WEBVTT - Excess Babbage 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.520 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:16.000 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.759 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:24.600 are you? I've been better. I'm in severe pain. I 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.360 think I may have a kidney stone, but I had 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:32.880 not yet recorded today's episode, and I definitely wanted to 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.640 get something out to y'all, and so before I head 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.680 off to an urgent care center to get checked out. 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:42.879 The sad thing with kidney stones is, unless it's a 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:44.880 really big one, there's not much they're going to be 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:47.720 able to do except maybe pack me full of saline 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:52.239 and await the dreadful end. But you know, before I 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:55.400 head off, I thought i'd bring you a nice little 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.000 classic episode, not even a classic episode, an episode from 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:03.600 just two years ago called Excess Babbage. This episode originally 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:09.160 published Monday, January eighteenth, twenty twenty one. It is about 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:14.200 Charles Babbage, a man ahead of his time, and yeah, 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:19.399 I hope you enjoy it, and hopefully by tomorrow I'll 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:22.039 be right as rain and I'll be ready to do 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:26.080 news episodes. For the time being, I'm gonna sign off 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.960 and take some painkillers and then head over to urgent care. 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:36.600 Many years ago, when tech Stuff was in a very 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:40.759 different format, our show talked a bit about Charles Babbage 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:44.720 and his various engines, that is, devices intended to perform 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:50.360 different mathematical processes. We also did an episode about Ada Lovelace, 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:54.680 the Enchantress of Numbers. But the show was so different 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:56.920 back then that I thought it might be good to 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:00.800 do some thorough examinations of who these people were and 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:05.200 the contributions they made to technology in general and arguably 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:09.480 computing in particular. And they are all the more remarkable 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.600 in that those contributions all took place in the early 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:17.240 to mid nineteenth century, nearly one hundred years before we 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:21.280 would get the first programmable, electronic and general purpose computer. 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:25.440 But we've got a lot of ground to cover before 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:28.560 we get there, so let us begin with the life 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:34.200 and accomplishments of one Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage was born 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:39.040 on December twenty sixth, seventeen ninety one, although his obituary 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:42.919 said it was seventeen ninety two. Spoiler alert, I guess 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:47.120 Babbage is not alive anymore. He was remarkable, but he 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:51.280 was not an immortal. Anyway, there's a record of his 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:55.840 baptism that actually dates back to January seventeen ninety two, 0:02:56.400 --> 0:03:00.000 so unless he was baptized nearly a full year before 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.280 or he was born, I think it is probably safe 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:07.080 to say that the seventeen ninety one date is the 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:12.240 correct one. His grandfather was Benjamin Babbage Senior, who was 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:16.280 a man of some standing in Tautness, a market town 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.840 in Devonshire itself, a region in the southwest of England. 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:23.239 It's a port town. It's about the same distance from 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.760 Exeter as it is from Plymouth, and Plymouth might be 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:31.440 the first location that my fellow Americans recognize. Benny Senior 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.840 served as mayor of Tautness for a year, indicating that 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:37.800 he must have been at least a little bit important 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:42.160 in that town. His son, Benji Junior, would become a 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:46.800 goldsmith and a tradesman, and later on a banker. Junior 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:48.720 was a bit of a career man, which is putting 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:51.440 it lightly. He was someone who apparently did not have 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.760 time for the other aspects of life, as he was 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:59.840 in his late thirties when he married Elizabeth Betsy plummet Teep, 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.720 who came from a likewise prominent family in Devonshire. They 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:09.000 were married in seventeen ninety. Benjamin Babbage Junior and Betsy 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:13.280 moved from Devonshire to London, where Benny secured a position 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:18.599 at the Bitton Estate banking firm. The following year, Charles 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:21.880 Babbage was born. His father continued to rise in the 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:25.440 ranks of the banking industry, becoming junior partner of the 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:30.360 banking house of prad Digby Box Babbage and Company, though 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.040 most people referred to it as Prad and Company for 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.200 the sake of Brevity, which as we know, is the 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.320 soul of wit. The bank was on Fleet Street, where 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:43.880 there was also a barber of some renown, but that's 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:48.280 a tale for a different time. Swing ear raiser High Sweeney. 