Sunday, November 1, 2009
Charles Babbage's greatest claim to fame is that he didn't build the world's first computer - although he sure tried hard enough.
Babbage was something of a zealot in the cause of mathematical accuracy - this was a man who once wrote to poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and demanded he change the lines: "Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born" to "Every moment dies a man, Every moment one and one-sixteenth is born".
But in spite of his eccentricities (Babbage also nurtured an almost pathological hatred of organ grinders), he almost, almost, became the first man to invent the modern computer.
Babbage's big mistake was being born in an age which had the basic knowledge to design such a machine, but no technology with which to build it.
Babbage was something of a zealot in the cause of mathematical accuracy - this was a man who once wrote to poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and demanded he change the lines: "Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born" to "Every moment dies a man, Every moment one and one-sixteenth is born".
But in spite of his eccentricities (Babbage also nurtured an almost pathological hatred of organ grinders), he almost, almost, became the first man to invent the modern computer.
Babbage's big mistake was being born in an age which had the basic knowledge to design such a machine, but no technology with which to build it.
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