Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? I've been better. I'm in severe pain. I
Speaker 1: think I may have a kidney stone, but I had
Speaker 1: not yet recorded today's episode, and I definitely wanted to
Speaker 1: get something out to y'all, and so before I head
Speaker 1: off to an urgent care center to get checked out.
Speaker 1: The sad thing with kidney stones is, unless it's a
Speaker 1: really big one, there's not much they're going to be
Speaker 1: able to do except maybe pack me full of saline
Speaker 1: and await the dreadful end. But you know, before I
Speaker 1: head off, I thought i'd bring you a nice little
Speaker 1: classic episode, not even a classic episode, an episode from
Speaker 1: just two years ago called Excess Babbage. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published Monday, January eighteenth, twenty twenty one. It is about
Speaker 1: Charles Babbage, a man ahead of his time, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it, and hopefully by tomorrow I'll
Speaker 1: be right as rain and I'll be ready to do
Speaker 1: news episodes. For the time being, I'm gonna sign off
Speaker 1: and take some painkillers and then head over to urgent care.
Speaker 1: Many years ago, when tech Stuff was in a very
Speaker 1: different format, our show talked a bit about Charles Babbage
Speaker 1: and his various engines, that is, devices intended to perform
Speaker 1: different mathematical processes. We also did an episode about Ada Lovelace,
Speaker 1: the Enchantress of Numbers. But the show was so different
Speaker 1: back then that I thought it might be good to
Speaker 1: do some thorough examinations of who these people were and
Speaker 1: the contributions they made to technology in general and arguably
Speaker 1: computing in particular. And they are all the more remarkable
Speaker 1: in that those contributions all took place in the early
Speaker 1: to mid nineteenth century, nearly one hundred years before we
Speaker 1: would get the first programmable, electronic and general purpose computer.
Speaker 1: But we've got a lot of ground to cover before
Speaker 1: we get there, so let us begin with the life
Speaker 1: and accomplishments of one Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage was born
Speaker 1: on December twenty sixth, seventeen ninety one, although his obituary
Speaker 1: said it was seventeen ninety two. Spoiler alert, I guess
Speaker 1: Babbage is not alive anymore. He was remarkable, but he
Speaker 1: was not an immortal. Anyway, there's a record of his
Speaker 1: baptism that actually dates back to January seventeen ninety two,
Speaker 1: so unless he was baptized nearly a full year before
Speaker 1: or he was born, I think it is probably safe
Speaker 1: to say that the seventeen ninety one date is the
Speaker 1: correct one. His grandfather was Benjamin Babbage Senior, who was
Speaker 1: a man of some standing in Tautness, a market town
Speaker 1: in Devonshire itself, a region in the southwest of England.
Speaker 1: It's a port town. It's about the same distance from
Speaker 1: Exeter as it is from Plymouth, and Plymouth might be
Speaker 1: the first location that my fellow Americans recognize. Benny Senior
Speaker 1: served as mayor of Tautness for a year, indicating that
Speaker 1: he must have been at least a little bit important
Speaker 1: in that town. His son, Benji Junior, would become a
Speaker 1: goldsmith and a tradesman, and later on a banker. Junior
Speaker 1: was a bit of a career man, which is putting
Speaker 1: it lightly. He was someone who apparently did not have
Speaker 1: time for the other aspects of life, as he was
Speaker 1: in his late thirties when he married Elizabeth Betsy plummet Teep,
Speaker 1: who came from a likewise prominent family in Devonshire. They
Speaker 1: were married in seventeen ninety. Benjamin Babbage Junior and Betsy
Speaker 1: moved from Devonshire to London, where Benny secured a position
Speaker 1: at the Bitton Estate banking firm. The following year, Charles
Speaker 1: Babbage was born. His father continued to rise in the
Speaker 1: ranks of the banking industry, becoming junior partner of the
Speaker 1: banking house of prad Digby Box Babbage and Company, though
Speaker 1: most people referred to it as Prad and Company for
Speaker 1: the sake of Brevity, which as we know, is the
Speaker 1: soul of wit. The bank was on Fleet Street, where
Speaker 1: there was also a barber of some renown, but that's
Speaker 1: a tale for a different time. Swing ear raiser High Sweeney.
Speaker 1: His family was religious, adhering to the Anglican faith, and
Speaker 1: Charles would also become a religious man. He had two brothers,
Speaker 1: who sadly did not survive infancy. He also had a
Speaker 1: sister named Mary Ann, who was seven years younger than
Speaker 1: he and would be one of his close friends as
Speaker 1: he was growing up. His early education came from private tutors,
Speaker 1: but Charles was also plagued with health problems described as
Speaker 1: violent fevers. And his parents worried that the realities of
Speaker 1: living in London at the dawn of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Remember this is in the middle of the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: that maybe all that was a little too taxing on
Speaker 1: young Chuck. So they decided that he should be sent
Speaker 1: off to attend school in a rural schoolhouse in the countryside,
Speaker 1: far from the noise and pollution of the city, and
Speaker 1: they hoped that there his health would be able to improve.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen o three, Ben Junior relocated his family
Speaker 1: back to Devon and Charles would move his studies to
Speaker 1: a village named Alphington outside of Exeter. His school consisted
Speaker 1: of six students, including Charles. Their teacher was a member
Speaker 1: of the local clergy. Charles' health did improve and his
Speaker 1: curiosity became one of his defining traits. He was keenly
Speaker 1: interested in puzzles and ciphers and clockwork devices. And this
Speaker 1: again was in the early eighteen hundreds. England's Industrial Revolution
Speaker 1: was in full swing, so this was an era of innovation,
Speaker 1: of urbanization and automation. Joseph Murrie Jacquard had invented a
Speaker 1: machine that would later serve as one of the foundational
Speaker 1: elements to one of Babbage's own inventions. This would be
Speaker 1: the Jacquard loom, which used punch cards as a way
Speaker 1: to create specific woven patterns. The Jacquard loom is a
Speaker 1: fascinating piece of technology and a truly ingenious invention. It
Speaker 1: allowed weavers to program a woven pattern, and assuming you
Speaker 1: operate the loom properly, the machine would follow the program exactly,
Speaker 1: creating the just as you had programmed it. Now, the
Speaker 1: way this worked mechanically is super cool, but it's also
Speaker 1: something that I don't think I can easily explain without
Speaker 1: visual aids because there are a lot of moving parts. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the punch cards would determine which threads in the loom
Speaker 1: would lift up for each pass of a loom's shuttle.
