Charles Babbage and The Countess

by Patricia S. Warrick

Charles Babbage was thirty years old in 1821, as was his close friend, John Herschel, and in English intellectual circles they were both regarded as brilliant mathematicians. One day as Babbage worked in preparing logarithmic tables, a tedious and boring task, he commented to Herschel that he thought he could invent a machine to do these calculations with far more speed and accuracy than a human calculator could. And so was born an idea that would fascinate, tantalize, and absorb him for the remainder of his life. Over the years he drew plans, expanded them, modified them, and finally invented two machines, the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. The first was capable only of generating tables, but the Analytical Engine could do much more. It could convert into numbers and print the results of any formula that might be required. It could also develop any analytical formula the laws of whose formation were given. Using punched cards it could store early results in a calculation and then use them to make further calculations when they were required. He had invented the first mechanical computer.

516 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2007

Reviews

[toxygen]

After finishing the book, very strong impression remained from last 100 pages. The book keeps reader interested from early beginning to the very end. It goes chronologically, and in the beginning the chapters about Babbage alternates with chapters about Ada until they meet. Since then, the book describes their intervening life stories. The author describes Ada's mother in pretty negative light, which sometimes pushes reader to think twice about her character. In the middle, it's not quite sure if her characteristics are really as bad as the author tries to paint them. Book provides a lot of interesting material for discussion, so I imagine I would thoroughly enjoy discussing this book with someone who read it or who knows about the material from other sources. Personally, I highly recommend this book to everyone who is interested in topic of Charles Babbage, his Difference and Analytical engines, and lastly, but most importantly, in Ada's Byron Lovelace life.