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:53.120 His family was religious, adhering to the Anglican faith, and 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:58.600 Charles would also become a religious man. He had two brothers, 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:02.720 who sadly did not survive infancy. He also had a 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:06.880 sister named Mary Ann, who was seven years younger than 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:10.360 he and would be one of his close friends as 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:14.680 he was growing up. His early education came from private tutors, 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:18.800 but Charles was also plagued with health problems described as 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:23.240 violent fevers. And his parents worried that the realities of 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:26.480 living in London at the dawn of the nineteenth century. 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.719 Remember this is in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:33.440 that maybe all that was a little too taxing on 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.800 young Chuck. So they decided that he should be sent 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:40.640 off to attend school in a rural schoolhouse in the countryside, 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:44.279 far from the noise and pollution of the city, and 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:47.800 they hoped that there his health would be able to improve. 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.040 So in eighteen o three, Ben Junior relocated his family 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:55.120 back to Devon and Charles would move his studies to 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:59.680 a village named Alphington outside of Exeter. His school consisted 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:04.960 of six students, including Charles. Their teacher was a member 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:09.159 of the local clergy. Charles' health did improve and his 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:13.000 curiosity became one of his defining traits. He was keenly 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:17.960 interested in puzzles and ciphers and clockwork devices. And this 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.400 again was in the early eighteen hundreds. England's Industrial Revolution 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:25.160 was in full swing, so this was an era of innovation, 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:30.919 of urbanization and automation. Joseph Murrie Jacquard had invented a 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:33.839 machine that would later serve as one of the foundational 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:37.240 elements to one of Babbage's own inventions. This would be 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:41.000 the Jacquard loom, which used punch cards as a way 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:45.520 to create specific woven patterns. The Jacquard loom is a 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:49.919 fascinating piece of technology and a truly ingenious invention. It 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:54.280 allowed weavers to program a woven pattern, and assuming you 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:58.720 operate the loom properly, the machine would follow the program exactly, 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:03.279 creating the just as you had programmed it. Now, the 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:07.000 way this worked mechanically is super cool, but it's also 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:11.000 something that I don't think I can easily explain without 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:16.000 visual aids because there are a lot of moving parts. Ultimately, 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.320 the punch cards would determine which threads in the loom 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:22.880 would lift up for each pass of a loom's shuttle. 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:26.600 So quick explanation here, just because it will clear some 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:31.280 stuff up. Let's imagine you've got a series of threads 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.440 arranged vertically, and let's say they're all white. This is 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.400 the background of your woven pattern. Let's say you're making 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:41.720 a rug. Well, you would weave by moving a new thread, 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:48.200 probably a different color, horizontally across these vertical strings, right, 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.160 and you would alternate when you would go over or 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:55.160 under threads, and which threads you go over or under 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:59.000 would be dependent upon whatever pattern you are trying to make. 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.440 This is painstakingly slow to do by hand, so a 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.760 loom speeds us up by lifting some threads while keeping 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.880 other threads down. So imagine that the loom is lifting 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:16.040 up every odd numbered thread and all the even numbered 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:20.400 threads stay down. Then you could pull a horizontal thread 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.640 across the width of all these vertical lines, and then 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:26.160 switch which threads are up and which ones are down 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.520 and pull the thread across again. That's the job of 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:33.400 the shuttle. The shuttle holds the thread that goes back 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:39.360 and forth horizontally across the lines of vertical threads. So 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:42.560 doing this and alternating it over and over again that 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:46.240 is weaving. It's much faster than doing the over under, 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:51.320 over under, over under by hand. Now, the punch cards 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:56.000 were important because they would give more specific instructions about 0:08:56.040 --> 0:09:00.280 which threads would lift up and which ones would stay 