Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

In dedicating this volume to your Majesty, I am also doing an act of justice to the memory of your illustrious father.

In 1840, the King, Charles Albert, invited the learned of Italy to assemble in his capital. At the request of her most gifted Analyst, I brought with me the drawings and explanations of the Analytical Engine. These were thoroughly examined and their truth acknowledged by Italy’s choicest sons.

To the King, your father, I am indebted for the first public and official acknowledgment of this invention.

I am happy in thus expressing my deep sense of that obligation to his son, the Sovereign of united Italy, the country of Archimedes and of Galileo.

I am, Sire,

With the highest respect,

Your Majesty’s faithful Servant,

CHARLES BABBAGE.

By : Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871)

00 - Dedication and Preface 01 - My Ancestors 02 - Childhood 03 - Boyhood 04 - Cambridge 05 - Difference Engine No. 1 Part 1 06 - Difference Engine No. 1 Part 2 07 - Statement relative to the Difference Engine, drawn up by the late Sir H. Nicolas from the Author’s Papers Part 1 08 - Difference Engine No. 2 09 - Of the Analytical Engine Part 1 10 - Of the Analytical Engine Part 2 11 - Of the Mechanical Notation 12 - The Exhibition of 1862 13 - The Late Prince Consort 14 - Recollections of the Duke of Wellington 15 - Recollections of Wollaston, Davy, and Rogers 16 - Recollections of Laplace, Biot, and Humboldt 17 - Experience by Water 18 - Experience by Fire 19 - Experience Amongst Workmen 20 - Picking Locks and Deciphering 21 - Experience in St. Giles’s 22 - Theatrical Experience 23 - Electioneering Experience 24 - Scene from a New After-Piece 25 - Experience at Courts 26 - Experience at Courts 27 - Railways 28 - Street Nuisances 29 - Wit 30 - Hints for Travellers 31 - Miracles 32 - Religion 33 - A Vision 34 - Various Reminiscences 35 - The Author’s Contributions to Human Knowledge 36 - The Author’s further Contributions to Human Knowledge Part 1 37 - The Author’s further Contributions to Human Knowledge Part 2 38 - Results of Science 39 - Agreeable Recollections

SOME men write their lives to save themselves from ennui, careless of the amount they inflict on their readers.

Others write their personal history, lest some kind friend should survive them, and, in showing off his own talent, unwittingly show them up.

Others, again, write their own life from a different motive—from fear that the vampires of literature might make it their prey.

I have frequently had applications to write my life, both from my countrymen and from foreigners. Some caterers for the public offered to pay me for it. Others required that I should pay them for its insertion; others offered to insert it without charge. One proposed to give me a quarter of a column gratis, and as many additional lines of eloge as I chose to write and pay for at ten-pence per line. To many of these I sent a list of my works, with the remark that they formed the best life of an author; but nobody cared to insert them.

I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work.

The remarkable circumstances attending those Calculating Machines, on which I have spent so large a portion of my life, make me wish to place on record some account of their past history. As, however, such a work would be utterly uninteresting to the greater part of my countrymen, I thought it might be rendered less unpalatable by relating some of my experience amongst various classes of society, widely differing from each other, in which I have oc­ca­sion­al­ly mixed.

This volume does not aspire to the name of an autobiography. It relates a variety of isolated circumstances in which I have taken part—some of them arranged in the order of time, and others grouped together in separate chapters, from similarity of subject.

The selection has been made in some cases from the importance of the matter. In others, from the celebrity of the persons concerned; whilst several of them furnish interesting illustrations of human character.