ON THE 150th anniversary of the death of Charles Babbage, we retrace the footsteps of the brilliant but irascible British inventor, mathematician and engineer. Host Kenneth Cukier investigates why ...

Englishman Charles Babbage (1791–1871), an eccentric, ingenious mathematician, decided that existing tables of computations included far too many errors: the day's textbooks came with errata sheets ...

As you might expect from its name, the "Difference Engine" is a strangely difficult object to describe. You might start by imagining the side of a large crib with uprights ringed by small metal wheels ...

Many people vaguely know Ada Lovelace as the inventor of the first computer. Is this claim true? To get straight to the point, it is not. To understand Lovelace's true contributions, we must first ...

AT a meeting of the Newcomen Society held at the Science Museum on December 13, Dr. L. H. D. Buxton read a paper on Charles Babbage and his difference engine, during which he gave a sketch of the ...

Tennyson has a poem, "The Vision of Sin," which contains the lines: "Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born." Polymath Charles Babbage (inventor, engineer, and mathematician, considered by ...