, which aimed to help members avoid being sent to a mental hospital if needed.

In 1812, Babbage moved to Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was the best mathematician there but did not graduate with honors. Instead, he received a degree without taking an exam in 1814. He had presented a thesis that some people thought was disrespectful to religious beliefs, but it is not clear if this was the reason he did not take the exam.

After Cambridge

Charles Babbage quickly gained recognition due to his reputation. In 1815, he gave lectures on astronomy at the Royal Institution, and in 1816, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. After completing his studies, Babbage struggled to find work and had few career opportunities. In 1816, he applied for a teaching position at Haileybury College, supported by recommendations from James Ivory and John Playfair, but lost the job to Henry Walter. In 1819, Babbage and John Herschel traveled to Paris, meeting French scientists. That same year, Babbage applied for a professorship at the University of Edinburgh with a recommendation from Pierre Simon Laplace, but the position was given to William Wallace.

Babbage and Herschel studied the electrodynamics of Arago's rotations, publishing their findings in 1825. Their work was later expanded by Michael Faraday. These discoveries became part of the theory of eddy currents, though Babbage and Herschel did not fully understand how to unify electromagnetic theory, remaining focused on Ampère's force law.

Babbage purchased the actuarial tables of George Barrett, who had died in 1821 with unpublished work. In 1826, Babbage wrote Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives, analyzing the field. This interest followed a failed attempt to start an insurance company in 1824, supported by Francis Baily. Babbage calculated actuarial tables for the project using data from the Equitable Society dating back to 1762.

Throughout this time, Babbage relied on his father’s financial support, complicated by his father’s disapproval of Babbage’s early marriage in 1814 to Edward Ryan, who had married the Whitmore sisters. Babbage lived in Marylebone, London, and raised a large family. After his father’s death in 1827, Babbage inherited a large estate valued at about £100,000 (equivalent to £9.14 million or $12.5 million today), making him independently wealthy. Following his wife’s death in the same year, Babbage traveled, meeting Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in Italy. In 1828, while in Rome and relying on Herschel to manage the difference engine project, Babbage learned he had been appointed a professor at Cambridge, a position he had previously failed to obtain in 1820, 1823, and 1826.

Babbage helped establish the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820, originally called the Astronomical Society of London. The society aimed to standardize astronomical calculations and share data, ideas closely tied to Babbage’s work on computation. In 1824, he received the society’s Gold Medal for inventing a machine to calculate mathematical and astronomical tables.

Babbage’s goal to reduce errors in tables through mechanization was discussed in an 1834 article in the Edinburgh Review, written under his guidance. His own account of the difference engine’s origin began with the Astronomical Society’s effort to improve The Nautical Almanac. Babbage and Herschel were tasked with recalculating parts of the tables, discovering discrepancies in 1821 or 1822. This experience led Babbage to develop his idea for mechanical computation. The Nautical Almanac issue is now linked to a scientific divide in Britain following the death of Sir Joseph Banks in 1820.

Babbage worked with Thomas Frederick Colby to study modern postal systems, advocating for a uniform rate. This idea was implemented in the Uniform Fourpenny Post, later replaced by the Uniform Penny Post in 1839 and 1840. Colby was also involved in the Survey of Ireland, and Babbage and Herschel observed a key measurement of the Lough Foyle baseline during the survey.

The Analytical Society began as a student-led initiative but later achieved significant accomplishments. In 1816, Babbage, Herschel, and Peacock translated Sylvestre Lacroix’s calculus lectures from French, a widely used textbook at the time.

References to Lagrange in calculus highlight the use of formal power series, mathematical tools British mathematicians used from the 1730s to 1760s. These methods were reintroduced to explore functional equations and operator techniques for solving differential equations. The symbolic approach, which replaced Δ (difference) with D (infinitesimal), became popular in operational calculus. The Cauchy concept of limits was avoided, as Woodhouse had previously introduced a "British Lagrangian School" focused on Taylor series.

