WEBVTT - Excess Babbage 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.160 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.640 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:22.479 and I love all things tech. And many years ago, 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:26.080 when tech Stuff was in a very different format, ours 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.680 show talked a bit about Charles Babbage and his various 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:34.880 engines that his devices intended to perform different mathematical processes. 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:39.599 We also did an episode about Ada Lovelace, the Enchantress 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.160 of Numbers. But the show was so different back then 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:45.319 that I thought it might be good to do some 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.640 thorough examinations of who these people were and the contributions 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:54.800 they made to technology in general and arguably computing in particular. 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:58.280 And they are all the more remarkable, and that those 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:02.720 contributions all took place in the early to mid nineteenth century, 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.959 nearly one hundred years before we would get the first programmable, 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:11.840 electronic and general purpose computer. But we've got a lot 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:14.840 of ground to cover before we get there, so let 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:20.080 us begin with the life and accomplishments of one Charles Babbage. 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:26.080 Charles Babbage was born on December twenty six see although 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:30.839 his obituary said it was sevento Spoiler alert, I guess 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:35.000 Babbage is not alive anymore. He was remarkable, but he 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:39.160 was not an immortal anyway. There's a record of his 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:44.480 baptism that actually dates back to January seventeen two, so 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:48.280 unless he was baptized nearly a full year before he 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:51.760 was born, I think it is probably safe to say 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.600 that the seventeen nine one date is the correct one. 0:01:56.320 --> 0:02:00.840 His grandfather was Benjamin Babbage Sr. Who was a man 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:05.760 of some standing in Tautness, a market town in Devonshire itself, 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:09.400 a region in the southwest of England. It's a port town. 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.400 It's about the same distance from Exeter as it is 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:15.840 from Plymouth, and Plymouth might be the first location that 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:20.440 my fellow Americans recognize. Benny Sr. Served as mayor of 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.760 Tautness for a year, indicating that he must have been 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.840 at least a little bit important in that town. His son, 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:32.200 Benji Jr. Would become a goldsmith and a tradesman, and 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:35.360 later on a banker. Junior was a bit of a 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:38.000 career man, which is putting it lightly. He was someone 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:41.239 who apparently did not have time for the other aspects 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.320 of life. As he was in his late thirties when 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:49.040 he married Elizabeth Betsy plumy Teep, who came from a 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:53.519 likewise prominent family in Devonshire. They were married in seventeen nine. 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:58.880 Benjamin Babbage Jr. And Betsy moved from Devonshire to London, 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:05.040 where Benny secured a position at the bitten Estate banking firm. 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:09.000 The following year, Charles Babbage was born. His father continued 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.080 to rise in the ranks of the banking industry, becoming 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:16.120 junior partner of the banking house of Prad Digby Box 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.839 Babbage and Company, though most people referred to it as 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.000 Pratt and Company for the sake of Brevity, which, as 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:26.520 we know, is the soul of wit. The bank was 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:29.639 on Fleet Street, where there was also a barber of 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.200 some renown, but that's a tale for a different time. 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:39.160 Swing your razor high Sweeney. His family was religious, adhering 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:43.720 to the Anglican faith, and Charles would also become a 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:47.760 religious man. He had two brothers, who sadly did not 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:52.160 survive infancy. He also had a sister named Mary Ann, 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:56.520 who was seven years younger than he and would be 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.040 one of his close friends as he was growing up. 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.720 His early education came from private tutors, but Charles was 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:08.560 also plagued with health problems described as violent fevers, and 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:11.960 his parents worried that the realities of living in London 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.640 at the dawn of the nineteenth century remember this is 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:19.360 in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, that maybe all 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.640 that was a little too taxing on young Chuck. So 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.520 they decided that he should be sent off to attend 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:29.480 school in a rural schoolhouse in the countryside, far from 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:32.760 the noise and pollution of the city, and they hoped 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.440 that there his health would be able to improve. So 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.320 in eighteen oh three, Ben