Speaker 1: So quick explanation here, just because it will clear some
Speaker 1: stuff up. Let's imagine you've got a series of threads
Speaker 1: arranged vertically, and let's say they're all white. This is
Speaker 1: the background of your woven pattern. Let's say you're making
Speaker 1: a rug. Well, you would weave by moving a new thread,
Speaker 1: probably a different color, horizontally across these vertical strings, right,
Speaker 1: and you would alternate when you would go over or
Speaker 1: under threads, and which threads you go over or under
Speaker 1: would be dependent upon whatever pattern you are trying to make.
Speaker 1: This is painstakingly slow to do by hand, so a
Speaker 1: loom speeds us up by lifting some threads while keeping
Speaker 1: other threads down. So imagine that the loom is lifting
Speaker 1: up every odd numbered thread and all the even numbered
Speaker 1: threads stay down. Then you could pull a horizontal thread
Speaker 1: across the width of all these vertical lines, and then
Speaker 1: switch which threads are up and which ones are down
Speaker 1: and pull the thread across again. That's the job of
Speaker 1: the shuttle. The shuttle holds the thread that goes back
Speaker 1: and forth horizontally across the lines of vertical threads. So
Speaker 1: doing this and alternating it over and over again that
Speaker 1: is weaving. It's much faster than doing the over under,
Speaker 1: over under, over under by hand. Now, the punch cards
Speaker 1: were important because they would give more specific instructions about
Speaker 1: which threads would lift up and which ones would stay
Speaker 1: down with each pass. And the end result of this
Speaker 1: is that you would have a specific woven pattern at
Speaker 1: the end, like an intricate design, something that would have
Speaker 1: taken ages to do by hand. And Babbage would later
Speaker 1: find a different use for punch cards later in his
Speaker 1: own career. However, let's get back to young Chuckers. He
Speaker 1: really was seeking understanding of the universe in general, and
Speaker 1: that included the spiritual realm. So one of my favorite
Speaker 1: stories about Babbage is about the time he tried to
Speaker 1: summon the devil. Yep, you heard me now. According to
Speaker 1: the story, a teenage Charles Babbage, because of course he
Speaker 1: was a teenager, decided that he was going to sneak
Speaker 1: out of his room one night, creep toward an unoccupied
Speaker 1: home that wasn't too far away, go up to the
Speaker 1: attic with a lantern and knife in hand, and there
Speaker 1: he pricked his finger to draw blood. He used that
Speaker 1: blood to draw up a circle, and then, according to
Speaker 1: the story, he walked into the circle and began to
Speaker 1: recite the Lord's prayer in reverse, keeping an eye out
Speaker 1: for any signs of the devil. And while the devil
Speaker 1: did not show up, tenacious deed totally did and they
Speaker 1: rocked out for the rest of the night. All right,
Speaker 1: that part was a lie, but the story about Babbage
Speaker 1: trying to summon the devil is apparently true, and of
Speaker 1: course nobody actually showed up there are other stories of
Speaker 1: Babbage using his ingenuity to attempt to create devices that
Speaker 1: would allow him to simulate the miracles mentioned in the Bible.
Speaker 1: So in a way, you could think of Charles Babbage
Speaker 1: as kind of an early model for MythBusters as he
Speaker 1: tried to replicate biblical tales. You know, if you've watched MythBusters,
Speaker 1: you've seen that sometimes they're not testing a myth, they're
Speaker 1: trying to replicate the results of a myth. That was
Speaker 1: kind of what Babbage was doing. He was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: how could I walk on water? And he would try
Speaker 1: to make stuff that would allow him to do that.
Speaker 1: More often than not he failed. In eighteen oh six,
Speaker 1: when he was fifteen and just a couple of years
Speaker 1: after Jacquard had invented his famous loom, Babbage enrolled in
Speaker 1: a school called Forty Hill in Enfield, a northern region
Speaker 1: of London, nearly two hundred miles away from his home.
Speaker 1: Forty Hill had thirty students, so it was positively teeming
Speaker 1: compared to the tiny school that Babbage had previously attended,
Speaker 1: and Babbage met a mentor who would encourage his curiosity further,
Speaker 1: a man named Stephen Freeman, Reverend Freeman was a mathematician
Speaker 1: and an amateur astronomer, and soon Babbage would dive into
Speaker 1: those subjects with the same enthusiasm he had shown in
Speaker 1: trying to summon Lucifer. Babbage did become something of a
Speaker 1: troublesome student, acting out on occasion and committing small acts
Speaker 1: of vandalism. After about a year, he was sent back
Speaker 1: home to study once more with tutors as he prepared
Speaker 1: for university, focusing primarily on mathematics. In eighteen ten, he
Speaker 1: was accepted into Trinity College at Cambridge. He had a
Speaker 1: pretty easy go of it there. His family was well
Speaker 1: to do, so Babbage even had a personal maid who
Speaker 1: was paid for by his family. She would look after him,
Speaker 1: she would cook for him and clean for him, and
Speaker 1: he had an allowance of three hundred pounds sterling each year,
Speaker 1: which today would be equivalent to around thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you want to talk privilege, this guy
Speaker 1: fits the bill. But Babbage also found the subject matter
Speaker 1: of his studies to be lacking, complaining that the college
Speaker 1: was teaching outdated material. He sought out on his own
Speaker 1: the works of more contemporary mathematicians, mostly from the continent.