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.560 down with each pass. And the end result of this 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:06.520 is that you would have a specific woven pattern at 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:10.240 the end, like an intricate design, something that would have 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:14.319 taken ages to do by hand. And Babbage would later 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:18.040 find a different use for punch cards later in his 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:22.280 own career. However, let's get back to young Chuckers. He 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:26.439 really was seeking understanding of the universe in general, and 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:30.040 that included the spiritual realm. So one of my favorite 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.040 stories about Babbage is about the time he tried to 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:36.760 summon the devil. Yep, you heard me now. According to 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:40.960 the story, a teenage Charles Babbage, because of course he 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:43.880 was a teenager, decided that he was going to sneak 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:47.120 out of his room one night, creep toward an unoccupied 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.120 home that wasn't too far away, go up to the 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:54.440 attic with a lantern and knife in hand, and there 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.360 he pricked his finger to draw blood. He used that 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:00.560 blood to draw up a circle, and then, according to 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.560 the story, he walked into the circle and began to 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:07.199 recite the Lord's prayer in reverse, keeping an eye out 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:09.600 for any signs of the devil. And while the devil 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.760 did not show up, tenacious deed totally did and they 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.600 rocked out for the rest of the night. All right, 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.440 that part was a lie, but the story about Babbage 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:22.520 trying to summon the devil is apparently true, and of 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:26.880 course nobody actually showed up there are other stories of 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:30.040 Babbage using his ingenuity to attempt to create devices that 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:34.160 would allow him to simulate the miracles mentioned in the Bible. 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:36.720 So in a way, you could think of Charles Babbage 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.960 as kind of an early model for MythBusters as he 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:44.000 tried to replicate biblical tales. You know, if you've watched MythBusters, 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:47.080 you've seen that sometimes they're not testing a myth, they're 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.720 trying to replicate the results of a myth. That was 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:53.840 kind of what Babbage was doing. He was thinking, well, 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:57.280 how could I walk on water? And he would try 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.400 to make stuff that would allow him to do that. 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.400 More often than not he failed. In eighteen oh six, 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.600 when he was fifteen and just a couple of years 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:11.480 after Jacquard had invented his famous loom, Babbage enrolled in 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:15.680 a school called Forty Hill in Enfield, a northern region 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:19.760 of London, nearly two hundred miles away from his home. 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:24.400 Forty Hill had thirty students, so it was positively teeming 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:27.760 compared to the tiny school that Babbage had previously attended, 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:31.920 and Babbage met a mentor who would encourage his curiosity further, 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:36.959 a man named Stephen Freeman, Reverend Freeman was a mathematician 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.640 and an amateur astronomer, and soon Babbage would dive into 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:43.600 those subjects with the same enthusiasm he had shown in 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:48.280 trying to summon Lucifer. Babbage did become something of a 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:53.000 troublesome student, acting out on occasion and committing small acts 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.400 of vandalism. After about a year, he was sent back 0:11:56.440 --> 0:11:59.000 home to study once more with tutors as he prepared 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:04.080 for university, focusing primarily on mathematics. In eighteen ten, he 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:08.800 was accepted into Trinity College at Cambridge. He had a 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:12.080 pretty easy go of it there. His family was well 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.320 to do, so Babbage even had a personal maid who 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.640 was paid for by his family. She would look after him, 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.400 she would cook for him and clean for him, and 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.040 he had an allowance of three hundred pounds sterling each year, 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:30.080 which today would be equivalent to around thirty thousand dollars. 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:34.280 So yeah, if you want to talk privilege, this guy 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:38.000 fits the bill. But Babbage also found the subject matter 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:41.240 of his studies to be lacking, complaining that the college 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:45.360 was teaching outdated material. He sought out on his own 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:49.559 the works of more contemporary mathematicians, mostly from the continent. 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:52.760 His desire to learn pushed him to spend a significant 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:57.640 amount to acquire calculus textbooks that came from France, which 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.960 was pretty hard to do because at the time there 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:05.800 was this little scuffle going on called the Napoleonic Wars. 