Jr. Relocated his family back 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.159 to Devon and Charles would move his studies to a 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:48.000 village named Alphington outside of Exeter. His school consisted of 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.960 six students, including Charles. Their teacher was a member of 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:57.800 the local clergy. Charles health did improve and his curiosity 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.520 became one of his defining traits. He was keenly interested 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:06.320 in puzzles and ciphers and clockwork devices. And this again 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.520 was in the early eighteen hundreds. England's Industrial Revolution was 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.120 in full swing, so this was an era of innovation, 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:18.800 of urbanization and automation. Joseph Murray Jacquard had invented a 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.719 machine that would later serve as one of the foundational 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.120 elements to one of Babbage's own inventions. This would be 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.839 the Jacquard loom, which used punch cards as a way 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:33.440 to create specific woven patterns. The Jaccard loom is a 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:37.800 fascinating piece of technology and a truly ingenious invention. It 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:42.160 allowed weavers to program a woven pattern, and assuming you 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:46.600 operated the loom properly, the machine would follow the program exactly, 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:51.080 creating the pattern just as you had programmed it. Now, 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.560 the way this worked mechanically is super cool, but it's 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:58.320 also something that I don't think I can easily explain 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.800 without visual aids. But because there are a lot of 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:06.600 moving parts, ultimately the punch cards would determine which threads 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.719 in the loom would lift up for each pass of 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.440 a looms shuttle. So quick explanation here, just because it 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:17.880 will clear some stuff up. Let's imagine you've got a 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.600 series of threads arranged vertically, and let's say they're all white. 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:25.920 This is the background of your woven pattern. Let's say 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.719 you're making a rug. Well, you would weave by moving 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:34.080 a new thread, probably a different color horizontally across these 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:38.040 vertical strings, right, and you would alternate when you would 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:42.080 go over or under threads, and which threads you go 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.800 over or under would be dependent upon whatever pattern you're 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.800 trying to make. Uh. This is painstakingly slow to do 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.320 by hand. So a loom space speeds us up by 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:58.520 lifting some threads while keeping other threads down. So imagine 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:01.920 that the loom is lifting up every odd numbered thread 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:06.479 and all the even numbered threads stay down. Then you 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.640 could pull a horizontal thread across the width of all 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:13.120 these vertical lines, and then switch which threads are up 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.480 and which ones are down and pull the thread across again. 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.640 That's the job of the shuttle. The shuttle holds the 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:25.400 thread that goes back and forth horizontally across the lines 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:29.440 of vertical threads. So doing this and alternating it over 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:33.080 and over again, that is weaving. It's much faster than 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:37.200 doing the over under, over under, over under by hand. Now, 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:42.040 the punch cards were important because they would give more 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:47.320 specific instructions about which threads would lift up and which 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.640 ones would stay down with each pass. And the end 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.320 result of this is that you would have a specific 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:57.600 woven pattern at the end, like an intricate design, something 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:00.920 that would have taken ages to do by hand, and 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:05.120 Babbage would later find a different use for punch cards 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:08.400 later in his own career. However, let's get back to 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:13.160 young Chuckers. He really was seeking understanding of the universe 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.080 in general, and that included the spiritual realm. So one 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.440 of my favorite stories about Babbage is about the time 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:24.040 he tried to summon the devil. Yep, you heard me now. 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:28.280 According to the story, a teenage Charles Babbage, because of 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:31.200 course he was a teenager, decided that he was going 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.000 to sneak out of his room one night, creep toward 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:37.720 an unoccupied home that wasn't too far away, go up 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:41.280 to the attic with a lantern and knife in hand, 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:44.800 and there he pricked his finger to draw blood. He 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:47.280 used that blood to draw up a circle, and then, 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.880 according to the story, he walked into the circle and 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.720 began to recite the Lord's prayer in reverse, keeping an 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.080 eye out for any signs of the devil. And while 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:00.120 the devil did not show up, tenacious d totally did it, 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.520 and they rocked out for the rest of the night. Alright, 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:07.320 that part was a lie, But the story about Babbage 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:10.400 trying to summon the devil is apparently true, and of 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:14.760 course nobody actually showed up. There are other stories of 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:17.920 Babbage using his ingenuity to attempt to create devices that 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:22.040 would allow him to simulate the miracles mentioned in the Bible. 