Speaker 1: His desire to learn pushed him to spend a significant
Speaker 1: amount to acquire calculus textbooks that came from France, which
Speaker 1: was pretty hard to do because at the time there
Speaker 1: was this little scuffle going on called the Napoleonic Wars.
Speaker 1: Babbage formed, as a bit of a joke a mathematics
Speaker 1: club at Trinity College that looked toward Europe and the
Speaker 1: mathematicians there as superior to the ones that they were
Speaker 1: studying while they were in class. Most of the mathematicians
Speaker 1: they were studying were English because England was extremely nationalistic. Now.
Speaker 1: One of his fellow club members was a guy named
Speaker 1: John Herschel that was a son of William Herschel, the
Speaker 1: astronomer who first discovered uranus. So this was prestigious company
Speaker 1: he was in, and the club became known as the
Speaker 1: Analytical Society. They pulled their books together and they formed
Speaker 1: their own society library from their collected textbooks. Babbage transferred
Speaker 1: from Trinity College to Peterhouse. Both colleges are part of
Speaker 1: University of Cambridge, with Peterhouse the oldest of the constituent colleges.
Speaker 1: That one was founded way back in twelve eighty four.
Speaker 1: Trinity College by comparison is positively youthful, having been founded
Speaker 1: in fifteen forty six. For those unfamiliar with universities like Cambridge,
Speaker 1: the university as a whole is made up of more
Speaker 1: than thirty semi autonomous colleges, and the colleges don't share
Speaker 1: a single campus. Rather, they are found throughout the city
Speaker 1: of Cambridge. So while Babbage was still part of the
Speaker 1: University of Cambridge as a whole, he was no longer
Speaker 1: studying at Trinity College with his buddies in the Analytical Society.
Speaker 1: Babbage also continued to be interested in the paranormal. He
Speaker 1: joined a ghost club at Peterhouse. However, he also must
Speaker 1: have recognized that such beliefs were viewed as let's call
Speaker 1: it eccentric, because he also joined a club called the
Speaker 1: Extraction Club, which boy, okay, all right. So the Extraction
Speaker 1: Club had a rule. Ever, member of the club was
Speaker 1: meant to send a handwritten letter including their current address,
Speaker 1: to the club's secretary every six months. Failure to do
Speaker 1: so would result in the club turning its full resources
Speaker 1: to extract that member from an asylum. Because it was
Speaker 1: assumed that if you were unable to respond to this demand,
Speaker 1: that you send a letter every six months that you
Speaker 1: must have been committed to an asylum for being very eccentric,
Speaker 1: we'll say, and that they would use any means necessary
Speaker 1: to get the member out of the asylum, legal or otherwise.
Speaker 1: So Babbage's college years were very different from my own.
Speaker 1: Chuck received an honorary diploma from Peter House. The reason
Speaker 1: for the honorary status is another ridiculous story, but I
Speaker 1: feel I've been a little too indulgent in his college
Speaker 1: years already. And he also married the woman he had
Speaker 1: been courting for three years. She was Georgina Whitmore, someone
Speaker 1: who sounds to me like she was genuinely a good person. However,
Speaker 1: Charles's father, Benji Junior, took issue with his son marrying
Speaker 1: so young in life. Now remember, Charles's father wait until
Speaker 1: he was in his late thirties before he got married,
Speaker 1: and he felt that Charles was making a big mistake
Speaker 1: for not securing his career before settling into domesticity. His
Speaker 1: father actually liked Georgina, but he hated the idea of
Speaker 1: his son getting married so young, and that put a
Speaker 1: strain upon the familial bonds. Charles, for his part, lamented
Speaker 1: this father was quote uncommonly fond of money end quote.
Speaker 1: Though heck, this is the same Charles Babbage who had
Speaker 1: an allowance equivalent to thirty grand a year while he
Speaker 1: was in college, so you know, glass houses. And heck
Speaker 1: Dadams was still sending the three hundred pounds a year
Speaker 1: and received one hundred and fifty pounds a year from
Speaker 1: her family, So the two already had a pretty decent
Speaker 1: income without you know, having to work for it. In
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen, two years after he graduated university, the twenty
Speaker 1: four year old Charles Babbage would give an impressive lecture
Speaker 1: to a group of distinguished gentlemen in London, with an
Speaker 1: outcome that ultimately discouraged Babbage. I'll explain more after we
Speaker 1: take this quick break. Charles Babbage presented a two part
Speaker 1: lecture on calculus and an essay titled Demonstrations of some
Speaker 1: of Doctor Matthew Stewart's General Theorems to the Royal Society
Speaker 1: of London. This institution is dedicated, ostensibly anyway, to the
Speaker 1: furthering of human knowledge in the various sciences. Babbage had
Speaker 1: hoped to gain entry into this influential society, which would
Speaker 1: give him valuable connections and Potenti victually have him linked
Speaker 1: up with a really good position that befitted his skills,
Speaker 1: and his presentations proved to be just the ticket to
Speaker 1: get in. However, he soon became disillusioned with the Royal Society.