Function composition became complex due to challenges in applying the chain rule to higher-order derivatives. Woodhouse, by 1803, had adopted a method from Louis François Antoine Arbogast, now known as Faà di Bruno’s formula, which was also used by Abraham De Moivre in 1697. Herschel praised this method, and Babbage was familiar with it. Ada Lovelace later noted its compatibility with the analytical engine. Between 1815 and 1820, Babbage focused on functional equations, resisting traditional finite differences and Arbogast’s approach. Through Herschel, he studied iteration, or composing a function with itself multiple times. In a major paper published in the Philosophical Transactions (1815/6), Babbage cited Gaspard Monge as the foundation for his work.

Academic

From 1828 to 1839, Charles Babbage held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He was not a typical resident and did not focus much on teaching. During this time, he wrote three books on important topics. In 1832, he was elected as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Babbage did not get along well with some colleagues, such as George Biddell Airy, who had been his predecessor as Lucasian Professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. Airy believed Babbage should have been held accountable for not lecturing. Babbage planned to give a lecture on political economy in 1831. He wanted universities to include more students, focus more on research, teach a wider range of subjects, and pay more attention to practical applications. However, William Whewell disagreed with these ideas. Babbage had a long disagreement with Richard Jones that lasted six years. He never gave a lecture.

During this time, Babbage tried to enter politics. Simon Schaffer wrote that Babbage supported ideas in the 1830s, such as ending the Church of England’s special status, expanding voting rights, and involving manufacturers in decision-making. He ran for Parliament twice as a candidate for the borough of Finsbury. In 1832, he came in third place among five candidates, losing by about 500 votes because two other reform-minded candidates split the votes. In his memoirs, Babbage wrote that this election brought him close to Samuel Rogers, whose brother, Henry Rogers, had wanted to support Babbage but died shortly after. In 1834, Babbage finished last among four candidates. In 1832, Babbage, Herschel, and Ivory were appointed as Knights of the Royal Guelphic Order, but they were not later made knights bachelor, which would have allowed them to use the title "Sir."

Babbage became known for writing strongly about issues. One of his biographers noted that all his books included a "campaigning element." His book Reflections on the Decline of Science and Some of Its Causes (1830) was especially critical. It aimed to improve British science and challenge Davies Gilbert, who was president of the Royal Society, which Babbage wanted to reform. Babbage wrote the book out of frustration after failing to become a junior secretary of the Royal Society because of conflicts with Humphry Davy. Michael Faraday had a response written by Gerrit Moll, titled On the Alleged Decline of Science in England (1831). Babbage’s ideas did not change the Royal Society, as the Duke of Sussex was elected to replace Gilbert the same year. However, Babbage’s Decline helped lead to the creation of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) in 1831.

In 1831, the Mechanics' Magazine called Babbage’s followers "Declinarians." It also mentioned David Brewster, who wrote for the Quarterly Review, as another leader. The article noted that both Babbage and Brewster had received public money.

During discussions about statistics and data collection, the BAAS, through its Statistical Section (which was also influenced by William Whewell), focused on collecting data. This section, the sixth part of the BAAS, was established in 1833 with Babbage as chairman and John Elliot Drinkwater as secretary. The Statistical Society was later formed, with Babbage as its public face, supported by Richard Jones and Robert Malthus.

Babbage published On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832), which discussed how to organize industrial production. This book was an early example of operational research. John Rennie the Younger, speaking to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1846, mentioned surveys from encyclopedias, including Babbage’s book, which had first appeared as an article in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana alongside works by John Farey Jr., Peter Barlow, and Andrew Ure. Babbage expanded on ideas from his earlier work, An Essay on the General Principles Which Regulate the Application of Machinery to Manufactures and the Mechanical Arts (1827), which became an article in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana in 1829. This earlier work helped shape the structure of his later book, which was divided into two parts: one about machines and factories, and the other about the "domestic and political economy" of manufacturing.