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:24.600 So in a way, you could think of Charles Babbage 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.880 as kind of an early model for MythBusters, as he 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.880 tried to replicate biblical tales. You know, if you've watched MythBusters, 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:34.960 you've seen that sometimes they're not testing a myth, they're 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:38.600 trying to replicate the results of a myth. That was 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.760 kind of what Babbage was doing. He was thinking, well, 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:45.160 how could I walk on water? And he would try 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:47.280 to make stuff that would allow him to do that. 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:51.360 More often than not he failed. In eighteen oh six, 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.440 when he was fifteen and just a couple of years 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:59.360 after Jacquard had invented his famous loom, Babbage enrolled in 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:03.560 a school called forty Hill in Infield, a northern region 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:07.640 of London, nearly two hundred miles away from his home. 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:12.280 Forty Hill had thirty students, so it was positively teeming 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:15.679 compared to the tiny school that Babbage had previously attended, 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.800 and Babbage met a mentor who would encourage his curiosity further, 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:24.760 a man named Stephen Freeman. Reverend Freeman was a mathematician 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:28.520 and an amateur astronomer, and soon Babbage would dive into 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.520 those subjects with the same enthusiasm he had shown in 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:36.240 trying to summon Lucifer. Babbage did become something of a 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:40.800 troublesome student, acting out on occasion and committing small acts 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:44.280 of vandalism. After about a year, he was sent back 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:46.880 home to study once more with tutors as he prepared 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:52.040 for university, focusing primarily on mathematics. In eighteen ten, he 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:56.680 was accepted into Trinity College at Cambridge. He had a 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:59.960 pretty easy go of it there. His family was well 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.199 to do, so Babbage even had a personal maid who 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.520 was paid for by his family. She would look after him, 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:09.240 she would cook for him and clean for him, and 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:12.960 he had an allowance of three hundred pounds sterling each year, 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:17.960 which today would be equivalent to around thirty thousand dollars. 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:22.160 So yeah, if you want to talk privilege, this guy 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.880 fits the bill. But Babbage also found the subject matter 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.080 of his studies to be lacking, complaining that the college 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:33.200 was teaching outdated material he sought out on his own 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:37.439 the works of more contemporary mathematicians, mostly from the continent. 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.640 His desire to learn pushed him to spend a significant 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:45.559 amount to acquire calculus textbooks that came from France, which 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.840 was pretty hard to do because at the time there 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.680 was this little scuffle going on called the Napoleonic Wars. 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.520 Babbage formed as a bit of a joke a mathematics 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:00.560 club at Trinity College that looked towards Europe and the 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:04.760 mathematicians there as superior to the ones that they were 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:08.400 studying while they were in class. Most of the mathematicians 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:14.600 they were studying were English because England was extremely nationalistic. Now. 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.160 One of his fellow club members was a guy named 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.920 John Herschel that was a son of William Herschel, the 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:26.640 astronomer who first discovered uranus. So this was prestigious company 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.200 he was in, and the club became known as the 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:33.520 Analytical Society. They pulled their books together and they formed 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:38.439 their own society library from their collected text books. Babbage 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:42.440 transferred from Trinity College to Peter House. Both colleges are 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.240 part of University of Cambridge, with Peter House the oldest 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:50.440 of the constituent colleges. That one was founded way back 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:56.120 in twelve eighty four. Trinity College, by comparison, is positively youthful, 0:12:56.200 --> 0:13:00.000 having been founded in fifteen forty six. For those unfamiliar 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.280 year with universities like Cambridge, the university as a whole 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.959 