Speaker 1: He felt that rather than pursuing knowledge and pushing back
Speaker 1: the boundaries of what we don't know, the society was
Speaker 1: being really indulgent. They were spending most of their time
Speaker 1: having fancy dinners, then holding various ceremonies in which some
Speaker 1: members of the society would give medals to some other
Speaker 1: members of the group, not exactly what he was hoping
Speaker 1: to sign up for. For the next few years, Babbage
Speaker 1: sought out a position at a college, but had no
Speaker 1: real luck. In eighteen nineteen, he traveled to Europe and
Speaker 1: encountered the infamous mechanical hoax called the Turk. Longtime listeners
Speaker 1: have heard the story of the Turk how a man
Speaker 1: named Wolfgang von Kimplin, determined to impress Austrian Impress Maria Theresa,
Speaker 1: created what he claimed to be an auton the miss
Speaker 1: mechanical chess playing figure in the form of a Turk,
Speaker 1: and this figure would play games against all comers and
Speaker 1: when far more often than it would lose, and that
Speaker 1: von Kimplin would open up the cabinet that was below
Speaker 1: the figure to reveal that there were a bunch of
Speaker 1: gears and cogs supposedly working the device. Now, Babbage himself
Speaker 1: played two matches against the Turk, and he lost both
Speaker 1: of them. He was intrigued by the idea of a
Speaker 1: machine that could be able to process information independently of
Speaker 1: a human, but at the same time he dismissed the
Speaker 1: Turk itself as a hoax. He theorized that there must
Speaker 1: be some human player hidden within the machine that was
Speaker 1: making all the moves, and as it turns out, he
Speaker 1: was right. That's exactly what was going on, as the
Speaker 1: world would learn a few decades later. In eighteen twenty,
Speaker 1: after publishing more works about mathematics, Babbage received an invitation
Speaker 1: to join the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but he felt
Speaker 1: that this version of the Royal Society also failed to
Speaker 1: meet his expectations, and so he decided to be like
Speaker 1: Bender in Futurama, I'll make my own society with math
Speaker 1: and astronomy. So he and several of his friends and peers,
Speaker 1: including John Herschel, his former schoolmate created the Astronomical Society
Speaker 1: of London, a sort of rival club to the Royal Society.
Speaker 1: One of the first projects that they tackled was to
Speaker 1: revise the Nautical Almanac, a publication that gave detailed information
Speaker 1: on the position of certain celestial bodies throughout the year
Speaker 1: for the purposes of navigation. The Almanac has within it
Speaker 1: many many mathematical tables, and some of those tables had
Speaker 1: errors in them, and so the goal was to try
Speaker 1: and create an error free version of the Almanac. The
Speaker 1: work was done manually, with two clerks working on each
Speaker 1: table independently of each other. When they were both done
Speaker 1: were working on a table, their results would be compared
Speaker 1: against one another to look for disparities. Now that helped,
Speaker 1: but did not eliminate error, and it may have been
Speaker 1: around this time that Babbage first started thinking about the
Speaker 1: possibility of creating a machine that would be able to
Speaker 1: replicate a precise mathematical process perfectly over and over for
Speaker 1: the purposes of generating mathematical tables error free. In eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, Babbage began to plan out such a machine,
Speaker 1: which would become known as the Difference Engine Number one,
Speaker 1: or sometimes the differential engine number one. It would allow
Speaker 1: an operator to calculate polynomial functions. And if you're like
Speaker 1: me and it's been a while since you've taken trigonometry
Speaker 1: or a calculus, it might be helpful to have a
Speaker 1: reminder as to what these functions are. Things changing so
Speaker 1: scory nowadays and everybody quick to forget. So the word
Speaker 1: polynomial literally means many terms, and it is a mathematic
Speaker 1: expression that can contain constant stance, that is, terms that
Speaker 1: have a specific and unchanging value, you know, like five.
Speaker 1: They can also have variables, that is, terms that can
Speaker 1: have one of many values, the classic being x. And
Speaker 1: they can have exponents that is, the power to which
Speaker 1: the associated quantity is raised, like two to the fourth power,
Speaker 1: which is the same as two times two times two
Speaker 1: times two or sixteen. So you could have a polynomial
Speaker 1: expression look something like four x plus two ynus twenty five.
Speaker 1: The end value of that expression depends upon the individual
Speaker 1: values of those variables. There are a lot of functions
Speaker 1: that boil down to polynomial expressions, and so you could
Speaker 1: create tables that gave the result of those expressions based
Speaker 1: on the values of the variables and that's what Babbage
Speaker 1: wanted to do. He wanted to make a machine that,
Speaker 1: when you set it for specific values within a polynomial function,
Speaker 1: you could operate it to generate the results of that
Speaker 1: function steady and reliably. Each time the machine would generate
Speaker 1: an answer, it would advance the gears and the machinery
Speaker 1: so that the variables would have new values. So let's
Speaker 1: say that you're working with X as you're variable, and
Speaker 1: it shows up a couple of times in your polynomial
Speaker 1: function like two x plus x to the second power
Speaker 1: plus twenty. Well, you would need to figure out what
Speaker 1: the value of that function is based on the value
Speaker 1: of x. Then you could just keep on going, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: what if x is one, What if x is two,
Speaker 1: What if x is three? And so on. He wanted
Speaker 1: a machine where he could do this very much automatically.
Speaker 1: To put it another way, and really to oversimplify things.
Speaker 1: Let's say you have a calculator and it happens to
Speaker 1: have a quirk where if you press the plus button twice,
Speaker 1: it automatically adds the last number you entered into the
Speaker 1: calculator to whatever the last result is. And let's say
Speaker 1: you did the simple calculation of three plus three, so
Speaker 1: your result is six. But then you hit the plus
Speaker 1: button two times and it automatically adds three to that result.