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.640 Babbage formed, as a bit of a joke a mathematics 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:12.640 club at Trinity College that looked toward Europe and the 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:16.880 mathematicians there as superior to the ones that they were 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:20.520 studying while they were in class. Most of the mathematicians 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:26.679 they were studying were English because England was extremely nationalistic. Now. 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.280 One of his fellow club members was a guy named 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:34.040 John Herschel that was a son of William Herschel, the 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.760 astronomer who first discovered uranus. So this was prestigious company 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.280 he was in, and the club became known as the 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:45.640 Analytical Society. They pulled their books together and they formed 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:51.199 their own society library from their collected textbooks. Babbage transferred 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.960 from Trinity College to Peterhouse. Both colleges are part of 0:13:55.160 --> 0:14:00.400 University of Cambridge, with Peterhouse the oldest of the constituent colleges. 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:04.480 That one was founded way back in twelve eighty four. 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:09.160 Trinity College by comparison is positively youthful, having been founded 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:13.840 in fifteen forty six. For those unfamiliar with universities like Cambridge, 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:16.600 the university as a whole is made up of more 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:20.800 than thirty semi autonomous colleges, and the colleges don't share 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.080 a single campus. Rather, they are found throughout the city 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.960 of Cambridge. So while Babbage was still part of the 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.640 University of Cambridge as a whole, he was no longer 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:33.200 studying at Trinity College with his buddies in the Analytical Society. 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:37.400 Babbage also continued to be interested in the paranormal. He 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:42.160 joined a ghost club at Peterhouse. However, he also must 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:47.520 have recognized that such beliefs were viewed as let's call 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:51.840 it eccentric, because he also joined a club called the 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:57.040 Extraction Club, which boy, okay, all right. So the Extraction 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:01.640 Club had a rule. Ever, member of the club was 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:06.520 meant to send a handwritten letter including their current address, 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:11.520 to the club's secretary every six months. Failure to do 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:16.520 so would result in the club turning its full resources 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:22.120 to extract that member from an asylum. Because it was 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:26.440 assumed that if you were unable to respond to this demand, 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:29.160 that you send a letter every six months that you 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.480 must have been committed to an asylum for being very eccentric, 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:37.840 we'll say, and that they would use any means necessary 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:42.440 to get the member out of the asylum, legal or otherwise. 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:46.520 So Babbage's college years were very different from my own. 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.840 Chuck received an honorary diploma from Peter House. The reason 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.480 for the honorary status is another ridiculous story, but I 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:57.760 feel I've been a little too indulgent in his college 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:01.440 years already. And he also married the woman he had 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:05.800 been courting for three years. She was Georgina Whitmore, someone 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:10.560 who sounds to me like she was genuinely a good person. However, 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.960 Charles's father, Benji Junior, took issue with his son marrying 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.840 so young in life. Now remember, Charles's father wait until 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.440 he was in his late thirties before he got married, 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.000 and he felt that Charles was making a big mistake 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:28.760 for not securing his career before settling into domesticity. His 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:32.720 father actually liked Georgina, but he hated the idea of 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.760 his son getting married so young, and that put a 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:40.360 strain upon the familial bonds. Charles, for his part, lamented 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.640 this father was quote uncommonly fond of money end quote. 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:48.480 Though heck, this is the same Charles Babbage who had 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.160 an allowance equivalent to thirty grand a year while he 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:55.360 was in college, so you know, glass houses. And heck 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.040 Dadams was still sending the three hundred pounds a year 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.280 and received one hundred and fifty pounds a year from 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:05.320 her family, So the two already had a pretty decent 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:09.959 income without you know, having to work for it. In 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:14.240 eighteen sixteen, two years after he graduated university, the twenty 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:17.399 four year old Charles Babbage would give an impressive lecture 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:20.040 to a group of distinguished gentlemen in London, with an 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.720 outcome