is made up of more than thirty semi autonomous colleges, 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:10.640 and the colleges don't share a single campus. Rather, they 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.640 are found throughout the city of Cambridge. So while Babbage 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:16.439 was still part of the University of Cambridge as a whole, 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:19.200 he was no longer studying at Trinity College with his 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:23.280 buddies in the Analytical Society. Babbage also continued to be 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:27.200 interested in the paranormal. He joined a ghost club at 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:31.720 Payder House. However, he also must have recognized that such 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:37.320 beliefs were viewed as um let's call it eccentric, because 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:41.400 he also joined a club called the Extraction Club, which 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:47.000 boy okay, alright. So the Extraction Club had a rule. 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.600 Every member of the club was meant to send a 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:56.199 handwritten letter including their current address, to the club's secretary 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:02.000 every six months. Failure to do so would result in 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:07.200 the club turning its full resources to extract that member 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.800 from an asylum, because it was assumed that if you 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:15.200 were unable to respond to this demand that you send 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:17.520 a letter every six months, that you must have been 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:23.240 committed to an asylum for being very eccentric will say uh, 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:26.360 and that they would use any means necessary to get 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.960 the member out of the asylum, legal or otherwise. So 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:35.800 Babbage's college years were very different from my own. Chuck 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:39.920 received an honorary diploma from paid House. The reason for 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.640 the honorary status is another ridiculous story, but I feel 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.720 I've been a little too indulgent in his college years already. 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.960 And he also married the woman he had been courting 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:54.560 for three years. She was Georgina Whitmore, someone who sounds 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.400 to me like she was genuinely a good person. However, 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:02.800 Charles's father, Benji Jr. Took issue with his son marrying 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.720 so young in life. Now remember, Charles's father way until 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.320 he was in his late thirties before he got married, 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:11.920 and he felt that Charles was making a big mistake 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:16.640 for not securing his career before settling into domesticity. His 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.600 father actually liked Georgina, but he hated the idea of 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.640 his son getting married, so young, and that put a 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:28.240 strain upon the familial bonds. Charles, for his part, lamented 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:32.720 his father was quote uncommonly fond of money end quote. 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:36.360 Though heck, this is the same Charles Babbage who had 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.080 an allowance equivalent to thirty grand a year while he 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:43.320 was in college. So you know, glass houses. And heck 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:46.920 d Adams was still sending the three hundred pounds a year, 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.160 and Georgina received a hundred fifty pounds a year from 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.200 her family, So the two already had a pretty decent 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:57.840 income without you know, having to work for it. In 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:02.160 eighteen sixteen, two years after he graduated university, the twenty 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.280 four year old Charles Babbage would give an impressive lecture 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:07.920 to a group of distinguished gentleman in London, with an 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:12.600 outcome that ultimately discouraged Babbage. I'll explain more after we 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:23.920 take this quick break. Charles Babbage presented a two part 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:28.520 lecture on calculus and an essay titled Demonstrations of some 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.680 of Dr Matthew Stuart's General Theorems to the Royal Society 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:37.600 of London. This institution is dedicated, ostensibly anyway, to the 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.840 furthering of human knowledge in the various sciences. Babbage had 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:45.320 hoped to gain entry into this influential society, which would 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:50.320 give him valuable connections and potentially have him linked up 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:54.240 with a really good position that befitted his skills, and 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:58.160 his presentations proved to be just the ticket to get in. However, 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:02.280 he soon became disillusion and with the Royal Society. He 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.760 felt that rather than pursuing knowledge and pushing back the 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.639 boundaries of what we don't know, the society was being 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:12.000 really indulgent. They were spending most of their time having 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:16.160 fancy dinners, then holding various ceremonies in which some members 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:19.640 of the society would give medals to some other members 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.840 of the group, not exactly what he was hoping to 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.080 sign up for. For the next few years, Babbage sought 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:29.200 out a position at a college, but had no real luck. 