The book was popular and went through four editions by 1836. Babbage claimed his work was based on observations in factories in Britain and abroad. In the first edition, he did not address deeper questions of political economy, but the second edition, published later in 1832, added three more chapters, including one on piece-rate pay. The book also included ideas about designing factories efficiently and sharing profits with workers.

In On the Economy of Machinery, Babbage described what is now called the "Babbage principle." This idea explained how dividing labor more carefully could reduce costs. Babbage noted that this idea had already appeared in the work of Melchiorre Gioia in 1815. The term "Babbage principle" was later introduced in 1974 by Harry Braverman. Similar ideas include the "principle of multiples" by Philip Sargant Florence and the "balance of processes."

Babbage explained that skilled workers often performed tasks below their skill level. By dividing tasks among workers, factories could save money by assigning complex tasks to skilled workers and simpler tasks to less expensive workers. He also noted that training costs could be fixed, but standardizing tasks could lead to cost savings through efficiency, supporting the factory system. His view of human capital focused on reducing the time needed to recover training costs.

Another part of the book detailed the cost structure of book publishing. Babbage criticized the industry’s profitability from the perspective of publishers, naming those who used restrictive practices. Twenty years later, he attended a meeting hosted by John Chapman to oppose the Booksellers Association, which was still a cartel.

It has been said that "what Arthur Young was to agriculture, Charles Babbage was to the factory visit and machinery." Babbage’s theories influenced the layout of the 1851 Great Exhibition. His ideas also affected his contemporary, George Julius Poulett Scrope. Karl Marx argued that the productivity of the factory system came from combining the division of labor with machinery, building on ideas from Adam Smith, Babbage, and Andrew Ure. Marx agreed with Babbage that the goal of dividing labor was to increase profitability, not just productivity, and noted its impact on trade.

John Ruskin strongly opposed Babbage’s ideas about manufacturing. Babbage also influenced the economic thinking of John Stuart Mill. George Holyoake saw Babbage’s discussion of profit sharing as important, following the traditions of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, but requiring the guidance of a kind and responsible leader, which was not widely adopted at the time.

From 1828 into the 1840s, Babbage held Saturday night gatherings that brought together scientists, writers, and members of the aristocracy. He is credited with introducing the "scientific soirée" to England through his popular Saturday evening events.

Works by Babbage and Andrew Ure were published in French translation in 1830, including On the Economy of Machinery.

Later life

The British Association was created to be similar to the Deutsche Naturforscher-Versammlung, which started in 1822. It rejected romantic science and metaphysics, and it made the divisions between science and literature, as well as between professionals and amateurs, more clear. As a member of the "Wattite" group in the British Association, represented especially by James Watt the younger, Babbage closely connected with industrialists. He wanted to move quickly in the same direction and had little interest in the more gentlemanly members of the group. He believed that industrial society was the final stage of human development, a view he shared with Herschel. A disagreement with Roderick Murchison led to his leaving the group in 1838. At the end of the same year, he resigned as Lucasian professor, also ending his involvement in the Cambridge debate with Whewell. His interests became more focused on computation, meteorology, and international connections.

Babbage announced a project to list all physical constants, called "constants of nature," a term he introduced. He was a pioneer in the field of "absolute measurement." His ideas followed those of Johann Christian Poggendorff and were mentioned to Brewster in 1832. The project included 19 categories of constants, and Ian Hacking notes these reflect Babbage's "eccentric enthusiasms." Babbage's paper, "On Tables of the Constants of Nature and Art," was reprinted by the Smithsonian Institution in 1856, with a note that Arnold Henry Guyot's physical tables would be part of the work.

Exact measurement was important for developing machine tools. Babbage was a pioneer in this area, along with Henry Maudslay, William Sellers, and Joseph Whitworth.

Through the Royal Society, Babbage became friends with engineer Marc Brunel. Brunel introduced Babbage to Joseph Clement, allowing him to study artisans in his work on manufacturing. Babbage introduced Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1830 for a connection with the proposed Bristol & Birmingham Railway. Around 1838, Babbage studied the advantages of the broad gauge used in Brunel's Great Western Railway.