Speaker 1: Now you've got nine. You hit the plus button twice again,
Speaker 1: and now you've got twelve. So the calculator is repeating
Speaker 1: that step exactly and it never makes a mistake no
Speaker 1: matter how frequently you do this. And that's sort of
Speaker 1: what Babbage was thinking. He wanted a device that was
Speaker 1: consistent and dependable, and most importantly, reliable for accurate results.
Speaker 1: It must have been an enticing thought being able to
Speaker 1: generate all sorts of mathematical tables for various publications and
Speaker 1: never having to worry if they contained errors, Because this
Speaker 1: was something Babbage was really passionate about. He would compare
Speaker 1: different textbooks containing tables of logarithmic functions and things of
Speaker 1: that nature, and he would despair when they didn't agree
Speaker 1: with one another, because it indicated that someone was wrong somewhere.
Speaker 1: But because the results of these tables require a lot
Speaker 1: of manual work to calculate, it was a laborious process
Speaker 1: to figure out which of the two or more textbooks
Speaker 1: was the right one. And worse than that, they could
Speaker 1: both be wrong in different ways. The whole purpose of
Speaker 1: the tables was to make work easier for clerks doing
Speaker 1: calculations by hand. They represented kind of a short cut
Speaker 1: to common tasks. But if the shortcut is wrong, everything
Speaker 1: that follows it will also be wrong. Babbage's desired to
Speaker 1: know things for certain and his intolerance for error drove
Speaker 1: his creativity when it came to devising a machine that
Speaker 1: could do the work infallibly. He got to work building
Speaker 1: a small prototype of what he had in mind. He
Speaker 1: used a lathe to build some of the basic components,
Speaker 1: and then he hired on a workshop to make some
Speaker 1: of the more complicated fiddly bits that were beyond his
Speaker 1: skill to produce. It was nearly summer in eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: two when he had a small but working version of
Speaker 1: his idea. It was a very limited, one word prototype,
Speaker 1: and when compared to what Babbage had in mind, it
Speaker 1: was very tiny, but it still had a ton of
Speaker 1: moving parts. There were twenty four axles, upon which there
Speaker 1: were ninety six wheels. The wheels geared would fit together,
Speaker 1: and the gears had different ratios between them, so that
Speaker 1: a rotation of one wheel would translate to either more
Speaker 1: or fewer rotations of another wheel. Gear ratios are really
Speaker 1: important in mechanical systems, and we see them used in
Speaker 1: everything from clocks to vinyl record turntables to car transmissions.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty easy to understand. Let's just imagine two
Speaker 1: gears and one has a circumference of ten inches and
Speaker 1: the other one has a circumference of five inches, and
Speaker 1: the two interlocked together, so that turning one will make
Speaker 1: the other one turn as well. If you were to
Speaker 1: rotate the ten inch gear once, the five inch gear
Speaker 1: would have two full rotations. Likewise, if you were to
Speaker 1: rotate the five inch gear one time, the ten inch
Speaker 1: gear will go through just half a rotation. So by
Speaker 1: combining gears of different sizes, and by the way, this
Speaker 1: isn't just different circumferences, we're also talking about the number
Speaker 1: of teeth each gear has. I'm just oversimplifying here, but anyway,
Speaker 1: you can precisely determine the mechanical motions of a device
Speaker 1: by pairing these different gears and different ratios. Gear ratios
Speaker 1: are also important when it comes to stuff like the
Speaker 1: amount of torque you generate that's rotational force. But that's
Speaker 1: enough about gear ratios for now. Babbage's prototype could only
Speaker 1: calculate a table based on the polynomial formula x to
Speaker 1: the second power plus x plus forty one. What's more,
Speaker 1: it was limited to just the first thirty values of
Speaker 1: that calculation, and the variables could only have whole integers
Speaker 1: as values. A crank provided the rotational force needed to
Speaker 1: operate the machine, which could generate results at a speed
Speaker 1: of thirty three digits per minute, so it took about
Speaker 1: two seconds for the machine to produce a digit. It
Speaker 1: didn't have a way to print the results either, you
Speaker 1: had to read it right off the machine. Now, the
Speaker 1: full version he helped to build would include a printer,
Speaker 1: but that was beyond his abilities. At this point, he
Speaker 1: gathered his fellow members of the Astronomical Society and he
Speaker 1: showed off his work in June eighteen twenty two. His
Speaker 1: peers offered some feedback, and he took it into account
Speaker 1: for his more grandiose plans. He then penned a letter
Speaker 1: titled Note on the Application of Machinery to the Computation
Speaker 1: of Astronomical and Mathematical Tables and sent it to the
Speaker 1: President of the Royal Society of London that would be
Speaker 1: Sir Humphrey Davy as a quick aside. Sir Humphrey is
Speaker 1: best known today for his experiments in which he used
Speaker 1: electricity to isolate various elements like boron, calcium, strontium, sodium,
Speaker 1: and potassium, among others. He's also famous for creating the
Speaker 1: Davy lamp, which is an oil lamp that had a
Speaker 1: fine metal mesh surrounding the flame and that would allow
Speaker 1: air to pass through to feed the process of burning,
Speaker 1: but it prevented the flame from escaping, which was incredibly
Speaker 1: useful in areas that had flammable gases present, like in
Speaker 1: coal mines. He would also do some early work with
Speaker 1: arc lamps, which uses an arc of electricity to provide light. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Sir Humphrey Davy was a super important dude, and one
Speaker 1: day I'll have to do a full episode about him.