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.439 In eighteen nineteen, he traveled to Europe and encountered the 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:36.760 infamous mechanical hoax called the Turk. Long time listeners have 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.240 heard the story of the Turk how a man named 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:44.920 Wolfgang von Kimplin, determined to impress Austrian Impress Maria Teresa, 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:49.800 created what he claimed to be an autonomous mechanical chess 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:54.280 playing figure in the form of a Turk, and this 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:58.440 figure would play games against all comers and when far 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.680 more often than it would lose, and that von Kimplin 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.119 would open up the cabinet that was below the figure 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:07.080 to reveal that there were a bunch of gears and 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:12.840 cogs supposedly working the device. Now, Babbage himself played two 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.600 matches against the Turk, and he lost both of them. 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:18.919 He was intrigued by the idea of a machine that 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.080 could be able to process information independently of a human, 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.720 but at the same time he dismissed the Turk itself 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:28.160 as a hoax. He theorized that there must be some 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.400 human player hidden within the machine that was making all 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:33.720 the moves, and as it turns out, he was right. 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:36.960 That's exactly what was going on, as the world would 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:41.639 learn a few decades later. In eighteen twenty, after publishing 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.600 more works about mathematics, Babbage received an invitation to join 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:49.240 the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but he felt that this 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:53.160 version of the Royal Society also failed to meet his expectations, 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:57.400 and so he decided to be like Bender in Futurama, 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:02.040 I'll make my own society with as in astronomy, so 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:05.360 he and several of his friends and peers, including John Herschel, 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:10.280 his former schoolmate, created the Astronomical Society of London, a 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.800 sort of rival club to the Royal Society. One of 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:18.040 the first projects that they tackled was to revise the 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:22.159 Nautical Almanac, a publication that gave detailed information on the 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:25.320 position of certain celestial bodies throughout the year for the 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:30.800 purposes of navigation. The Almanac has within it many many 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:34.720 mathematical tables, and some of those tables had errors in them, 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:36.840 and so the goal was to try and create an 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:41.200 error free version of the Almanac. The work was done manually, 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:45.480 with two clerks working on each table independently of each other. 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.119 When they were both done working on a table, the 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.680 results would be compared against one another to look for disparities. 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:56.720 Now that helped but did not eliminate error, and it 0:19:56.800 --> 0:19:59.359 may have been around this time that Babbage first started 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:02.200 thinking about the possibility of creating a machine that would 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:07.040 be able to replicate a precise mathematical process perfectly over 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:11.280 and over for the purposes of generating mathematical tables error free. 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:14.560 In eighteen twenty one, Babbage began to plan out such 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:18.160 a machine, which would become known as the difference engine 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:23.000 number one or sometimes the differential engine number one. It 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:27.440 would allow an operator to calculate polynomial functions. And if 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:29.960 you're like me and it's been a while since you've 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.199 taken trigonometry or a calculus, it might be helpful to 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:36.240 have a reminder as to what these functions are. Things 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:40.520 changing so scory nowadays and everybody quick to forget. So 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:45.200 the word polynomial literally means many terms, and it is 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:49.760 a mathematic expression that can contain constants, that is, terms 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:53.760 that have a specific and unchanging value, you know, like five. 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.560 They can also have variables, that is, terms that can 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:01.800 have one of many values, the class being x. And 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:04.679 they can have exponents that is, the power to which 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:09.080 the associated quantity is raised, like two to the fourth power, 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:11.600 which is the same as two times two times two 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:15.560 times two or sixteen. So you could have a polynomial 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:20.400 expression looks something like four x plus two y minus 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:24.080 twenty five. The end value of that expression depends upon 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:28.040 the individual values of those variables. There are a lot 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:31.399 of functions that boil down to polynomial expressions, and so 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:33.960 you could create tables that gave the result of those 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:37.920 expressions based on the values of the variables. And that's 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:41.119 what Babbage wanted to do. He wanted to make a 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:44.280 machine that, when you set it for specific values within 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.840 a polynomial function, you could operate it to generate the 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:52.000 results of that function steady and reliably. Each time the 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:54.800 machine would generate an answer, it would advance the gears 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:57.720 and the machinery so that the variables would have new values. 