that ultimately discouraged Babbage. I'll explain more after we 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:36.040 take this quick break. Charles Babbage presented a two part 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:40.639 lecture on calculus and an essay titled Demonstrations of some 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.800 of Doctor Matthew Stewart's General Theorems to the Royal Society 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:49.760 of London. This institution is dedicated, ostensibly anyway, to the 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.959 furthering of human knowledge in the various sciences. Babbage had 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:57.440 hoped to gain entry into this influential society, which would 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:02.200 give him valuable connections and Potenti victually have him linked 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:05.920 up with a really good position that befitted his skills, 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:09.040 and his presentations proved to be just the ticket to 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:13.960 get in. However, he soon became disillusioned with the Royal Society. 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.760 He felt that rather than pursuing knowledge and pushing back 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:20.600 the boundaries of what we don't know, the society was 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.760 being really indulgent. They were spending most of their time 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:27.600 having fancy dinners, then holding various ceremonies in which some 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:31.080 members of the society would give medals to some other 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.879 members of the group, not exactly what he was hoping 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.960 to sign up for. For the next few years, Babbage 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:40.679 sought out a position at a college, but had no 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:43.919 real luck. In eighteen nineteen, he traveled to Europe and 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:48.760 encountered the infamous mechanical hoax called the Turk. Longtime listeners 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:51.000 have heard the story of the Turk how a man 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:56.720 named Wolfgang von Kimplin, determined to impress Austrian Impress Maria Theresa, 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.360 created what he claimed to be an auton the miss 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:05.280 mechanical chess playing figure in the form of a Turk, 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:09.840 and this figure would play games against all comers and 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:12.879 when far more often than it would lose, and that 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.720 von Kimplin would open up the cabinet that was below 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:18.679 the figure to reveal that there were a bunch of 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:24.320 gears and cogs supposedly working the device. Now, Babbage himself 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.720 played two matches against the Turk, and he lost both 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:30.399 of them. He was intrigued by the idea of a 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:33.720 machine that could be able to process information independently of 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:37.000 a human, but at the same time he dismissed the 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.880 Turk itself as a hoax. He theorized that there must 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:43.040 be some human player hidden within the machine that was 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:45.320 making all the moves, and as it turns out, he 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.520 was right. That's exactly what was going on, as the 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:52.720 world would learn a few decades later. In eighteen twenty, 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:57.240 after publishing more works about mathematics, Babbage received an invitation 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:00.960 to join the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but he felt 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:04.000 that this version of the Royal Society also failed to 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.439 meet his expectations, and so he decided to be like 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:12.359 Bender in Futurama, I'll make my own society with math 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.960 and astronomy. So he and several of his friends and peers, 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:21.320 including John Herschel, his former schoolmate created the Astronomical Society 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:26.000 of London, a sort of rival club to the Royal Society. 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:29.479 One of the first projects that they tackled was to 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:34.000 revise the Nautical Almanac, a publication that gave detailed information 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.960 on the position of certain celestial bodies throughout the year 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:40.760 for the purposes of navigation. The Almanac has within it 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:45.920 many many mathematical tables, and some of those tables had 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:48.320 errors in them, and so the goal was to try 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.960 and create an error free version of the Almanac. The 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:55.480 work was done manually, with two clerks working on each 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:59.600 table independently of each other. When they were both done 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:02.560 were working on a table, their results would be compared 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:06.080 against one another to look for disparities. Now that helped, 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:09.359 but did not eliminate error, and it may have been 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.240 around this time that Babbage first started thinking about the 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.040 possibility of creating a machine that would be able to 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:19.679 replicate a precise mathematical process perfectly over and over for 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:24.040 the purposes of generating mathematical tables error free. In eighteen 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:27.240 twenty one, Babbage began to plan out such a machine, 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.080 which would become known as the Difference Engine Number one, 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:35.639 or sometimes the differential engine number one. It would allow 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:40.080 an operator to calculate polynomial functions. And if you're like 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:43.240 me and it's been a while since you've taken trigonometry 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:45.560 or a calculus, it might be helpful to have a 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:48.919 reminder as to what these functions are. Things changing so 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:53.240 scory nowadays and everybody quick to forget. So the word 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:58.040 polynomial literally means many terms, and it is a mathematic 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:01.960 expression that can contain constant stance, that is, terms that 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:05.879 have a specific and unchanging value, you know, like five. 