Speaker 1: Babbage's letter included not only a description of his difference engine,
Speaker 1: but also Babbage's thoughts on more advanced machines that would
Speaker 1: be able to do much more, including multiply any number
Speaker 1: of figures by any other number, and a means by
Speaker 1: which he could generate a table of prime numbers from
Speaker 1: zero to ten million, and most importantly, by using the machines,
Speaker 1: he could be certain that the tables would be free
Speaker 1: of error. Now, big prime numbers are something that's really
Speaker 1: useful in cryptography. A pretty common method of encrypting it
Speaker 1: information involves creating a key system that uses two extremely
Speaker 1: large prime numbers. Then you multiply those two numbers together
Speaker 1: to create an even bigger number, which is used in
Speaker 1: the encryption process. So to decrypt the information, you need
Speaker 1: to know those two big prime numbers, and it's really
Speaker 1: hard to work backward from the product of multiplication to
Speaker 1: figure out which two really big prime numbers were used
Speaker 1: to generate that product. This is the basis for much
Speaker 1: of modern cryptography, including the mining process for bitcoins, among
Speaker 1: other things. Though Babbage was not that into bitcoins since
Speaker 1: they hadn't been invented yet. He was more concerned about
Speaker 1: creating tools that would allow for more efficient and accurate
Speaker 1: calculations for future work. The Royal Society responded to Babbage's
Speaker 1: letter with enthusiasm, commending Babbage on his ingenuity, but Chuck
Speaker 1: had hit pretty much the limit of how far he
Speaker 1: could go on his own. He had been funding his
Speaker 1: work on his own, but he needed financial support if
Speaker 1: he was going to continue, and so he sought out
Speaker 1: a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to see
Speaker 1: if he could get some public funding for his work.
Speaker 1: When we come back, i'll talk more about how that
Speaker 1: turned out, but first let's take a quick break. Babbage's
Speaker 1: meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer probably caused Chuck
Speaker 1: a bit of anxiety. After all, it was one thing
Speaker 1: to communicate with fellow mathematicians and the scientifically minded and
Speaker 1: agree upon the utility of Babbage's invention. To them, it
Speaker 1: would be obvious. But it's another matter to convince someone
Speaker 1: who's holding the purse strings. That person may or may
Speaker 1: not share that same mindset. Babbage brought with him a
Speaker 1: letter of recommendation from the Royal Society of London, and
Speaker 1: that went a long way, and so ultimately he was
Speaker 1: granted an advanced somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: Not all accounts actually agree on the exact amount, but
Speaker 1: it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars in today's money, a princely sum.
Speaker 1: In return, Babbage was meant to complete a difference engine
Speaker 1: capable of computing quote six orders of differences each of
Speaker 1: twenty places of figures end quote, and do so at
Speaker 1: a rate of forty four digits per minute, and he
Speaker 1: had three years to do it. Babbage would do some
Speaker 1: of the construction work in his own workshop. He turned
Speaker 1: much of his own home into additional workspaces, and he
Speaker 1: hired on an engineer named Joseph Clement to oversee additional
Speaker 1: work at a professional manufacturing facility. Unfortunately, the building process
Speaker 1: did not go as quickly or as smoothly as Babbage
Speaker 1: had hoped. Three years came and went and he was
Speaker 1: still working on it. He took on additional jobs in
Speaker 1: the meantime as work continued, and occasionally he would fund
Speaker 1: his own work. In eighteen twenty seven, Babbage suffered a
Speaker 1: pretty severe mental breakdown because it was a very tragic
Speaker 1: year for him. In that one year, he lost his father,
Speaker 1: with whom he had had that difficult relationship. His wife
Speaker 1: and his newborn son passed away that year, and his
Speaker 1: ten year old son also passed away that year, so
Speaker 1: he lost four family members in the space of a year.
Speaker 1: His friends were able to convince him to take a
Speaker 1: break from his work on the difference engine and told
Speaker 1: him that he should travel to help kind of deal
Speaker 1: with his grief, and so he sent his children to
Speaker 1: stay with his mother. He had several children with his wife,
Speaker 1: and his surviving children went to his mom to stay
Speaker 1: with her, and then John Herschel, his good friend from school,
Speaker 1: took over the job of overseeing progress on the difference
Speaker 1: engine while he was traveling. Babbage would return to England
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty eight, after having visited various colleges and
Speaker 1: universities and research facilities throughout Europe. He secured a professor
Speaker 1: position in Cambridge and he resumed overseeing the construction of
Speaker 1: the difference engine. The monstrosity now had nearly twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand parts. If it were to be finished, it would
Speaker 1: have weighed four tons. It had also gone well over budget,
Speaker 1: but the Royal Society of London helped Babbage recoup expenses,
Speaker 1: convincing the UK government to send more financial support toward Babbage.
Speaker 1: So Babbage would foot the bill and then over time
Speaker 1: he would get money from the UK government that helped
Speaker 1: offset his costs, but that support only stretched so far.
Speaker 1: By eighteen thirty two, the government had kind of had
Speaker 1: enough At that point, it had invested around seventeen thousand
Speaker 1: pound into this effort. Babbage himself had contributed around six
Speaker 1: thousand pounds of his own money into the project, and
Speaker 1: it was nowhere close to being finished, so the government
Speaker 1: chose to suspend support, deeming it a waste of resources.