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:00.760 So let's say that you're working with x x as 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:03.480 your variable and it shows up a couple of times 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:08.159 in your your polynomial function like two x plus x 0:22:08.200 --> 0:22:12.160 to the second power plus twenty. Well, you would need 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:14.760 to figure out what the value of that function is 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:17.159 based on the value of x. Then you can just 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:19.959 keep on going, all right, Well, what if x is one? 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:23.280 What if excess to what if xcess three? And so on. 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:26.280 He wanted a machine where he could do this very 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:29.800 much automatically. To put it another way, and really to 0:22:29.840 --> 0:22:33.119 oversimplify things, Let's say you have a calculator and it 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:35.320 happens to have a quirk where if you press the 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:39.280 plus button twice, it automatically adds the last number you 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:43.280 entered into the calculator to whatever the last result is. 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:46.359 And let's say you did the simple calculation of three 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:50.520 plus three, so you're your result is six. But then 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:53.480 you hit the plus button two times and it automatically 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:57.879 adds three to that result. Now you've got nine. You 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:00.679 hit the plus button twice again, and now got twelve. 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:04.600 So the calculator is repeating that step exactly, and it 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:08.040 never makes a mistake no matter how frequently you do this. 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:11.640 And that's sort of what Babbage was thinking. He wanted 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:15.600 a device that was consistent and dependable, and most importantly, 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:20.200 reliable for accurate results. It must have been an enticing 0:23:20.280 --> 0:23:23.360 thought being able to generate all sorts of mathematical tables 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:26.920 for various publications and never having to worry if they 0:23:26.920 --> 0:23:31.800 contained errors, Because this was something Babbage was really passionate about. 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:37.119 He would compare different textbooks containing tables of logarithmic functions 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:40.400 and things of that nature, and he would despair when 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:43.440 they didn't agree with one another, because it indicated that 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:47.160 someone was wrong somewhere. But because the results of these 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:50.520 tables required a lot of manual work to calculate, it 0:23:50.600 --> 0:23:53.560 was a laborious process to figure out which of the 0:23:53.640 --> 0:23:56.879 two or more textbooks was the right one, and worse 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:00.280 than that, they could both be wrong in different as. 0:24:00.720 --> 0:24:02.680 The whole purpose of the tables was to make work 0:24:02.760 --> 0:24:06.960 easier for clerks doing calculations by hand. They represented kind 0:24:07.000 --> 0:24:10.280 of a short cut to common tasks. But at the 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:13.959 shortcut is wrong, everything that follows it will also be wrong. 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:17.280 Babbage is desired to know things for certain, and his 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:21.000 intolerance for error drove his creativity. When it came to 0:24:21.040 --> 0:24:24.840 devising a machine that could do the work infallibly. He 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:27.679 got to work building a small prototype of what he 0:24:27.720 --> 0:24:30.760 had in mind. He used a lathe to build some 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:33.240 of the basic components, and then he hired on a 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:36.560 workshop to make some of the more complicated fiddly bits 0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:40.479 that were beyond his skill to produce. It was nearly 0:24:40.560 --> 0:24:43.200 summer in eighteen twenty two when he had a small 0:24:43.359 --> 0:24:46.240 but working version of his idea. It was a very 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:50.439 limited one, but a working prototype, and when compared to 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:53.840 what Babbage had in mind, it was very tiny, but 0:24:53.840 --> 0:24:55.640 it still had a ton of moving parts. There were 0:24:55.680 --> 0:24:59.480 twenty four axles, upon which there were ninety six wheels. 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:03.440 The wheels geared would fit together, and the gears had 0:25:03.480 --> 0:25:06.400 different ratios between them, so that a rotation of one 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:09.520 wheel would translate to either more or fewer rotations of 0:25:09.520 --> 0:25:14.640 another wheel. Gear ratios are really important in mechanical systems, 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:17.680 and we see them used in everything from clocks to 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:23.800 vinyl record turntables to car transmissions. And it's pretty easy 0:25:23.840 --> 0:25:27.520 to understand. Let's just imagine two gears and one has 0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:30.359 a circumference of ten inches and the other one has 0:25:30.359 --> 0:25:34.119 a circumference of five inches, and the two interlocked together, 0:25:34.520 --> 0:25:37.400 so that turning one will make the other one turn 0:25:37.520 --> 0:25:40.320 as well. If you were to rotate the ten inch 0:25:40.400 --> 0:25:45.400