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:09.679 They can also have variables, that is, terms that can 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.919 have one of many values, the classic being x. And 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:16.800 they can have exponents that is, the power to which 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:21.080 the associated quantity is raised, like two to the fourth power, 0:22:21.240 --> 0:22:23.720 which is the same as two times two times two 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:27.680 times two or sixteen. So you could have a polynomial 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:33.280 expression look something like four x plus two ynus twenty five. 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:37.200 The end value of that expression depends upon the individual 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:40.760 values of those variables. There are a lot of functions 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:43.920 that boil down to polynomial expressions, and so you could 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:47.320 create tables that gave the result of those expressions based 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:50.760 on the values of the variables and that's what Babbage 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:53.960 wanted to do. He wanted to make a machine that, 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:57.760 when you set it for specific values within a polynomial function, 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:01.000 you could operate it to generate the results of that 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:04.960 function steady and reliably. Each time the machine would generate 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:07.679 an answer, it would advance the gears and the machinery 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:10.560 so that the variables would have new values. So let's 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:14.199 say that you're working with X as you're variable, and 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:16.840 it shows up a couple of times in your polynomial 0:23:16.880 --> 0:23:21.399 function like two x plus x to the second power 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:25.360 plus twenty. Well, you would need to figure out what 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:27.840 the value of that function is based on the value 0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:30.560 of x. Then you could just keep on going, all right, Well, 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:33.359 what if x is one, What if x is two, 0:23:33.800 --> 0:23:36.080 What if x is three? And so on. He wanted 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.400 a machine where he could do this very much automatically. 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:43.040 To put it another way, and really to oversimplify things. 0:23:43.320 --> 0:23:45.760 Let's say you have a calculator and it happens to 0:23:45.760 --> 0:23:48.760 have a quirk where if you press the plus button twice, 0:23:49.119 --> 0:23:52.359 it automatically adds the last number you entered into the 0:23:52.400 --> 0:23:56.280 calculator to whatever the last result is. And let's say 0:23:56.280 --> 0:23:59.720 you did the simple calculation of three plus three, so 0:24:00.640 --> 0:24:03.480 your result is six. But then you hit the plus 0:24:03.520 --> 0:24:07.679 button two times and it automatically adds three to that result. 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:11.520 Now you've got nine. You hit the plus button twice again, 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:15.040 and now you've got twelve. So the calculator is repeating 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:18.200 that step exactly and it never makes a mistake no 0:24:18.200 --> 0:24:21.800 matter how frequently you do this. And that's sort of 0:24:21.800 --> 0:24:24.600 what Babbage was thinking. He wanted a device that was 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:29.800 consistent and dependable, and most importantly, reliable for accurate results. 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:33.359 It must have been an enticing thought being able to 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:37.439 generate all sorts of mathematical tables for various publications and 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:40.840 never having to worry if they contained errors, Because this 0:24:41.000 --> 0:24:45.000 was something Babbage was really passionate about. He would compare 0:24:45.080 --> 0:24:50.359 different textbooks containing tables of logarithmic functions and things of 0:24:50.400 --> 0:24:53.320 that nature, and he would despair when they didn't agree 0:24:53.359 --> 0:24:57.640 with one another, because it indicated that someone was wrong somewhere. 0:24:58.000 --> 0:25:00.440 But because the results of these tables require a lot 0:25:00.440 --> 0:25:03.919 of manual work to calculate, it was a laborious process 0:25:03.960 --> 0:25:07.120 to figure out which of the two or more textbooks 0:25:07.480 --> 0:25:10.240 was the right one. And worse than that, they could 0:25:10.280 --> 0:25:13.560 both be wrong in different ways. The whole purpose of 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:16.280 the tables was to make work easier for clerks doing 0:25:16.320 --> 0:25:20.200 calculations by hand. They represented kind of a short cut 0:25:20.600 --> 0:25:24.000 to common tasks. But if the shortcut is wrong, everything 0:25:24.040 --> 0:25:27.760 that follows it will also be wrong. Babbage's desired to 0:25:27.800 --> 0:25:31.480 know things for certain and his intolerance for error drove 0:25:31.560 --> 0:25:34.280 his creativity when it came to devising a machine that 0:25:34.320 --> 0:25:38.000 could do the work infallibly. He got to work building 0:25:38.040 --> 0:25:41.000 a small prototype of what he had in mind. He 0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:44.040 used a lathe to build some of the basic components, 0:25:44.400 --> 0:25:46.479 and then he hired on a workshop to make some 0:25:46.520 --> 0:25:49.879 of the more complicated fiddly bits that were beyond his 0:25:50.000 --> 0:25:54.159