In 1838, Babbage invented the pilot, also called a cow-catcher, a metal frame on the front of trains that clears obstacles. He also built a dynamometer car. His eldest son, Benjamin Herschel Babbage, worked as an engineer for Brunel on the railways before moving to Australia in the 1850s.

Babbage also invented an ophthalmoscope, which he gave to Thomas Wharton Jones for testing. Jones ignored it, and the device was later used after being independently invented by Hermann von Helmholtz.

Babbage achieved important results in cryptography, though this was not widely known until a century after his death. Letter frequency was category 18 of his tabulation project. Joseph Henry later argued that it was relevant to managing movable type. As early as 1845, Babbage solved a cipher created by his nephew, Henry Hollier, and discovered that ciphers based on Vigenère tables could be broken using modular arithmetic. During the Crimean War of the 1850s, Babbage cracked Vigenère's autokey cipher and the simpler Vigenère cipher. He planned to write a book, "The Philosophy of Deciphering," but never did. His discovery was kept secret and not published. Credit for the result was later given to Friedrich Kasiski, a Prussian officer, who made the same discovery years later. However, in 1854, Babbage published a solution to a Vigenère cipher that had appeared in the Journal of the Society of Arts. In 1855, he also published a short letter, "Cypher Writing," in the same journal. His priority was not recognized until 1985.

Babbage was involved in public but unpopular campaigns against nuisances. In 1857, he published a "Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows," showing that of 464 broken panes, 14 were caused by "drunken men, women or boys."

Babbage disliked common people, especially the "Mob," and wrote "Observations of Street Nuisances" in 1864. He counted 165 "nuisances" over 80 days. He especially disliked street music, especially the music of organ grinders, and criticized them in many places. The following quote is typical of his views.

Babbage was not the only one with these views. Michael Thomas Bass, an MP, supported his cause.

In the 1860s, Babbage also opposed hoop-rolling, blaming boys for causing accidents by rolling hoops under horses' legs, leading to injuries. He became well-known for this, being criticized in Parliament in 1864 for "commencing a crusade against the popular game of tip-cat and the trundling of hoops."

Computing pioneer

Charles Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers. They were not completed mainly because of funding problems and disagreements, especially with George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer Royal.

Babbage oversaw the building of some steam-powered machines that had limited success, showing that calculations could be done by machines. For over ten years, the government funded his project with £17,000, but eventually, the Treasury no longer trusted him.

Although Babbage's machines were mechanical and difficult to handle, their basic structure was similar to modern computers. Data and program memory were kept separate, operations were based on instructions, the control unit could make decisions to change the process, and the machine had a separate unit for input and output.

During Babbage's time, printed math tables were calculated by human computers, meaning people did the work by hand. These tables were important for navigation, science, engineering, and math. Errors often happened during copying or calculations.

At Cambridge, Babbage noticed the mistakes in this process and saw the chance to use machines to help. He wrote about a time when he became interested in improving math tables. He was familiar with a French project led by Gaspard de Prony, which had problems with its setup. After the Napoleonic Wars ended, scientists began working together again. In the 1820s and 1830s, Babbage wrote about de Prony's project in detail.

In 1822, Babbage started building a machine called the difference engine, designed to calculate values of polynomial functions automatically. It used the method of finite differences to avoid needing multiplication or division.

To build a prototype difference engine, Babbage hired Joseph Clement in 1823. Clement worked carefully, but his tools were very complex. At the time, he could charge for building them and keep ownership. Babbage and Clement had a disagreement about costs around 1831.

Some parts of the prototype are in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. This prototype became the "first difference engine." It was never finished, and the completed parts are now at the Science Museum in London. The first difference engine would have had about 25,000 parts, weighed 13,600 kg, and been 2.4 meters tall. Even though Babbage received enough money for the project, it was never completed. Later, between 1847 and 1849, he created detailed plans for an improved version, "Difference Engine No. 2," but the British government did not fund it. His design was finally built in 1989–1991 using 19th-century methods. It performed its first calculation in London, returning results accurate to 31 digits.

