This entry contributed by Margherita Barile

English mathematician and inventor. Babbage was obsessed from his boyhood with the idea of an universal language, and he conceived his first mechanical calculator around 1812 while he was a student at the Trinity College in Cambridge, England. At that time, he was involved in research on differential and integral calculus as a co-founder of the new Analytical Society. Later, he would become Lucasian professor (1828) and contribute to establishing the Royal Astronomical Society (1820) and the London Statistical Society (1834).

The project of Babbage's Difference Engine No. 1 was completed in 1822. Two improved versions followed in the next years, but were never realized. These devices, based on a system of toothed gears, could automatically compute arithmetical sequences of high order involving numbers having up to 5 digits. Babbage's (unachieved) masterpiece was the Analytical Engine, a much more sophisticated invention, which worked using punched cards, could perform any arithmetical operation, and was even able to print out the results.

One of the main outcomes of Babbage's research was the conclusion that every game of skill could be played by a properly instructed automaton.

Babbage's extremely creative mind spread over disparate fields: he compiled dictionaries for word-puzzlers, wrote the choreography of the ballet "Alethes and Iris" for the Italian Opera House, constructed a multipurpose surgical pump and a small cableway for mail, designed a travelling hotel room, studied the transmission of light signals and submarine navigation in the diving bell, published papers on economy and finance, mechanical machinery, and philosophy. He advised governmental institutions on the prevention of money forgery, on the costs of postal service and on the safety of railways. According to Hyman (1982, pp. 1-2), Babbage was the "leading advocate of the systematic application of science to industry and commerce." His twofold engagement for the progress of technology and the well-being of mankind was the natural consequence of his birthdate, which made him a "child of two revolutions," the industrial revolution in England, and the political and social revolution in France.

In the creation of new tools he was guided, as he states in his autobiography, by the principle that "inquiry should be made whether that which is a defect as regards the object in view may not become a source of advantage in some totally different subject." (Babbage 1968, p. 452)