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About Charles Babbage

Link Rot Warning!

Some links here might still work, but I am no longer maintaining the links on this page. If you need more information about Charles Babbage, just google him! (I know, that’s probably what brought you here in the first place, but …)

Picture of Charles Babbage

The computer in my office, a Sun Microsystems SunBlade 150 an Apple MacPro an Apple Mac Mini, is named babbage in honor of Charles Babbage, the inventor of the Analytical Engine. You can find out more about Charles at his page at the Computer Science Department of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. This picture of him, which I copied from his page at Virginia Tech, was originally from the AFIPS Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 2, No. 4.

There is a good collection of material on Babbage at The Science Museum Website of the British National Museum of Science and Industry.

Charles also has his own page at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota.

Another place to go for more information about Charles is his page on USA People Search

There is another biography, with more links to information about Babbage, atHosting Reviews

Here is part of the entry from the Encyclopaedia Britannica on Charles Babbage:

During the mid-1830’s Babbage developed plans for the so-called analytical engine, the forerunner of the modern digital computer. In this device he envisioned the capability of performing any arithmetical operation on the basis of instructions from punched cards, a memory unit in which to store numbers, sequential control, and most of the other basic elements of the present-day computer. The analytical engine, however, was never completed. Babbage’s design was forgotten until his unpublished notebooks were discovered in 1937. In 1991 British scientists built Difference Engine No. 2—accurate to 31 digits—to Babbage’s specifications.

Copyright © 1995 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Charles T. Babbage is a present-day west coast artist who is related to “the original” Charles Babbage. There are some examples of his interesting work on the web.