In 2000, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage designed for the difference engine. His printers were the first computer printers ever invented.

The Science Museum has built two Difference Engines based on Babbage's plans for the Difference Engine No. 2. One is owned by the museum. The other, owned by Nathan Myhrvold, was displayed at the Computer History Museum in California in 2008. These models are not copies of the original.

After the first difference engine project failed, Babbage designed a more complex machine called the Analytical Engine. He hired C. G. Jarvis, who had worked with Clement as a drafter. The Analytical Engine marked the shift from simple arithmetic to general-purpose computation. Babbage's reputation as a computer pioneer is largely based on this machine.

The main innovation was that the Analytical Engine would use punched cards for programming. It would use loops of Jacquard's punched cards to control a mechanical calculator, which could use results from earlier calculations as input. The machine was intended to include features later used in modern computers, such as sequential control, branching, and looping. It would have been the first mechanical device capable of being Turing-complete. Babbage wrote programs for the Analytical Engine from 1837 to 1840. The first program was completed in 1837. The Analytical Engine was not a single machine but a series of designs Babbage worked on until his death in 1871.

Ada Lovelace, who communicated with Babbage during the development of the Analytical Engine, is credited with creating an algorithm to calculate Bernoulli numbers. Some scholars question how much of the idea was Lovelace's own, despite evidence in her handwriting. She is often called the first computer programmer, even though no programming language existed at the time.

Lovelace also translated and wrote about the project. She described the engine's programming by punch cards, saying: "We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."

In 1840, Babbage visited Turin at the invitation of Giovanni Plana, who had built an analog computing machine in 1831. There, Babbage gave the only public explanation of the Analytical Engine. In 1842, Charles Wheatstone asked Lovelace to translate a paper by Luigi Menabrea, who had taken notes of Babbage's Turin lectures. Babbage also asked her to add her own ideas. Fortunato Prandi, an Italian interpreter in Turin, was an exile and follower of Giuseppe Mazzini.

Per Georg Scheutz wrote about the difference engine in 1830 and experimented with automated computation. After 1834 and an article by Lardner in the Edinburgh Review, Scheutz and his son, Edvard, started their own project, doubting whether Babbage's plan could be completed. Another Swedish engine was built by Martin Wiberg in 1860.

In 2011, researchers in Britain proposed a project called "Plan 28" to build Babbage's Analytical Engine. Since Babbage's plans were constantly changing and never finished, they planned to involve the public in deciding what to build. The machine would have the equivalent of 675 bytes of memory and operate at about 7 Hz. They aimed to complete it by 2021, the 150th anniversary of Babbage's death.

Advances in MEMS and nanotechnology have led to recent experiments with mechanical computation. These modern machines may work well in high radiation or high temperature environments. These developments were highlighted in The Economist in a special article titled "Babbage's Last Laugh" in its "end of the millennium" issue.

Because of his connection to the town, Babbage was chosen in 2007 to appear on the 5 Totnes pound note. An image of Babbage is featured in the British cultural icons section of the redesigned British passport in 2015.

Family

On July 25, 1814, Charles Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore, the sister of William Wolryche-Whitmore, a member of the British Parliament. The ceremony took place at St. Michael's Church in Teignmouth, Devon. The couple lived at Dudmaston Hall in Shropshire, where Babbage designed the central heating system, before moving to 5 Devonshire Street in London in 1815.

Charles and Georgiana had eight children, but only four—Benjamin Herschel, Georgiana Whitmore, Dugald Bromhead, and Henry Prevost—survived childhood. Georgiana died in Worcester on September 1, 1827, the same year as Charles’s father, their second son (also named Charles), and their newborn son, Alexander.