Speaker 1: For the time being, it technically was still in the books,
Speaker 1: but all actual financial support was suspended. Babbage decided to
Speaker 1: expand his workshop space at his home and to move
Speaker 1: all operations into that workspace. This was something that rubbed
Speaker 1: the engineer Clement the wrong way, and the two were
Speaker 1: unable to find a compromise, and so Clement and Babbage
Speaker 1: parted ways. By the end of all this, Babbage had
Speaker 1: started to grow really disenchanted with the whole process. He
Speaker 1: still had a really far way to go. Three quarters
Speaker 1: of the work was yet to be done, and the
Speaker 1: setbacks he had encountered and the personal losses he had
Speaker 1: endured had discouraged him to the point that he decided
Speaker 1: to give up on the project. However, something else happened
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty two that would be a positive change
Speaker 1: in his life, a significant one. In an effort to
Speaker 1: expand his social circles, he began to host parties. These
Speaker 1: parties were meant not only to help him make new
Speaker 1: connections with influential people, but also introduce his growing children
Speaker 1: to influential families as well. Something that's important if you're
Speaker 1: trying to do things like you know, potentially set up
Speaker 1: a possible marriage in the future. And it was one
Speaker 1: of these parties that a seventeen year old woman named
Speaker 1: Augusta Ada Byron, better known to us as Ada Lovelace,
Speaker 1: the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, walked into
Speaker 1: his life. Now. The accounts say that at the party,
Speaker 1: Babbage demonstrated to his guests a more recent prototype of
Speaker 1: his difference engine. This one had two thousand moving parts,
Speaker 1: and Lovelace was absolutely fascinated by this. She, like Babbage,
Speaker 1: had a love of mathematics and logic, and the two
Speaker 1: found they shared many interests. It wasn't long before they
Speaker 1: became fast friends, and that Lovelace would become a professional
Speaker 1: partner to Babbage. In some ways, she was like a
Speaker 1: daughter to him, particularly after the tragic loss of Babbage's
Speaker 1: own daughter, Georgiana in eighteen thirty four, Babbage continued to
Speaker 1: work and host parties despite experiencing tremendous personal loss in
Speaker 1: his life, he was known to be a little bit
Speaker 1: irascible as well. There's a wonderful story that I want
Speaker 1: to share. Babbage famously once wrote a letter criticizing Alfred
Speaker 1: Lord Tennyson's for a verse in the vision of sin.
Speaker 1: Babbage's message to Tennyson said, in your otherwise beautiful poem,
Speaker 1: one verse reads every moment dies a man, every moment
Speaker 1: one is born. If this were true, the population of
Speaker 1: the world would be the standstill. In truth, the rate
Speaker 1: of birth is slightly in excess of that of death.
Speaker 1: I would suggest that the next version of your poem
Speaker 1: should read every moment dies a man, every moment one
Speaker 1: one sixteenth is born. And he probably wasn't joking about that. Lovelace,
Speaker 1: by contrast, was much better at dealing with the human
Speaker 1: side of life while still maintaining a keen mind for
Speaker 1: the mathematic and scientific, and the two worked very well together.
Speaker 1: Babbage turned his mind to other types of invention as well.
Speaker 1: He created the cowcatcher aka the pilot. This is the
Speaker 1: wedge frame that extends in front of a locomotive, and
Speaker 1: it's designed to push obstacles out of the way of
Speaker 1: the train. If something happens to be on the tracks,
Speaker 1: it's meant to move it out of the way so
Speaker 1: it doesn't derail the train. He also invented a railway
Speaker 1: vehicle called the dynamometer, which could measure train performance. Babbage
Speaker 1: was obsessed with quantifying various phenomena, even stuff that might
Speaker 1: seem to be unquantifiable. It was in eighteen forty that
Speaker 1: Babbage would travel to France, whereupon he encountered the Jacquard
Speaker 1: Looms i mentioned earlier. This is where Babbage first saw
Speaker 1: the use of punch cards, and before long he began
Speaker 1: to imagine new uses for that type of technology. He
Speaker 1: thought of a machine that could use punch cards to
Speaker 1: carry out specific instructions, something even more advanced than the
Speaker 1: difference engine design of his. He called this new machine
Speaker 1: design the analytical engine. Lovelace quickly became an enthusiastic supporter
Speaker 1: of this idea, and she took it even further. While
Speaker 1: Babbage was thinking of a machine capable of performing complicated
Speaker 1: mathematical processes, Lovelace envisioned a world in which all sorts
Speaker 1: of things, from language to music could be translated into
Speaker 1: mathematics and then manipulated or even created through such a machine.
Speaker 1: Imagined music made by machine. In other words, Lovelace was
Speaker 1: imagining computer science nearly a century before we would see
Speaker 1: the first programmable general purpose machines. Babbage's design for the
Speaker 1: Analytical Engine was both more audacious than the Difference Engine
Speaker 1: and more elegant. It would be steam powered, it would
Speaker 1: be able to store one thousand digits with fifty decimal places.
Speaker 1: It would be able to perform any type of mathematical function,
Speaker 1: and Babbage and Lovelace worked together to create a very
Speaker 1: long pamphlet, more than sixty pages in length, describing the
Speaker 1: design of the Analytical Engine in eighteen forty three. By
Speaker 1: this time, the UK government had officially canceled funding for
Speaker 1: the Difference Engine. It was no longer just suspended. The
Speaker 1: project itself was no more. Babbage, however, hadn't quite let
Speaker 1: go of the idea, and he began to work on
Speaker 1: a new proposal for such a device. The Difference Engine
Speaker 1: number two would be mechanically simpler than the original machine.
Speaker 1: He had able to do more than his first design,
Speaker 1: while Engine number one had more than twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: parts before it had been canceled. And remember it was
Speaker 1: only about a quarter finished. The new design called for
Speaker 1: a machine with eight thousand parts. He would work on
Speaker 1: that in between his work with Lovelace on the Analytical Engine.
