The trouble with being a genius is that nobody pays you any attention until you`re dead. Even then they can take a long time getting round to it. If you`re really unlucky you`ll be called all sorts of unpleasant names during your lifetime and your real name will be lost to posterity. All this happened to Charles Babbage, cruelly known as "Barmy Cabbage" to his contemporaries at the Royal Society, and it is only now, over two hundred years after his birth in 1791, that he is beginning to receive the homage he deserves.
Charles Babbage, English mathematician and founder of learned scientific societies, was the first man to conceive and attempt to construct a computer as we understand it today. When we consider our increasing obsession and dependency on this invention it is staggering to think that there is no Babbage column in London or no Babbage hall to honour him. However, the Science Museum in Kensington, London, is currently preparing an exhibition that should drag his name from obscurity and place him firmly up there with the great nineteenth century innovators. The sheer tedium of addition drove Babbage to consider mechanising calculation. The focus of this exhibition is to be babbage`s difference engine number 2, the last of the three calculating machines he designed for the speedy solution of mathematical problems.
He once said to his mate John Herschel, "I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam," to which his friend replied,"it is entirely possible," sowing the seeds for Babbage`s life`s work and eternal frustration.
He began to make detailed drawings for his engines declaring his aim to eliminate mistakes in the calculating and printing of mathematical tables by mechanising the whole process. enough of his scientific peers were convinced to warrant a recommendation from the royal society and a 1,500 government grant.
In 1823 work on his machine began. after 10 years and �17,000 of public funds (about �450,000 today) the project was abandoned with only a small part of the machine constructed. unassembled components were sold for scrap and it was about this time that the expression "A right Charlie " came into popular usage.
Closest resemblance to today`s computers. It consisted of a store for the numbers, a mill to do the calculations, punch card input based on those used in Jacquard Looms and a printing unit for the results. It was of the Analytical engine that Babbage`s disciple Lady Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and great great grandmother of Linda and on whom we reckon Babbage spent most of his grant) said, "it can arrange and combine numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or other general symbols; and, in fact, it might bring out its results in algerbraical notation, were provision made accordingly." This is basically what modern-day computers do; employ the basic functions of computation to abstract forms.
Today we use the binary number system, Babbage used the decimal system in his machines.
None of Babbage`s machines were constructed in his lifetime-his son H.P. Babbage tried to build part of the Analytical engine after his father`s death, but even this didn't work properly.
It has been the general opinion that babbage`s ideas were too advanced for the technology of his day, that machining was too crude to produce the precision of his drawings and that the spirit of his inventions didn't sufficiently arouse the imagination of his peers. It has been an essential part of the current project at the science museum to show that the engines could indeed have been made in babbage`s day.
From a study of the many hundreds of drawings left to the museum by his son, experts became increasingly convinced that construction of a babbage engine might be possible. this study was first suggested by Dr.Anthony Hyman in his biography (Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer, Oxford University Press 1982).
Dr.Allan Bromley of Sydney University also realised while cataloguing the Babbage archive that construction of difference engine number 2 might be possible.
This engine benefited from experience gained from the design of the analytical engine. In 1985 Bromley approached the museum with the proposal.
The project was extremely well timed, since 1991 was to be the bicentenary of Babbage`s birth. It has been suggested that had this not been the case it is quite possible that the project would not have gone ahead for lack of impetus. so, but for the British obsession with anniversaries Babbage`s name might still be resting in the hall of failure and the post office would not consider his face fit for a postage stamp.
A team of experts and technicians was assembled under the direction of Doron Swade, the curator of computing. It was their task to interpret the hundreds of drawings into a workable format. Babbage`s drawings, while extremely detailed, lacked much of the specification demanded of engineering designs today. There were no dimensions, specification of materials, tolerances or even numbers of parts needed.
The plans also contained a glaringly obvious fault; Babbage had drawn part of the machine backwards, giving it a contrary rotational direction to the rest of the engine. This is a bit like sitting on the handle-bars of a bicycle and trying to steer with the saddle, an error so elementary that it has been suggested that Babbage was trying to safeguard his deliberate mistakes.
It was decided that a trial piece should be made to see if the basic design of the machine was sound. this was completed in December 1988. Before construction of the full-scale engine could begin it was essential to know the manufacturing costs. Consulting engineers Rhoden partners, the same firm that had updated Babbage`s drawings, was brought in for this task. The money was to come from sponsorship. In order to reduce costs and time it was decided to omit the printing mechanism. Once funding was assured Rhoden partners began work on the first steps toward construction.
The painstaking attention that every step of this project has been given is born out in the words of Peter Turvey, project coordinator: "Paramount was the need to maintain historical authenticity. If the project was to succeed in its aim of demonstrating that difference engine number 2 could have been built in Babbage`s day, then it was vital to ensure that the materials used, manufacturing methods and accuracy achieved were not incompatible with 1840`s technology. Furthermore, any departures from babbage`s original design would have to be very carefully vetted to ensure that they remained true to the spirit of babbage`s design."