• Benjamin Herschel Babbage (1815–1878)
• Charles Whitmore Babbage (1817–1827)
• Georgiana Whitmore Babbage (1818–September 26, 1834)
• Edward Stewart Babbage (1819–1821)
• Francis Moore Babbage (1821–????)
• Dugald Bromhead (Bromheald?) Babbage (1823–1901)
• (Maj-Gen) Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918)
• Alexander Forbes Babbage (1827–1827)

Henry Prevost Babbage, the youngest child who survived, created six small models of Difference Engine No. 1 based on his father’s designs. One of these models was sent to Harvard University, where it was later found by Howard H. Aiken, who helped develop the Harvard Mark I. A 1910 model of the Analytical Engine Mill, once displayed at Dudmaston Hall, is now on display at the Science Museum.

Death

Charles Babbage lived and worked at 1 Dorset Street, Marylebone, for more than 40 years. He died there on October 18, 1871, at the age of 79. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London. According to Horsley, Babbage died from kidney problems caused by a bladder infection. He refused both a knighthood and a baronetcy. He believed that titles should be given for life rather than being passed down through families.

In 1983, an autopsy report about Charles Babbage was found by his great-great-grandson. A copy of the report is now available. One half of Babbage's brain is kept at the Hunterian Museum in London. The other half is shown at the Science Museum in London.

Memorials

A black plaque at 1 Dorset Street, London, honors the 40 years Charles Babbage lived there. Many places, organizations, and items are named after him, including:

• A crater on the Moon called Babbage
• The Charles Babbage Institute, a place that collects and studies information technology at the University of Minnesota
• Babbage River Falls in Yukon, Canada
• The Charles Babbage Premium, an award given yearly for achievements in computing
• A train named after Charles Babbage by British Rail in the 1990s
• Babbage Island in Western Australia
• The Babbage Building at the University of Plymouth, where the school of computing is located
• The Babbage programming language used for GEC 4000 series minicomputers
• "Babbage," a science and technology blog in The Economist
• A former computer and video game store called "Babbage's" (now known as GameStop), which was named after him.

In fiction and film

Charles Babbage is often featured in steampunk stories; he is considered a well-known figure in this genre. Other works that include Babbage are:

• A 2008 short film titled Babbage, which was shown at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It was also a finalist in 2009 with Haydenfilms and was displayed at the 2009 HollyShorts Film Festival and other international film festivals. The film portrays Babbage at a dinner party where guests discuss his life and work.
• Sydney Padua created The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, a cartoon that presents an alternate version of history. In this story, Babbage and Lovelace successfully build the Analytical Engine. The cartoon uses many quotes from the writings of Lovelace, Babbage, and their contemporaries.
• Kate Beaton, the cartoonist behind the webcomic Hark! A Vagrant, created a comic strip about Charles and Georgiana Babbage.
• The Doctor Who episode "Spyfall, Part 2" (Season 12, episode 2) includes Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace as characters who help the Doctor when she is stuck in the year 1834.

Publications

• Account of Repeating M. Arago's Experiments on Magnetism in Rotating Materials. London: William Nicol. 1825.
• Babbage, Charles (1826). A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives. London: J. Mawman. charles babbage.
• Babbage, Charles (1830). Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. London: B. Fellowes. charles babbage.
• Abstract of a Paper Called Observations on the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli. London: Richard Taylor. 1834.
• Babbage, Charles (1835). On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (4th ed.). London: Charles Knight.
• Babbage, Charles (1837). The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, a Fragment. London: John Murray. charles babbage. (Reissued by Cambridge University Press 2009, ISBN 978-1-108-00000-0.)
• Babbage, Charles (1841). Table of the Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108000. London: William Clowes and Sons. charles babbage. (The LOCOMAT site contains a reconstruction of this table.)
• Babbage, Charles (1851). The Exposition of 1851. London: John Murray. charles babbage.
• Laws of Mechanical Notation. 1851.
• Babbage, Charles (1864). Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London: Longman.
• Babbage, Charles (1989). Hyman, Anthony (ed.). Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-34311-4.
• Babbage, Charles (1989) [1815]. "Charles Babbage's Lectures on Astronomy." London.