Speaker 1: Little side adventure here. Babbage was, among other things, an
Speaker 1: enthusiastic patron of the theater, and there's a story that
Speaker 1: says he was watching an opera and noticed light playing
Speaker 1: upon the lace bonnet of his friend who attended the
Speaker 1: show with him, and that gave him an idea. He
Speaker 1: contacted his buddy Michael Faraday, who also deserves his own episode,
Speaker 1: to go over a concept. He wanted to use liquids
Speaker 1: of different colors, you know, jars of these liquids, so
Speaker 1: you have like a jar of amber liquid, a jar
Speaker 1: of blue liquid, and so on, and then place those
Speaker 1: jars in front of a limelight lamp. Essentially, he wanted
Speaker 1: to create a primitive series of color filters for theatrical
Speaker 1: lights to create a specific effect. He even went to
Speaker 1: the trouble of making a ballet called Alethes and Iris
Speaker 1: to show this off, complete with a cast of sixty
Speaker 1: young women in white costume so that the light would
Speaker 1: play upon their outfits. While rehearsing this piece, the theater
Speaker 1: manager got second thoughts because he started to worry about
Speaker 1: the possibility of a fire with so much liquid near
Speaker 1: powerful electric lamps, and so the piece was never actually
Speaker 1: performed for the public. Tragedy returned to Babbage's life in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two, when Ada Lovelace would pass away from illness.
Speaker 1: She was only thirty six years old. Babbage once again
Speaker 1: was left behind. He continued to work, completing blueprints for
Speaker 1: a prototype version of the analytical engine in eighteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: but he failed to find funding for either the Difference
Speaker 1: Engine or the Analytical Engine. The government had become really
Speaker 1: wary of his history of going over budget without producing
Speaker 1: a final working piece of equipment. They did offer him
Speaker 1: a knighthood, but he declined that offer. He grew increasingly
Speaker 1: unpleasant as he aged in the eighteen sixties. He was
Speaker 1: generally disliked by his neighbors, and he could be the
Speaker 1: patron saint of Get Off My Lawn. He was known
Speaker 1: in particular for his dislike of street performers and musicians,
Speaker 1: and I really do mean he was known for it
Speaker 1: because he wrote a pamphlet about it, listing all the
Speaker 1: sins of quote encouragers of street music, and among whose
Speaker 1: numbers he counted gen shops, coffee shops, tourists, children, and
Speaker 1: ladies of doubtful virtue. His grouchiness led to the passing
Speaker 1: of what became known as the Babbage Act, which made
Speaker 1: it a crime for street musicians who interfered with any
Speaker 1: citizen's ordinary occupation. So, in other words, if they didn't
Speaker 1: cut out that racket, and you couldn't get any work done,
Speaker 1: you could call in the coppers and they could get
Speaker 1: clapped for it. Nice guy, that Babbage. He never finished
Speaker 1: his difference Engine nor his analytical engine. He passed away
Speaker 1: on October eighteenth, eighteen seventy one. While he never saw
Speaker 1: either machine completed within his lifetime, others would later take
Speaker 1: his designs and build their own versions of the machine.
Speaker 1: His youngest son, Henry, managed to finish a section of
Speaker 1: the second difference Engine, and others would build replicas of
Speaker 1: his designs much later on. You can find some in
Speaker 1: museums like the Computer History Museum. The models work complete
Speaker 1: with a working printer, and they are all mechanical in operation.
Speaker 1: Babbage's life was one filled with incredible innovation and terrible loss.
Speaker 1: I always thought of him as a really smart, sourpuss,
Speaker 1: someone who was really intelligent, but generally unlikable by most people.
Speaker 1: It was only after reading a much more detailed biography
Speaker 1: of his life and diving into his past that I
Speaker 1: got a deeper appreciation for the challenges he faced and
Speaker 1: those that he overcame. And I haven't covered all those challenges.
Speaker 1: I haven't covered all of his accomplishments. I haven't covered
Speaker 1: all the tragedy of his life. He invented other things
Speaker 1: as well, like an ophthalmoscope that's a medical device. He
Speaker 1: did a lot in his lifetime. The fact that Babbage
Speaker 1: did have close and lifelong friends tells me that he
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly the curmudgeon I originally thought him to be,
Speaker 1: at least not throughout his entire life. He certainly grew
Speaker 1: more grouchy as he aged, but considering the setbacks he
Speaker 1: experienced both personally and professionally, and those terrible losses that
Speaker 1: he had endured, I think we should be able to
Speaker 1: forgive him for that. And the fact that he was
Speaker 1: more interested in seeing his work completed than getting an
Speaker 1: honorific title like a knighthood says a lot about his
Speaker 1: priorities and his character, and that wraps up this look
Speaker 1: at Charles Babbage, a truly influential figure in the history
Speaker 1: of technology. I will have to do, as I said,
Speaker 1: more episodes about some of his contemporaries. Maybe I'll do
Speaker 1: another one about Ada Lovelace. She again is a fascinating
Speaker 1: person in her own right, and in fact, we have
Speaker 1: Ada Lovelace Day to celebrate her work and the inspiration
Speaker 1: she has given to countless generations of young women who
Speaker 1: themselves have become prolific coders. And a lot of that
Speaker 1: was work that was foreseen by Ada Lovelace. Okay, I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that episode of tech Stuff from twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. My apologies for not having a new episode
Speaker 1: out today. I really wanted to do it, but it's
Speaker 1: just it's gotten more painful as I've been here, and
Speaker 1: I want to take care of all that. Yay, Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope all of you are well. I hope none
Speaker 1: of you are going through this kind of discomfort, and
Speaker 1: I will be sure to talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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