Much time was spent deciding on the grades of metal to be used. Electron microscopes were used to analyse parts made by babbage`s engineer in order to find an equivalent for nineteenth century gun-metal.
Everything seemed to be cruising along quite nicely when unexpected disaster struck. Rhoden partners went bust. Was this the ghost of Charlie`s bad luck? The only solution was for the science museum to take over the construction mid-stream and on their own premises. It was also plain that to maintain consistency the services of Reg Crick and Barry Holloway, rhoden`s project and procurement engineers, were essential. One fortunate spin-off from this unhappy event was that the engine was now to be constructed in full public view at the museum.
The various stages of construction have been video recorded and it is hoped that this will prove an interesting record for posterity, showing current methods and manners.
The engine has now just been completed and was awaiting various tests. But in preliminary phonecalls to the director Doron Swade we were given the impression that there was a high level of anxiety as to whether the machine was actually going to work. "Leave it a couple of weeks before coming along," he said. "Things are pretty tense".
The project was looking to cost about half a million at this stage and the idea of a six month babbage exhibition with out a working engine was not a handsome prospect. Great sympathy for babbage, his trials and tribulations, must have developed over the various stages of construction.
According to the Science museum, "It featured an unrivalled collection of surviving Babbage pieces and selected items of unique archival material. Contemporary calculation machines on special loan from Sweden will be exhibited for the first time in the United Kingdom." A special room was prepared for the show and the royal mail did indeed announce a special commemorating Michael Faraday, the British physicist, Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine and Watson Watt for his work on radar.
Doron Swade, project manager, told us "It doesn't do multiplications" he explained that the machine works by the process of "Finite differences", a technique which allows complex multiplications and divisions to be performed by simple additions - the mechanisms for doing additions being very much simpler than for that of multiplication and division.
Numbers are fed into the machine by turning and setting the numbered cog- wheels to a cursor. An operating handle is then turned and the result arrives to be read off the final column. Babbage designed the answer to arrive in a complete machine cycle, this being one turn of the handle and taking a matter of seconds. He also designed a print out mechanism which due to reasons of time and economy were left out and replaced with its current device.
However, the engine could not be described as fully automated. Before it can function, all of its 248 cogs on eight columns must be set by hand! Initial calculations of a given equation must first be done in long hand and the results fed into the machine. It is at this point that the engine computes, giving its answer to 30 decimal places.
It is easy to see why Babbage`s engine was criticised in its day for not doing the "whole job". Babbage could not altogether banish the tedium of higher maths, but if you wanted to find all the values for x in the function x^7+x2+41 with x equalling any number from 75 to 350 then you could do this at the turn of a handle.
Modern historians describe a prime function of a computer as number crunching; not only does Babbage`s engine do the work but it makes the noises as well.
The engine itself is a terrific structure and a great achievement. It is also bizarre to think that we are looking for the first time at a piece of nineteenth century technology in the late twentieth century. In this sense it is also like some archeological discovery, a hitherto unknown piece of history. Here are some dimensions.
The Babbage project is of great importance to all who are interested in the impact of technology, in particular computers, on culture. if we consider that electronic computers now perform precisely those functions of higher mathematics that babbage envisioned which allow us to construct space craft, it is fascinating to think how this process might have accelerated had Babbage himself been successful.
The fact that one of his machines has now been built suggests that it was not technological crudity that hampered their development but lack of support and limited funding. David Bolter in his book turings man is sympathetic to Babbage: "Babbage and his proteges were genuine visionaries. in their writings we often find expressions of a world view fully a century ahead of it's time. If the analytical engine had been built, it would indeed have been the first computer, but Babbage was trying to fashion out of clockwork a device that really belongs to the age of electronics "Babbage`s blue-prints and disassembled parts could not change the world. His writings give proof of this sad fact: they speak eloquently of instruction steps, programming logic, symbol manipulation, the limits of machine time. Yet the scientists of the age apparently did not feel the significance of the message. Babbage remained a brilliant aberration, a prophet of the electronic age in the heyday of the steam engine".
And Doron Swade, a man who must take a great deal of credit for the babbage project currently underway, speaks on a more sober note about British attitudes towards innovation. "Babbage`s attempts to achieve a complete engine find strong echoes today; the relationship between entrepreneurial ventures and government, advanced technology and innovation, market needs, peer groupage, valuations, personal enmities and the relationship of the investigative scientist and the establishment. "He was uncomplementary about the cultural climate for entrepreneurs, an allegation that Britain can innovate but unlike America can`t exploit it's inventiveness".